Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

UK data protection minister did not know about breach

Chancellor's Commons speech broke the news

The UK government's data protection minister did not know about the huge data breach at HM Revenue and Customs until he heard the chancellor's statement in the Commons on November 20, he has admitted.

Chancellor Alistair Darling said he had been told of the data breach -- in which CDs containing the details of 25 million people were lost in transit between HMRC and the National Audit Office -- on 10 November.

But data protection minister Michael Wills was forced to admit to parliament's joint committee on human rights that Darling's Commons speech was the first he had heard of Britain's biggest ever data breach.

"I'm afraid I learned about it when I heard the statement in the House of Commons," Wills told the mixed committee of MPs and peers.

Wills was mocked by committee members, who asked whether he did not find it "rather surprising" that as data protection minister he had not been notified earlier about the breach.

The data protection minister -- who was interrupted and barracked as he spoke -- answered: "I think it's perfectly reasonable for me not to be informed the moment something like this happened. I would expect the responsible officials and the responsible ministers first of all to discover the extent of the problem and then do whatever they could to put the problem right immediately.

"At that point comes the task of actually looking to see what can be done systemically to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. At that point I would expect this department [the Ministry of Justice] to get involved."

Under repeated pressure from the committee, Wills said: "My responsibility is not for actually stopping any breaches of data protection personally, individually or even corporately within the department where and whenever they occur." Instead the Ministry of Justice was responsible for setting out a "proper legislative apparatus" for data protection.

A review of data sharing and data protection has been ordered by prime minister Gordon Brown, Wills added.

Wills was also quizzed by sceptical committee members about what the HMRC fiasco meant for the security of data to be held on the national identity register that will underpin the government's ID card program.

"You obviously are going to have to look at the national identity register again in the light of this," he conceded. "Everything will have to be scrutinized."

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: National Audit Office

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Server and Storage Optimization Techniques
    By meeting the requirements to deploy new applications and support a larger number of internal and external customers, IT organizations are facing a space, power, and cooling crunch. Read on.
    Learn more »
  • Closing the print security gap - The market landscape for print security
    Today, many organisations continue to rely on printing to support business processes, particularly in the public sector, finance industry and legal profession. Whilst MFPs and printers have improved business productivity, they pose the same security risk as any networked device if left unprotected. With reported data breaches on the rise and growing industry and regulatory requirements around information security, businesses may suffer financial and reputational damage if they ignore the risks of unsecured printing. Read more.
    Learn more »
  • Print security and the mobile workforce
    Where, when, and how we work is changing. Whether your employees are working on the road without a dedicated workstation or from a home office, they need a safe way to print. Driving this shift is the accelerating adoption of smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. But even with these devices, printing remains a key business function for virtually all employees, and many may already be using them to print. Read more.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments