Child Benefit agency loses personal data of 25 million people

Two discs containing personal details of more than 25 million child benefit claimants and their families have been lost by HM Revenue & Customs after going missing in the post on 18 October 2007.

The password-protected discs contained the entire database of child benefit recipients and included the names, addresses, dates of birth, bank accounts details and National Insurance numbers of everyone who receives child benefit in the UK.

The government attempted to blame a single junior official working for HM Revenue & Customs who allegedly copied the discs and then sent them to the National Audit Office (NAO) through the internal post system operated by TNT. However the package was not sent as a registered or recorded delivery and later went missing. Senior Management were notified of the information breech over 3 weeks later on 8 November and two days later, the Chancellor was notified.

Darling claimed that the "police tell me that they have no reason to believe that this data has found its way into the wrong hands”. He also announced plans for an allegedly independent review of the incident by Kieran Poynter of PricewaterhouseCoopers. The discs have yet to be recovered.