A reader writes, "Guy working for UK Revenue burns all 25m personal records held by the department onto two CDs. Sends them to the National Audit Office, unregistered. They don't arrive. So he sends off another couple of CDs. They don't arrive either. Then the head of the department resigns just as it's about to be made public. It's the names, addresses, dates of birth and the employment and bank details of 25 million people. Who needs Russian hackers when you've got the UK government?"

Alistair Darling told the House of Commons this afternoon that two CDs bearing highly sensitive information including bank account numbers and National Insurance numbers failed to arrive after they were sent in the ordinary internal mail between government departments, in a catastrophic breach of security guidelines.

The Chancellor admitted that HMRC had made the same mistake on several occasions in the past six months...

Mr Darling's admission that "I regard this as an extremely serious failure," was met with derisive laughter from MPs. He advised every parent who claims Child Benefit to look very closely at their bank statements in the coming weeks for signs of fraud or identity theft.