The Ministry of Defence has admitted there have been 49 separate data breaches in the past four years at the unit handling relocation applications from Afghans seeking safety in the UK.
Four out of the 49 breaches were already publicly known - including the leak in 2022 of a spreadsheet containing details of almost 19,000 people fleeing the Taliban.
This mammoth data breach, which led to thousands of Afghans being secretly relocated to the UK, was only revealed last month after the High Court lifted a gagging order.
It was described by the UK's information watchdog as a "one-off occurrence following a failure to [follow] usual checks, rather than reflecting a wider culture of non-compliance".
However, lawyers representing Afghans affected by data breaches said the new figures, released to the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act, raised concerns about a culture of lax security among those working on the resettlement scheme.
