Liberal Democrat research reveals 2007 as the worst ever year for personal privacy

9.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Wed 9th Jan 2008

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg

A record 37 million items of personal data went missing last year, new research by the Liberal Democrats reveals.

Most of the data was lost by government officials but councils, NHS trusts, banks, insurance companies and chain stores also mislaid or published personal information about staff or members of the public. The details lost included those of names, addresses, passports, bank and mortgage accounts, credit cards, hospital records, dates of birth, national insurance numbers, driving licences and telephone numbers. The shocking total of 36,989,300 items has prompted calls for the Government to kill its plans for national identity cards.

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg said "2007 was the worst ever year for personal privacy. This shocking record of data loss means we need a total rethink on data protection enforcement and an immediate end to the Identity Cards plan. The ID card project is now in freefall, because faith in the Government's ability to handle personal data has hit crisis point. There is simply no way that any democratic government can expect an unwilling public to accept having their precious personal data cropped and stored in the world's largest database when they aren't confident that database will be safe."