Richard Thomas, giving evidence to the House of Commons Justice Committee yesterday, warned that more government data could have gone missing.

Thomas said that as a result of the HMRC scandal, "several departments have come to see us on a confessional basis, but none on anything like the scale of the HMRC loss".

In other news, the Telegraph warns that if the missing child benefit discs did end up in the wrong hands then criminals could find details of people on witness protection programmes on the discs. The paper says the discs include the real and changed names of up to 350 people who have changed their identities after giving evidence against criminals.

More from the Telegraph here. ®

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