People must be 'held to account' for Afghan data breach, Vickers tells GB News

GB News

Conservative MP Matt Vickers has declared that British taxpayers will be "picking up the tab" for the uncovered Afghan asylum scheme.Speaking to GB News, the Shadow Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire said the data breach was "disastrous" and now Britons are facing "real consequences" of the scandal.FULL STORY HERE.

Transcript

00:00Matt, good to see you this morning. Thank you very much for joining us. Matt, we obviously

00:03have to start with the story that's on the front page of all our newspapers this morning,

00:06the mess that is the Afghanistan situation. You were part of that government at the time.

00:13What would you... I mean, do you owe the public an apology over this?

00:17Well, good morning. I wasn't really well. I was a backbench MP. I know as much as you,

00:22really. I know what I've read from the papers. Utter, utter mess. Disastrous, disastrous

00:28data breach that has real consequences for those who were involved in the threat to them,

00:34but also for the taxpayers picking up the tab for this. Lessons need to be learned. People

00:38do need to be held to account for the role they played in that. And we need to make sure

00:42it can never, ever, ever happen again. Of course, this is going to be a huge cost

00:46to the British taxpayer. Of course, we've heard the £850 million figure. But on top of that,

00:51the paper's reporting this morning that there's going to be a huge legal bill as these Afghans

00:56who are being resettled could well claim compensation from the government.

01:02Yeah. I mean, utterly devastating in terms of the outcome of it. But actually, did we have...

01:08Well, we did have a responsibility to those people. They did their bit for Britain. And

01:13fundamentally, our services let them down. That data breach should never have been allowed

01:17to happen. It's terrifying. Matt, as you say, we owe a huge debt of regret to the people that

01:24helped our forces in Afghanistan at the time. Not just our translators, but the cooks, the drivers,

01:30everybody involved. However, there are a lot of people on this list that we don't know who they

01:34are. We don't know the reasons for being over here. But what we do know is that Afghans are more

01:40than 20 times more likely to account for sexual offence convictions than British citizens. What are

01:46you going to do to ensure that British women and girls are safe? Well, I think in that... Do you know

01:54what? I've been making a lot of noise about this, actually, in the differential arrest rates that

01:59different people of different nationalities go through. Fundamentally, the debate around that

02:03and the fact that anybody who commits an offence in this country should be removed. And we certainly

02:08should not be allowing people to come here who pose a threat to British citizens in such a way. If there's one

02:13person who has arrived in this country and has a history of doing such a thing, then that's one

02:18person too many and they should not be allowed to stay and they should be deported immediately.

02:22But how much do the... How much do the politicians... Because, I mean, it's both... It's

02:26Conservatives and the Labour Party here. How much do politicians know exactly about who is coming into

02:31the country? Well, I mean, in the case of these Afghanis, we should know all about them because we know

02:38who these individuals are that are arriving. But then in the case of people who are arriving in this country

02:41illegally, very little is known, which makes it utterly terrifying. That's why we should be

02:47removing them all. The problem is with the Afghanis, you don't know who they are. You don't know

02:52what their background is. We know that, well, some of the stories today that sex offenders are amongst

02:57them. Well, I don't know that there's any evidence that there are sex offenders amongst them.

03:03But we do know who they are because we had that list, that list that was the subject of the data breach.

03:08So we do know who these individuals are. And they should be getting checked. The authorities

03:13should be checking every one of those individuals. Any one of them that pose the risk should be

03:16removed. I understand that there's been things said about them, but I haven't seen any evidence

03:20yet that any of those people are. So I always think it's dangerous for someone like me to comment

03:24if there's no firm evidence that that's the case.

03:27Matt, in your view, who should be held accounts to this? Should it be the individual who leaked this list?

