The government is facing further questions over its ability to handle sensitive personal information after the Ministry of Defence became the latest Whitehall department to own up to losing the personal details of thousands of people.

The defence secretary Des Browne was forced to admit last month that the MoD had lost a laptop containing the personal details of more than 600,000 individuals after it was stolen from the car of a navy recruiting officer in Birmingham.

In breach of official security regulations, the computer included the passport details, national insurance and driver’s licence numbers, family information and NHS numbers of more than 150,000 people who had applied to join the armed forces.

The bank details of 3,700 people were also stored on the unencrypted database.
Browne also told MPs that two similar thefts had taken place in the previous two years.

The revelations are the latest information losses by government departments. The security breaches have put millions of parents, children, learner drivers, NHS patients, pensioners and social security claimants at risk of identity fraud.

The government has responded by launching a series of inquiries into its handling of information.
The Cabinet Office, Kieron Poynter of accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, information commissioner Richard Thomas, and Sir Edmund Burton, chair of the Information Assurance Advisory Council, are all heading separate inquiries.

The Poynter Review and the Thomas Review are expected to be published this spring.

Last month an influential group of MPs called for the information commissioner to be given new powers to carry out unannounced spot checks on procedures in Whitehall departments and other public sector bodies.

They also backed proposals that would see public sector officials who put people’s data security at risk facing criminal charges.

Liberal Democrat MP Alan Beith, chairman of the Justice Select Committee, said: “The scale of the data loss by government bodies and contractors is truly shocking but the evidence we have had points to further hidden problems.”

A spokeswoman for the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) told IWR that a consultation on how such spot checks would work was ongoing.

“We are talking to the Ministry of Justice about whether legislation needs to be changed to give the ICO greater powers,” she said.