A NEW fraud alert was issued by the government this weekend as it confirmed that it had lost another computer disc containing the personal financial details of 40,000 housing benefit claimants.

The unencrypted disc was sent by courier by a West Yorkshire council to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Officials raised concerns that the disc might be missing on September 18. It has still not been found.

“We have been carefully monitoring all the details of people who might be affected and there is no evidence of fraud,” said a DWP spokesman. “We believe this disc is still somewhere in the system.”

The disc was sent from Kirklees council to the DWP as part of its work monitoring benefits payments. The department has now stopped receiving or sending any electronic data by courier or recorded post.

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In a separate incident, it was disclosed this weekend that another disc containing the bank details, salaries, National Insurance numbers and home addresses of more than 6,500 public sector workers has also been lost.

The disc with data on workers, including teachers, in Torbay, Devon, is believed to have gone missing after being sent in the post as part of a government antifraud initiative.

It was one of several discs containing highly sensitive data that were sent to a private data company to check the files of public sector employees for possible fraud. Under the Audit Commission’s national fraud initiative (NFI), information from 1,300 public bodies is sent to a Staffordshire-based company, Synectics Solutions.

“The Audit Commission assists public sector organisations in tracking down suspicious payments by comparing records of those claiming pensions, housing benefits and other entitlements,” said a spokeswoman. “The last NFI exercise detected fraud and overpayments to the value of £111m.”

Torbay council launched an investigation in March 2007 when it realised that a disc had gone missing after being sent for the fraud checks.

The collection of data for the NFI has also raised concerns in other parts of the country. One official who works for a National Health Service trust in southeast England said: “We were told that all our data were being sent, but we didn’t have any choice in the matter. It obviously makes you very concerned when you see how much information the government has lost.”

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