Grant Shapps defends use of superinjunction to suppress Afghan data leak

Shapps, defence secretary when the superinjunction was imposed, said its use was entirely justified' to save lives

• Afghan nationals: have you arrived in the UK under the ARR?

The former defence secretary Grant Shapps has defended the use of an unprecedented superinjunction to suppress a data breach that led to the UK government relocating 15,000 Afghans.

The Afghanistan Response Route (ARR) was created in haste after it emerged that personal information about 18,700 Afghans who had applied to come to the UK had been leaked in error by a British defence official in early 2022.