The personal information of UK citizens is being lost and stolen at an unprecedented rate, the UK’s privacy watchdog said today.

Nearly 100 data breaches were reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the last three months alone, with millions of bank details, addresses, emails, private health information and employee salary statements lost or stolen in 2008.

Data breaches jumped by 36 per cent last year, the ICO said. Personal information is now lost - on average - more than once a day.

In June, Virgin Media lost a CD containing private information on more than 3,000 customers while a hospital in Wembley recently had two computers stolen which contained the unencrypted details on 400 patients.

Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, said it was “unacceptable” that private companies - responsible for 112 of the 376 data breaches last year - could not be investigated by the ICO without their permission.

“For more than 20 years, my office has not had the power to carry out any inspection without the consent of the organisation concerned,“ Mr Thomas said. “In the six and a half years that I have been commissioner, I have strenuously argued that that is not acceptable. One would not expect a food inspector to have to get the restaurant’s consent before carrying out an inspection.”

MPs are currently drafting new legislation allowing the ICO to investigate central and local government departments without their permission. But private companies are exempt under the proposals.

Enforcement powers were now “required right across the private and voluntary sectors for all data controllers,” Mr Thomas told the Public Bill Committee last week.

On Friday, the House of Lords warned that the collection of data in Britain "risks undermining the fundamental relationship between the state and citizens".

Peers said that the national DNA database could be used for "malign purposes” and questioned whether local authorities should be allowed to use surveillance powers at all.

"There are clear benefits for limited sharing of personal details, but this must only be done in precisely defined circumstances and must not lead to large-scale data-sharing initiatives that would constitute very significant changes to public policy," the ICO said.

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