Just looked at BBC news website- Paul Gray (Chairman of HM Revnue) has resigned ahead of commons statement from Alastair Darling (due at 3.30) concerning 'major operational problems'. I wait with baited breath...

Confidential details of 15 million child benefit recipients are on a computer disc lost by HM Revenue and Customs, the BBC understands.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7103566.stm

That must have been one hell of a floppy disc.....

15 million! This must be every family in Britain.

It appears to be exactly that!

They went to to the same place as all those missing ballpoint pens, screwdrivers, keys and other things that you can never lay your hands on...

Probably in a pile of flippantly discarded (lost!!??) IS claims and tax credit appeals - right needle in a haystack!!

For some reason I find a surreptitious grin appearing on my face. I think it's what they call Schadenfreude (some of them anyway) - a guilty feeling of pleasure at someone else's discomfiture. And you don't often get to write either Schadenfreude or discomfiture on an internet discussion forum.

If you had read the Times story on the Washington CB centre yesterday, you could almost sense the surreptitious grin on the reporter's face. Plus of course you would have thought that you were definately living on another planet...thousands upon thousands of unopened letters (allegedly), staff morale at it lowest (allegedly).

The sad thing is that we've been here before - it's not that long ago the DWP had thousands of it's personnel records stolen, possibly by hackers, or just possibly by someone copying them: 15000 Standard life customers records lost in the theft of a IR laptop recently.

PS - the Mail had to point out of course that one of their photos showed a member of staff wearing a baseball cap.. where that exclusive news item fitted into the scheme of things I'm not too sure......

correspondence, including email exchanges, between the Revenue and the NAO ...

... http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/nao_reports/07-08/child_benefit_data.pdf

nice to see HMRC and NAO so cosy and chummy...

it's appears that HMRC provided data to the NAO which the NAO didn't want ie it disclosed data unnecessarily ie in breach of DPA 1998 never mind internal procedures...this happened to include the highly sensitive information of individuals bank account details - it failed to adequately protect that data... another DPA breach...

this unnecessary data provision was made on the grounds that it would cost more for HMRC to be other than sloppy about its legal responsibilities wrt data, and the NAO were understanding and accomodating.

i would still like to know why NAO would ever require partial details of the entire data-base - surely it audits randomly selected samples?

and i have to wonder what the hell kind of contract HMRC has with EDS requiring HMRC to pay them for scans of its data...

so now the treasury have appointed Kieran Poynter, Chairman and Senior Partner of Pricewaterhouse to chair an enquiry...

Pricewaterhouse's appreciation of the public service ethos is not well documented so this is not reassuring...even if he's doing it as a freebie - even more especially unreassuring...if there's no-one left, i would rather it were Kim and Aggie, or even Kath and Kim...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PricewaterhouseCoopers

...Now I would have suggested Alan Sugar - a gentleman not known to suffer fools and idiots gladly, and a past master at asking awkward questions...

brilliant, Mike!

i could live with that -
Alan Sugar would want to clean up.
Kim and Aggie would want a deep clean.
What we'll get is a whitewash...

it's a very narrow remit, the outcome pre-ordained, the dirty linens aired behind closed doors...

still, i don't see why we should be denied our fun...imagine our leader setting up a public service truth commission and consulting broadly for nominations...

Has everyone received their reassuring letter from HMRC?

I have and it strikes me that while they are very sorry and we get a personal apology from the acting chair, the responsibility very quickly passes on to everyone except HMRC.

For example we are reassured that the banks have all signed up to a code which means that they won't allow us to be out of pocket if we are the victims of fraud. In the mean time we may want to take action to protect ourselves like changing passwords and pin numbers.

Now I don't often feel much sympathy for the banks, and as I am a tax payer and not a bank share holder I would prefer the banks to take the loss rather than the Government, but I must say I can see why they are rather peeved about it.