The Government is unable to calculate the total cost of a secret relocation plan it set up following the Afghan data leak, according to Britain's public spending watchdog.
The National Audit Office (NAO) said the amount dished out on the scheme has not been recorded separately from other resettlement activities in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) accounts after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021.
In April 2024, the Government set up the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR) for people in the country whose details were leaked "in error" by a defence official in February 2022.
The scheme, separate from the main Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) and is estimated to have cost £850million.
In a report, the NAO said the Government had failed to provide enough evidence to give the watchdog "confidence" in the figure's accuracy.
The watchdog stated: "The MoD is not able to determine exactly what it has spent on resettling people through the ARR scheme.
"This is because it did not separately identify the costs of the ARR scheme in its accounting system, meaning that these costs were not visible in its management accounts, but instead included them within its total spending on Afghan resettlement activities."
The MoD said it avoided differentiating the costs to comply with an unprecedented superinjunction.
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The MoD has admitted it does 'not know' the exact cost of the Afghan data breach
| GETTYEstimations suggest around £400million on relocating people through ARR so far, and will spend an additional £450million.
Around £128,000 will be spent per resettled individual, of which an estimated £53,000 would be met by the MoD.
Almost 19,000 applicants for the original Arap scheme had their details leaked in the breach.
However, the NAO said at the time, it "had not provided us with sufficient evidence to give us confidence regarding the completeness and accuracy of these estimates".
The total cost to the MoD of all Afghan resettlement activity between 2021 and 2029 is forecast to exceed £2billion.
Between 2021-22 and 2024-25, the MoD recorded spending a total of £563million on Afghan resettlement schemes, including the ARR scheme.
The Government closed the ARR scheme in early July 2025 to new applications, and at the end of the same month, it estimated that 7,355 people would be eligible for resettlement in the UK through the scheme directly as a result of the data breach.
The Liberal Democrats stated the country needed answers to "how this breach happened under the Conservatives' watch and what steps are urgently needed to tackle the confusion and chaos at the heart of the MoD".
The MoD said it is 'committed to honouring the moral obligation we owe to those Afghans'
| GETTYLib Dem party defence spokeswoman, Helen Maguire, said: "Not only has the MoD put thousands of lives at risk through its bureaucratic blunders, but now it can't even tell the British public how much taxpayer money those blunders have cost. This is exactly why we need a full inquiry."
The MoD has also admitted to 49 other data breaches in the past four years, handling relocation applications from Afghans seeking safety in the UK.
Four of the 49 breaches were already publicly known, including a leak exposing a spreadsheet containing details of almost 19,000 people fleeing the Taliban.
A MoD spokesman said: "We are committed to honouring the moral obligation we owe to those Afghans who stood with us and risked their lives.
"Since taking the decision to support the lifting of the superinjunction brought by the previous Government, we have been clear on the costs associated with relocating eligible Afghans to the UK, and are fully committed to transparency.
"The cost of all Afghan resettlement schemes, including the Afghan Response Route, has been fully funded as part of the Government's Spending Review."