Alistair Darling announced today that his department has lost two disc that contain the details of everyone in the country that is currently claiming child benefit. This is an incredible thing to happen but not altogether unexpected given the governments track record with computer systems. In the information age I find it quite disturbing that information is still passed between departments in this fashion. The information was sent to the National Audit Office using the courier TNT on October 18. Today an emergency statement was issued to the commons informing them of the problem.

Every person, twenty five million, who claims the benefit in this country is now in real danger of identity fraud. The information includes the name, address, National Insurance number, date of birth and bank details of each and every claimant. The bank details are the most worrying but are probably only included if you had your child benefit paid directly into your bank account. I would expect that to be a large percentage of the people claiming the benefit today. Amazingly the discs were not even sent using any kind of recorded delivery and the blame is currently being placed on some junior official. The chairman of Her Majesties Revenues and Customs, Paul Gray, resigned earlier today I suppose in an attempt to focus the blame away from the government. What really amazes me is the time scale before this problem has been brought to light. The chancellor was not informed until ten days ago and even then it was another four days before the police were called in. In total this is nearly five whole weeks before the incident was released to the commons. Were they waiting for the criminal fraternity to turn it over? Insultingly the usual investigation is underway to ensure that "it never happens again". The current advice from the government is to monitor your accounts for any unusual activity.

The opposition are busy making the most of the situation asking questions such as "can the Government be trusted with an ID database" and "has the recent 25,000 job losses at the department caused problems". Other MPs are saying that it is an accident that could have happened to any government and the real test is how the government now deals with it. The fact is this is the third time this year information entrusted to the HMRC has gone missing. It is the second time that that information was transported on a compact disc. The other was a laptop that was stolen from the boot of a HMRC employees car. At least the DVLA are not involved as they quite happily sell the information they hold on us! Oh well better go and check my bank accounts I suppose.

BBC News Article