SECURE in the KNOWLEDGE THAT the KNOWLEDGE is SECURE

My principal objection to ID cards has always been that, while of course I accept that the present government will not sell or release the data that has been collected about me, I have no confidence that future governments will not see this data as a useful source of revenue. Indeed, if this country ever elects a prime minister comparable to, for instance, Robert Mugabe, the ID data bank will be of great use to him in establishing absolute power and suppressing democrats.

But the absurd security breach at HM Revenue and Customs, whereby discs containing bank and tax details of some 25 million people have been mislaid, adds a further dimension to my objection. Along with the possibility of greed and expediency, breath-taking incompetence must form the basis for a strong objection to allowing the authorities access to my private information.

At least this glitch is out in the open. You could understand a government seeking to bury such bad news as this. In the Commons, Chancellor Alistair Darling and the PM appear to have made a clean breast of it on successive days. The Tories are presently stopping short of demanding any ministers’ heads on platters, perhaps mindful that no future Tory minister is going to be able to invigilate every civil servant’s daily caseload. If HMRC and other departments make a concerted effort to blame staff cutbacks and/or government targets and other methodologies on ministerial fiats, Gordon Brown himself, after ten long years as Chancellor, will inevitably come into the frame. Government managers must be braced for this crisis to get worse before it gets better.

Over the next few days, Darling will be praying that another wave of panic among customers does not sweep through the already jittery banking market. On the other hand, customers are entitled to be sceptical. Only because of this much more serious security breach have I learned that records went missing as long ago as September from a finance company with which I have an arrangement. The company has not seen fit to alert me of this breach. ‘Caveat emptor’ cannot be allowed to apply when the data holder has failed to protect its customers’ confidence.

We need a clear statutory obligation on all data collectors wholly and in perpetuity to protect the security of that data, on pain of a fixed and punitive scale of compensation to anyone whose data has been accessed by an unauthorised party, whatever the outcome of that access. It’s not good enough for HMRC blithely to advise all those parents who have received child benefit – the sector of society directly affected by the security breach – that any passwords they have used that reflect their child’s name or date of birth should be changed. As a basic security precaution, such advice should have been given when the parent first registered for child benefit. Putting out a public statement now that may be heard by those who happen to watch or listen to the news or read the more public-spirited newspapers is not going to reach all the recipients of child benefit.

Whenever some sudden crisis engulfs an administration, the best tactic is to ensure that ministers do nothing to exacerbate an already regrettable situation. Tested thoroughly by a succession of unlooked-for events in the first weeks of his premiership, Gordon Brown won great credit for establishing his authoritative grip and being steady under fire. He will need to invoke that heady honeymoon period if his government is not to be stuck with a lingering appearance of incompetence, especially if that incompetence can be characterised as a failure to implement its own measures.