Government faces call for IT security review

Nearly 2,000 items of IT equipment lost or stolen since 1997, claims MP

1,660 government laptops went missing

The Scottish National Party has called for a wide ranging review of the security of government data and IT assets in the wake of culture secretary Andy Burnham's temporary loss of a briefcase containing confidential documents on a train.

The material was recovered when handed in by a member of the public.

But Glasgow East SNP MP John Mason said this added to his concern raised by the "extraordinary tally" he had compiled of assets lost or stolen from government departments, including 1,660 laptops, 505 mobile telephones and BlackBerrys and more than 700 other items of IT equipment which have been lost or stolen since 1997 worth an estimated £1.6m.

Mason complained that the Ministry of Defence alone had been unable to detail the cost of 974 laptops lost between 2003 and 2008, despite being asked in formal questions in Parliament.

"It is not just the scale of these losses that is disturbing but, in terms of IT equipment there are serious questions about the security of the information they contain," he said.

"This should sound the death knell of the government's ill-fated ID card scheme."