Speeches by Pollard.

“I do not think I have—on taking office, I have had no correspondence that I can recall from Grant Shapps at all, and that is not one that I am aware of.”

“The spirit of the super-injunction was that, due to the risk involved, only those individuals necessary for the protective action should be told about it. I was uncomfortable with the super-injunction; I think we all were in the Department—there was no one who was comfortable with this situation—and that led us, in tim…”

“I was not shown a full list of the people in the compartment, but broadly there was an understanding that this was a tightly held restriction. It was not a departmental compartment, so to speak; it was one required by the courts in terms of the risk of it. We could not acknowledge either that it existed or the contents…”

“Yes, what I am saying is that the previous Government had read on the Speaker and the Lord Speaker. In the event that a debate happened in the House of Commons, I think the previous Government made the decision, which I think was reasonable at the time, that in order to support the spirit of the super-injunction, there…”

“I will let Dominic talk about the broader exercise. We have put in place—as this Government rather than the previous Government—improvements to data protection, data handling and record keeping. That includes implementing new IT systems that would make it impossible to send entire datasets out from MOD systems. Previou…”

“That might be one for Dominic.”

“The handling of the Triples is something that I have been incredibly vocal and critical about, including in opposition, and that is why, upon taking office, we continued the Triples review announced to the House by my predecessor, James Heappey. It was reassuring that one reason that that was announced was the pressure…”

“I will turn to Dominic to give some of the detailed recommendations, but broadly it was apparent for those who were following the Triples over a number of years—before the Triples review started—that the data required to demonstrate that the Triples had indeed worked alongside UK forces in Afghanistan was not being cor…”

“Certainly, record keeping has improved considerably across defence in recent years. However, on the specific details, I am happy to write to the Committee.”

“It is hard for me to comment on the actions of a particular individual, because I will not be able to talk about individuals and anything around special forces; the Committee will know that that is difficult for me as a Minister. Broadly, the Triples review was necessary, and it identified that decisions had been taken…”

“Thank you for your opening remarks about the soldier we lost recently. That is much appreciated. It was immediately after becoming a Minister—I think it was 10 July 2024—when the super-injunction was disclosed to me, and I was read in on that injunction. In opposition, it was only the now Defence Secretary who was read…”

“I am very happy to look into that.”

“It is not what he did, though, when he was in charge. Certainly, when we assumed office, having been briefed on the super-injunction and made aware of the other challenges affecting the ARAP scheme, our assessment in opposition was the one that I had immediately after coming into office: that it was a mess that needed …”

“At the time, the new shadow Defence Secretary, James Cartlidge, was a read-on Minister from the previous Administration, so that effectively mirrored the arrangement under which John Healey had been read on in opposition.”

“I suspect there was someone. That might be a question for Dominic. We would have to have kept a record of all those people who the super-injunction had been applied to, but that was not a long list that I was privy to—and nor was there a necessity for me to be.”

“My sense of this is, having inherited a situation where a number of parliamentarians were read on, that that work had already been done. Those people had already been read on. The legal application of the super-injunction had been applied to those individuals, and that was the current sense.”

“That is right. In opposition, as the shadow Armed Forces Minister with responsibility for Afghans, I had raised a number of concerns around data and the handling of the Afghan scheme, but I was not aware of the super-injunction until I became a Minister.”

“During that period, I wrote to the Leader of the Opposition, inviting her to be read on. As you will recall from the time, it took a wee while to get a response to that, but we read her on ahead of the lifting of the super-injunction. And, just at the point of lifting the super-injunction, as part of a managed briefing…”

“I am not privy to the decisions that the last Government made as to who they chose to read in on this.”

“I don’t believe that was necessarily the case. What I do think is that the whole system was not set up to deliver the correct eligibility decisions. That is because the eligibility decisions were not able to access the correct information required for doing so. We know that from the Triples review, because during the r…”