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HM Revenue and Customs

I am grateful to the Comptroller and Auditor General and to the Chancellor for briefing me this morning. May I just make one or two things clear from the CAG's briefing? He requested this information—the national insurance numbers—to create a sample to enable him to carry out the audit. It is clear that the CAG specifically asked that all personal details, bank account details and all that sort of information should be removed before this was sent. That is the most important thing. The National Audit Office simply asked for the national insurance numbers; this had nothing to do with personal details. On the other important point the Chancellor may have inadvertently misled the House—I am sure that it would have been completely inadvertent. He said that this information was sent on 18 October. That is true; the Inland Revenue informed the NAO on 18 October. He then told us that it was not until 8 November that senior management were told that these discs had not arrived. In fact, the NAO informed HMRC on 24 October that the wallet had not arrived. It was sent completely insecurely. A second wallet was then sent, so there is no doubt that the wallet never arrived at the NAO; it was lost in the post. No blame can be attached to the NAO, which was simply doing its job in asking for this information. This is criminally irresponsible behaviour on the part of a Department that once had an unimpeachable reputation.