The Rural Payments Agency loses lost two tapes holding encoded personal information on farmers earlier this year but only informed its minister last week.
Hilary Benn, the environment, food and rural affairs minister, told parliament on 29 October that the agency realised it could not account for 38 data backup tapes and one CD earlier this year. It has since found all but three data backup tapes and the CD, and two of the tapes "potentially contained partial data in code".
"However, tapes of this sort can only be read with specialist equipment and detailed technical knowledge. Furthermore, one of the two tapes was known to be faulty and had been reported as such, since it could not be read," Benn added.
Nick Herbert, Benn's Conservative shadow, told the Commons that the data loss was being announced because Farmers Weekly was about to publish the story, and asked why the loss had not been disclosed earlier.
Benn replied that he had not known of it himself until 28 October. "As the data were in code that cannot be read, as I have indicated, a judgement was made in accordance with Cabinet Office guidelines that ministers need not be informed," he said.
"I wanted to reassure farmers today that the risk of this information getting out is very low, for the reason I have explained to the House at the first available opportunity."
He said he will publish a copy of the report on the investigation, but stressed that the data would be unreadable without specialist knowledge and equipment.
