Loss of Secret Documents

Martyn Day Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

The hon. Gentleman gets the point. I am sure that the Secretary of State would have wished to be here otherwise, so please do not take it as a lack of interest on his part. He is doing the right and responsible thing. We all want our colleagues to do the right and responsible thing in all circumstances.

Please do not take my desire to hear the results of the investigation to be covering up anything other than serious disquiet, and indeed anger, that this has happened. It should not have happened; these documents should not have been mislaid. I am deeply sorry that that has been the case. We need to see from the investigation the circumstances that led to it and get the full details, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we are taking it very seriously.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP) [V]]

This latest breach further demonstrates why the Government are not trusted with data. From the NHS data grab and the Home Office’s loss of 15,000 arrest records to losing details of thousands of covid cases in a track and trace Excel spreadsheet, and now this—how can the Minister reassure the public that breaches of this severity will not happen in future? When will the Government publish details of a more comprehensive and robust investigation into wider security practices?

[Jeremy Quin]

The irony will not be lost on the hon. Gentleman that, whereas he referred to massive data accumulations through the internet and online services, what we are talking about here is paper documentation being left and mislaid. It is a different scenario. As I say, the investigation will check what happened, why it happened, what we can do to prevent document loss in future and whether there are more measures we need to put in place. Ultimately, however, this is the loss of physical documents. It should not happen. As I said to the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) earlier, I did do a trawl and we have no record of documents being mislaid at above official sensitive level in the last 18 months. I hope that this is an extremely rare circumstance, but we still need to learn the lessons.