Speeches by Pollard.

“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…”

“As I said, I will not be able to talk about individual judgments, but the Defence Secretary set it out in a statement to Parliament, when he talked about not the actions of individuals, but a system that was not delivering.”

“I am certainly not accountable for, or able to comment on, the decisions relating to the initial data breach, because that happened under the last Government. I am responsible for how we responded to it from July 2024 onwards. In doing so, from July 2024, we took a steady set of measures: stabilising the schemes, which…”

“As I set out previously, we have an ambition to look at how we address all the schemes, including where we are on what honouring the obligation fully means, but the Rimmer review was absolutely essential and vital. It was the main piece of evidence that we were able to use to assess whether there was an increased risk …”

“That is probably a “me” question, rather than a “Ben” question. We will publish the KPIs; it is one of the key parts of the instruction that I have given that we should be transparent about the performance—it is not where I would like it to be, but it is a lot better than we inherited in July ’24. That is designed to s…”

“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.”

“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 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.”

“It is hard for me to talk about SF, as the Committee will know. I am happy to clarify elements around that with the Committee privately, if that would be helpful.”

“We are not aware of any veto that the special forces had in relation to that particular process, but as I said in response to the previous question, the process that was being followed in the original assessment of the Triples, but more broadly around ARAP applications, was not able to access all the available data. I …”

“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…”

“My message, very clearly, is that we will honour our obligation in full to eligible Afghans. This country, under both the previous Government and the current Government, has promised that we will honour that obligation. We have relocated 38,000 or so eligible Afghans to date, including key principal individuals and imm…”

“I am not going to comment on hypotheticals, and you would not expect me to do such a thing. I have seen no evidence to suggest that that is the case. If evidence subsequently emerges, of course we will look at it, but I cannot see that evidence from where I sit today. I can see evidence of a system that is not working.…”

“I was not the Minister at the time.”

“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.”

“It seems a fair challenge. I do not know precisely what happened under the last Government, because I was not a Minister at the time, so I will probably invite Dominic to comment on the detail of some of the instructions and the processes—”

“We have closed two and we have only a very small number left. We intend to exit out of all hotels as part of the close-down programme before the end of this Parliament.”

“There are a number of reasons for that. First, it reflects the objective to complete the programme by the end of the Parliament. We had to close them at some point during that period if we wanted to achieve that. Working back from the end of the Parliament, when you have relocations and the caseworking period, includin…”

“Again, I will turn to Dominic for the details on that question, but broadly, on the basis of the Rimmer review that assessed a different level of risk, we were able to make a different decision around the risk, which enabled the Defence Secretary and me to agree to lift, or to apply to the court to lift, the super-inju…”

“Largely the military bases that we have been phasing out and the Defence estate, but I receive regular updates from the hotels.”