20 November 2007, Statement to the House of Commons by Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, MP, on HMRC
“With your permission Mr Speaker I should like to make a statement on the breach of procedures which led to missing personal data relating to child benefit from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs…The National Audit Office – which is independent of Government, but answerable to Parliament – has a right to ask for and access data from HMRC in discharging its compliance responsibilities. In March of this year it appears that a junior official within HMRC provided the National Audit Office with a full copy of HMRC’s data in relation to the payment of child benefit [The missing information contains details of all child benefit recipients: records for 25 million individuals and 7.25 million families. These records include the recipient and their children’s names, addresses and dates of birth, it includes Child Benefit numbers, National Insurance Numbers, and, where relevant, bank or building society account details]. In doing so it is clear that the strict rules governing HMRC standing procedures were not followed. These procedures relate to the security and access to data as well as its transit to ensure that data is properly protected. This information should not have been handed over by HMRC in the way that it was. However, I understand that in this case the NAO subsequently returned all the information it received in March to HMRC after auditing it. It now appears that following a further request from the NAO in October for information from the Child Benefit database, and again at a junior level and again contrary to all HMRC standing procedures, two password protected discs containing a full copy of HMRC’s entire data in relation to the payment of child benefit was sent to the NAO, by HMRC’s post system operated by the courier TNT. The package was not recorded or registered. Mr Speaker, it appears the data has failed to reach the addressee in the NAO. Mr Speaker, I also have to tell the House that on finding that the package had not arrived at the NAO, a further copy of this data was sent, this time by registered post, and which did arrive at the NAO. However, again HMRC should never have let this happen. Although it is believed the data was sent from HMRC to the NAO on 18 October, the fact it did not arrive it was not reported to HMRC’s senior management until 8 November, nearly 3 weeks later. I was informed on Saturday 10 November and immediately instructed that comprehensive searches be carried out of all premises where the missing data might be found. These searches are continuing…On Monday 12 November HMRC informed me that evidence might have had been found of the route taken by the data and that the data was likely to be found. However, by Wednesday 14 November it was clear to me that the HMRC searches had failed to find them. I therefore instructed the Chairman of HMRC to call in the Metropolitan Police to conduct a full investigation in order to find the missing package.”
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