Loss of armed forces data is 'regrettable'

Published on Friday 10 October 2008 22:09

MPs demanded a "cultural change" in public sector data handling yesterday as it em-erged that a computer hard drive with details of Armed Forces personnel was missing.

In the latest Whitehall data loss embarrassment, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) revealed that names, addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth and driving licence details of about 100,000 employees had been lost.

It also contained the next-of-kin details of the Army, Royal Navy and RAF personnel, as well as data on 600,000 potential services applicants and the names of their referees.

Officials are "not ruling out" the risk that bank account details of personnel were held on the drive, which belonged to its IT contractor EDS.

The department said it learned of the loss on Wednesday and MoD police were investigating. Downing Street described the loss of the data as "regrettable".

It is only the latest information security breach to hit the MoD. In July it admitted 658 of its laptops had been stolen over the past four years and 26 portable memory sticks containing classified information had been either stolen or misplaced since January.

Tory MP Nigel Evans, who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on Identity Fraud, said: "It is vital there is a cultur-al change across the public sector with all professionals aware of their responsibility to protect personal data."

The Liberal Democrats described the loss as a "disturbing breach of security" and called for an urgent inquiry into how it had occurred.