Home Office sacks company over lost data

The company which lost the personal details of thousands of criminals is to have its contract terminated, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced today.

PA Consulting will lose the £1.5 million, three-year deal with the Home Office after it mislaid a computer "memory stick" containing the names, addresses and expected release dates of 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales.

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Ms Smith said all PA Consulting's contracts with the department - worth £8 million a year - will be reviewed, along with those signed with other firms.

The Cabinet Office will also launch a review of all contracts signed by the Government with private companies to ensure they are "appropriate", she added.

"Our contract had stipulated the sort of security provisions that needed to be in place and that had not happened," said the Home Secretary.

"We are cancelling this contract and we are urgently reviewing the way in which PA Consulting are meeting the requirements of other contracts we have with them.

"Our investigation has demonstrated that while the information was transmitted in an appropriately secure way to PA Consulting and fed to a secure site, it was subsequently downloaded on to an insecure data stick and that data stick was then lost."

Cancelling the contract will not cost the taxpayer and any expenses incurred will have to be met by PA Consulting, she added.

Apart from the 84,000 prisoner details, the lost computer hardware also contained the names, addresses and dates of birth of 30,000 people with six or more convictions in the last year, as well as the names and dates of birth of 10,000 criminals regarded as prolific offenders.

It also carried the initials of people on drug treatment programmes.

The memory stick was left in an unlocked drawer in an unsecured office at its offices in Victoria, central London.

The blunder has raised further doubts about the Government's controversial ID card project, in which PA Consulting is heavily involved.

Ms Smith said: "The inquiry that we have carried out ... suggests that the most likely thing to have happened was that the data stick was pilfered or lost.

"I think (PA Consulting) recognise that what they have done is against the terms of their contract."

At the weekend, it emerged that another private contractor, EDS, mislaid a computer disc carrying personal details of thousands of employees of the National Offender Management Service in July last year.