Moving Afghan nationals to UK forecast to cost more than £2bn

The total cost of relocating Afghan nationals to the UK is estimated to be more than £2bn, according to a report by the National Audit Office (NAO).

This includes 7,355 people eligible for resettlement in the UK under the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR) scheme, which was launched for those whose personal information was leaked in a February 2022 data breach.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) estimates the cost of resettling people in the UK through the ARR scheme to be around £850m, not including legal costs or compensation claims.

But the ministry does not know the exact cost resulting from the data breach resettlement scheme because it did not separately identify the costs in its accounting system, the NAO said.

It added that the MoD had not provided enough evidence to give the NAO "confidence in its estimate of £850m in relation to past and future costs".

The total cost of all Afghan resettlement activity between 2021 and 2029 - including the ARR - is expected to exceed £2bn.

About £563m of this has already been spent on Afghan resettlement schemes between 2021-22, for those who helped the British military during the war, and 2024-25, for those put at risk because of the data breach. The MoD expects to spend a further £1.5bn by March 2029.

Data breach undiscovered for 18 months

The cost skyrocketed due to the creation of the ARR scheme and those eligible under it, which came after an unnamed British official accidentally emailed details of 18,714 Afghan nationals who applied to be relocated to the UK under the previous scheme outside a secure government system.

He sent the email in February 2022 in an attempt to verify information, believing the dataset to only contain around 150 rows of information, but it actually contained around 33,000.

The MoD discovered the leak in August 2023 after seeing details of the emails had been posted by a Facebook user.

UK officials sent around 1,800 ARAP applicants in Pakistan a warning via WhatsApp to say their data may have been breached.

Shortly after, two journalists inquired about the breach, causing then-defence secretary Ben Wallace to seek a court order, with the High Court granting a super-injunction. The super-injunction was only lifted in July 2025.

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In April 2024, the government secretly launched the ARR scheme specifically for those whose personal information was leaked in the data breach, who were ineligible for other resettlement schemes and who were at significant risk of reprisal by the ruling Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

The MoD did not record separately who was resettled via the ARR scheme, arguing this was to maintain the secrecy of the ARR scheme while the super-injunction was in place, preventing disclosure of both the data breach and the existence of the injunction itself.

£400m spent on resettling Afghans affected by breach

The ministry estimates that £400m of the £850m estimated total cost of resettling Afghan nationals via the ARR scheme had been spent by July 2025, but the NAO said it had not been provided with sufficient evidence to support either estimate.

In early July 2025, the government closed the ARR scheme to new applicants.

The NAO report was welcomed by Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, who said: "After the High Court super-injunction was lifted earlier this year, confusion still remains over the reported £850m historic and future costs relating to the breach, with the MoD unable to provide sufficient assurance over their numbers.

"This figure does not include all legal costs or compensation claims, which currently remain unknown."

He added that the Public Affairs Committee would be examining this issue in its inquiry next week.

(c) Sky News 2025: Moving Afghan nationals to UK forecast to cost more than £2bn