The Conservatives have demanded the immediate suspension of a new government electronic database containing personal details of all 11 million children in England.

The move comes after HM Revenue and Customs lost two computer discs containing the banking and personal details of 25 million people.

The £224 million ContactPoint register, which is due to go live next April, lists the names, addresses, schools, GPs and, where applicable, social worker of every child in England.

Where parents or children give consent, it could also include more sensitive information about whether children have accessed sexual or mental health services or had treatment for substance abuse.

Tim Loughton, Shadow Children’s Minister, has written to the Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes asking her to put the whole project on ice, amid fears about the security of the information.

“After the Revenue and Customs fiasco this week, there are question marks over whether the security around ContactPoint is watertight,” he said.

Mr Loughton has also asked Ms Hughes to reveal what discussions she has had with Revenue and Customs, the Prime Minister and Children’s charities about how to address the security implications for children arising from the lost computer discs.

The government revealed last night that the Children’s Secretary Ed Balls ordered an urgent security review of ContactPoint on Tuesday as details of the missing discs emerged.

Mr Balls also commissioned an independent assessment of ContactPoint’s security procedures. The government will announce next week who will conduct the assessment.

ContactPoint will be password protected, but the password will be available to around 330,000 vetted users, including head teachers, GPs and social and youth workers.

The database will not contain specific information about what public services children have used, but it should alert users if other organisations are working with the same child. It was set up in the wake of the Victoria Climbie child abuse inquiry and aims to stop children falling into gaps between different services.

Earlier this week, a report from Roger Morgan, the children’s rights director, revealed that children themselves are anxious about the security of the new system.

“They thought that paedophiles would spend a lot of time and effort trying to break into ContactPoint.

“They thought that one day, eventually, the system would either break down, or its security would be breached, and that would have very bad consequences for children and, they thought, for the Government," Dr Morgan said.

Even with password-protected systems, children feared that some staff would share their sign-on details with other people, opening up the database to unauthorised people.

The Conservatives have long opposed ContactPoint, arguing that it would make more sense to maintain a much smaller register of children known to be at risk, rather than a universal database.

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