Farmers' bank details lost after RPA blunder

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) was alerted to the issue immediately, but it is not believed any of the affected farmers have been told about the breach.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn yesterday confirmed 38 back-up tapes and one CD had been found to be "unaccounted for" during routine checks earlier this year.

Mr Benn told MPs that 35 had since been accounted for. Of the remainder one tape and the CD did not contain "personal protected data" but the two remaining tapes "potentially contained partial data in code".

He said: "Tapes of this sort can only be read with specialist equipment and detailed technical knowledge.

"Furthermore, one of the two tapes was known to be faulty and had been reported as such since it could not be read." A "forensic investigation" was carried out in accordance with Cabinet Office guidelines and officials concluded there was "only a low risk of any usable personal data having been lost".

But Otterburn farmer Malcolm Corbett is furious that the Government has known about the blunder for months, but has not taken steps to warn any of the affected farmers.
He said: "It's always worrying if you hear that bank details have been lost.

"If they've known about it for a while, they should have said something before now.

"Farmers' businesses could be disrupted by this. Are the farmers now going be given advice on what to do if their bank details have been lost?

"I'm not surprised that this has happened. The RPA has fallen down once again."

A DEFRA spokeswoman said a thorough search was conducted to find the missing material and concluded that some tapes were misfiled and placed "on the wrong shelf".

She described this as "bad book-keeping" by RPA-contracted IT consultants IBM, which runs the data centre.

DEFRA said it assumed that the two tapes that were never found must have been destroyed.

A spokesperson for the RPA said: "Since these incidents, procedures have been further tightened to prevent a recurrence.

"IBM have instigated a thorough review of their procedures to manage removable storage media, such as these tapes, as well as tightening access control requirements.

"The tapes are held in a secure IBM data centre and only IBM and Accenture technicians have access to them.

"Both IBM and Accenture were asked to review their security arrangements as a result of this incident."

The scandal comes two years after Britain's worst-ever data loss, when two discs containing the details of 25 million children went missing from a Government office in the North East.

The £155m blunder happened when the CDs were sent from HM Custom and Revenue's offices in Washington in October 2007 by a junior official by non-traceable internal courier - against regulations - to the National Audit Office in London.