Secret files on the al-Qaeda threat and the Iraqi security forces were left on a train by a senior intelligence official, the Cabinet Office said yesterday. Last night the department said that the man at the centre of the investigation into the loss of the documents had been suspended from his job.

The government documents were in an orange cardboard envelope, which was left on a commuter train between Waterloo Station in London and Surrey on Tuesday.

A passenger picked it up, realised what was inside and passed the contents to the BBC, which last night handed the documents to police.

The disclosure came on the day that the Prime Minister was seeking parliament’s approval for extra security powers, and follows the controversy last year over the loss of two discs holding the details of 25 million child benefit claimants and a series of data protection breaches by the National Health Service, the Crown Prosecution Service and other public sector bodies.

One of the files left on the train is believed to be a seven-page report entitled Al-Qaeda: Constraints and Vulnerabilities and relates to the state of the threat posed by the network in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The BBC said that the report, commissioned by the Foreign Office and Home Office, was classified “UK top secret” and each page was marked “For UK, US, Canadian and Australian eyes only”.

The other file was a British assessment of the capabilities of the Iraqi security forces, entitled Iraqi Security Forces: More or Less Challenged?. Its findings are thought to have been largely positive, despite some negative comments on the Iraqi police.

Both documents were prepared by the Joint Intelligence Committee, the Government’s main advisory body on intelligence matters.

The official believed to have left the documents on the train is a senior civil servant working in the Cabinet Office’s intelligence and security unit.

The Conservatives’ security spokeswoman, Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, said: “This is just the latest in a long line of serious breaches of security involving either the loss of data, documents or Government laptops, further highlighting the most basic failures in this Government’s ability to maintain our security.”

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