New data blunder as Home Office loses prisoners' details

Taxpayers could be facing a huge compensation bill after a contractor working for the Home Office lost a memory stick containing personal details of every prisoner in England and Wales.

The lost information - which was not encrypted - includes the names, addresses and expected release dates of all 84,000 prisoners.

The memory stick also contains similar data on 33,000 prolific offenders with six or more convictions in the last year, a dossier of 10,000 "priority criminals", and details of people on drug treatment programmes.

There were also unconfirmed suggestions that details of some informants could also be among the data, placing them at the risk of reprisals.

The blunder raises the prospect that offenders could sue ministers if their personal data subsequently becomes public, while taxpayers could also face further expense to protect convicts and others who could be put at risk.

The Tories described the loss as " horrifying" and said the British public would be incensed if it had to foot the bill, while the Information Commissioner's Office warned that "serious questions" would need to be answered.

Describing the incident as a "massive failure of duty", Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: "The British taxpayer will be absolutely outraged if they are made to pick up the bill for compensation to criminals. The Home Office is entrusted with highly confidential material and it seems to be incapable of keeping it secure."

The Home Office was warned on Monday by contractor PA Consulting that the stick might be missing and the loss was confirmed on Tuesday.

Although the data it contained had initially been encrypted while at the Home Office, it had converted into unprotected information by the contractor, meaning that it will be easily readable by anyone who finds the missing stick.

Officers from the Metropolitan Police's Specialist and Economic Crimes Unit have been brought in to try to establish what happened to the stick.

Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, said ministers should have revealed the blunder more quickly - rather than waiting two days - and said that the Home Office needed to ensure that proper safeguards were applied.

PA Consulting had the information as part of research it was carrying out for the Home Office on tracking offenders through the criminal justice system.

Deputy Information Commissioner David Smith said the loss was "deeply worrying", and that his office would decide what action to take once it had received the findings of an internal Home Office inquiry.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in