Firm that lost prison data 'broke rules'

Published on Friday 22 August 2008 22:17

THE government has accused a private contractor of breaking the rules after it lost personal details of the entire prison population in England and Wales.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said PA Consulting had downloaded the data on to a memory stick, a move which she said "runs against the rules" on holding government data and is contrary to its contract.

She said the loss was "completely unsatisfactory".

Personal data, including release dates, on all 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales has vanished after being transferred on to the memory stick.

PA Consulting Group has won at least 240 million in government contracts since 2004, but the government has said its contracts may be re-examined after it lost the data, which it was holding as part of research on tracking offenders. The stick also contains the names, addresses and dates of birth of 30,000 people with six or more convictions in the past year, as well as the names and dates of birth of 10,000 offenders regarded as prolific and the initials of people on drug-treatment programmes.

The crisis sparked fresh calls for the government to rethink its ID card scheme. Shami Chakrabarti, director of the campaign group Liberty, said: "With every new government data bungle, another ounce of public trust ebbs away. Ministers continue to make overblown claims for the preposterous ID card scheme – when will they ever learn?"

In a separate incident, HM Revenue and Customs lost saliva samples of 12 suspected smugglers.