A junior Royal Navy officer is facing a court martial after a laptop containing the personal data of 600,000 people, including serving personnel and thousands of people who have shown an interest in a military career, was stolen from his car.

The loss of the laptop was considered to be so serious that Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, will make a statement to the Commons early next week.

The Ministry of Defence said last night that the data included bank account and passport details, national insurance and NHS numbers, and home addresses.

Serving members of the Royal Navy, Royal Marines and RAF will be the most vulnerable to potential fraud because all their details would have been included. People who indicated an interest in the Services would have supplied only names and addresses. The laptop was stolen from the car parked in Birmingham overnight on January 9-10. MoD sources said that laptops could be removed from an office or base only if there was proper signed authorisation. One source said: “We cannot confirm yet whether this laptop had been signed out.”

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There were concerns last night about security implications because recruits could be targets for terrorists.

West Midlands Police were investigating the theft. Meanwhile, the MoD took steps to safeguard the personal data of the people involved, and said that it included details of young men and women who were in the early stages of applying to join the Services. The MoD said that army details were not involved.

Although the theft was known about more than a week ago, the MoD decided to keep it secret in order to take immediate security measures. It said that the theft had leaked out to the media, and a decision was taken to make a full statement.

The junior officer will face questioning by West Midlands Police and the military police. Leaving a laptop containing such sensitive material inside a car is likely to be viewed as a serious offence, leading to a court martial. The most serious loss of a military laptop occurred in 1990, when an RAF officer working at the Permanent Joint Headquarters at Northwood, northwest London, had a computer stolen from the boot of his car. The laptop contained the top-secret plan to drive the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait after it had invaded the Gulf state in August 1990. The secret was never made public, but the officer was court martialled.

The latest theft of personal data will add to the Government’s embarrassment over a recent series of losses of sensitive information, notably the CDs sent from Revenue and Customs that went astray last year. The CDs included bank details and other personal data for hundreds of thousands of people.

The MoD said that it was writing to 3,500 people whose bank details were known to have been included in the database of the missing laptop. Action had also been taken with bank payment clearing services to alert the relevant banks to suspicious, unauthorised access to private accounts.

Service personnel have been given a helpline e-mail address — recruitdata@check.mod.uk — to contact from 10am this morning.

Open secrets

November 20 Revenue & Customs admits that the personal details of 25 million child benefit claimants have been lost

December 11 Police investigate after details of more than 6,000 Northern Irish drivers disappear

December 17 Announcement that information on three million learner drivers is missing

December 23 Medical records missing at nine NHS trusts

Source: Times database

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