Hunt for data discs lost in post is called off

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... ata112.xml

Police have given up the search for the missing Customs and Revenue discs containing personal details of 25 million people after an operation costing the taxpayer tens of thousands of pounds.

Scotland Yard sources said the six-week operation was the "most expensive lost property inquiry ever known".

Officers found other mislaid documents "stuffed away in cupboards" during a forensic search of the Government department at the centre of the fiasco, but now believe the discs will never be found.

The bill will be footed by the taxpayer after HM Revenue and Customs guaranteed to cover the "incremental" costs of the police operation - accommodation, travel and overtime.

A team of 46 detectives was originally deployed, then cut to 32 after a fortnight. Dozens of specialist search officers were also used. A Scotland Yard source said: "There was a lot of pressure to find the discs and vast resources thrown at it - more than you would see used in a major murder investigation."

Sources described the HMRC centre where the discs were lost in Washington, Tyne and Wear, as an "inept battery farm" of civil servants, where "no one knows what the person on the next desk is doing".

The discs went missing after a junior official sent them by internal mail, operated by TNT, to the National Audit Office.

Teams have searched NAO offices, two HMRC premises and other government buildings. The Royal Mail depot in Belfast and a rubbish tip in Kent have also been scoured, as well as four depots belonging to the courier firm TNT.

Detectives spent more than a month in Newcastle interviewing employees of HMRC and uncovered some of the errors which led to the scandal. Sources revealed that the NAO - which had asked for the CDs to be sent to London - was partly at fault because it spoke to the wrong person at HMRC.

The "junior official" who lost them in the post was "merely trying to help", the source said, and his "world had fallen apart" when Alistair Darling pinned the blame for the data loss solely on him.

Contrary to the Chancellor's claims, police said that "several people" knew about the lost discs, including senior managers, but no one believed they had done anything wrong.

The police investigation was launched amid fears that the loss of the data exposed every family in Britain to identity fraud.

Detectives believe there is no evidence of criminality at HMRC. They think the discs were inadvertently destroyed, but police cannot guarantee they have not since fallen into "the wrong hands".

Fraud experts claimed that criminals could "sit" on the confidential data - including bank details, national insurance numbers and dates of birth - for more than a year before using it.