03:34Should it be someone higher up in authority? Because there's a number of former ministers

03:39speaking on the record yesterday saying that, you know, people alleging that people were covering this

03:44up and that there is this clearly has caused a lot of tension in terms of more money that taxpayers

03:50are having to pay on this. Well, the individual who breached the the security around this and allowed

03:57that list to fall into the wrong hands is ultimately responsible. I think that they should definitely

04:03be held to account. I think fundamentally we have to look at there are all sorts of safeguards and

04:07checks that should be in place on data like this, particularly in the Ministry of Defence. We need

04:11to look at where those failings were specifically and who is responsible for allowing flawed systems

04:17that let this data get into the wrong hands because, as we've said, huge consequences for the British

04:23taxpayer and huge consequences for the people who were named on that list. Matt, we had a survey earlier

04:28in the week that 90 per cent of the British public do not trust the political classes. This situation

04:33isn't going to help that, is it? No. Well, I think it's damaging for people's confidence in the

04:39government. It's damaging for people's confidence in the Ministry of Defence and it's damaging for

04:43people's confidence probably in politicians as well. Matt, we've heard from Lord David Anderson about the

04:54PREVENT scheme and he's found that the anti-terror scheme PREVENT has failed to provide help that may

04:59have stopped the killers of the three girls in Southport last year and the MP Sir David Amis. What

05:07now should be done with that anti-terror scheme to make sure it's up to scratch? I think the entire thing

05:14needs to be looked at in the round. I mean, when you look at these outcomes, the thought that what went on in

05:19Southport could be prevented is terrifying. It's just not acceptable that they think they've missed

05:25this and it's cost people their lives. I mean, Sir David Amis, I knew Sir David Amis well, an incredible

05:30guy who had so much more to give to public life, just an incredible individual whose life was cut

05:35short. And then when you hear the story and how many opportunities, because it wasn't once that it was

05:39missed, it wasn't twice. There seems to have been a series of errors that allowed individuals like this

05:44to slip through the net. Fundamentally, it's broken and we need to go back to the drawing board,

05:48look again at what's going on and how we fix this so this can never happen again. Opportunities to

05:53prevent these situations cannot be allowed to carry on. Matt, prevent have been failing for a

06:00long time. Why didn't you do something about it when you were in power? I think fundamentally,

06:05lots of people would tell you all the cases that are solved and are fixed. But today we've got it in

06:09black and white in that report of somebody who's looked at this, who's investigated it objectively and

06:15found those flaws, has found what's gone wrong, has found the opportunities that were missed. And

06:20one of the things that actually you do need to look at with Prevent is the fact that it's caseload,

06:24it's something like 93% of all deaths as a result of terrorism in this country since the 90s,

06:29as a result of Islamist terrorism. Yet the caseload of Prevent is something like 13%

06:36of it is looking at Islamist terrorism. We need to get on top of that, we need to make sure that

06:40what they are looking at is the right thing, that some of these ideological terrorists are

06:47investigated properly and we're looking at what is the real threat. But if you'd have done something

06:52when you were in power, Matt, your government or you personally, obviously, maybe those three

06:55little girls in Southport would still be alive. Well, I think that Prevent is constantly being

07:01reviewed and constantly being looked at. Today, we've got the evidence, the black and white evidence

07:05of someone who's looked at it objectively and found factual failings. I don't think that

07:10necessarily that has happened on such a scale before. It's been as black and white as that.

07:14And these things, these things may have been more effective at points in their existence than they

07:19are now. Matt, we've heard this morning that Pakistani airlines will be allowed to fly back into

07:24Britain for the first time in five years. What's your initial reaction to that? Has the government

07:31made the right decision by giving it the green lights? And are we getting anything in return for

07:35that? I think, you know what, you've got to look at the facts that present themselves. I'm sure the

07:40government has looked at those facts, looked at the case and what that means for us. I don't know

07:47that we're getting anything out of it other than opening that doorway and seeing where it goes to.

07:51Matt, I think we've run out of time there, but thank you very much for joining us at Matt Vickers, MP,

07:58Shadow Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire. Thank you very much for joining us this morning, Matt.

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