It has been revealed that the personal details of almost every farmer in England have been lost by government officials.
The Environmental Secretary Hilary Benn told MP’s that 38 back up computer tapes and one disc were found to be “unaccounted for” during routine checks at the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) earlier this year. He added that it was certain that these tapes contained the details of more than 100,000 farmers including their addresses, banking details and computer passwords which was held in “order to make subsidy payments.” Any sane person would come to the conclusion that the farmers who have had their details lost should have been told that their information had in fact been “misplaced”- However the government has failed to do so.
This isn’t the first time the RPA has been in the news for being completely incompetent. Earlier this year, the National Audit Office accused the RPA of showing “scant regard” for public money in how the farm payments scheme is run. The spending watchdog said that of the scheme’s £1 billion cost, more than £680 million was completely wasted.
This is just another incident that marks the latest in a long line of shameful loss of personal data by our incompetent government- Isn’t it time we kicked those traitorous fools out of office and had a complete overhaul of how personal data is kept secure.
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