Bye-Bye Darling. It's for the best.
HarryW Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 08:49:05 PM GMT 
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One of the things that characterised the Blair administration, and for that matter, the Major Government before it, was the sight of Ministers seeking to cling on to office by their fingertips, no matter what. There was always enough blame for so many others that no culpability was left for themselves.
Irrespective of the problems with his handling of the Northern Rock bailout, losing the personal details of half the country should not just cost the Civil Servant in charge of the the HMRC his job.
Irrespective of the problems with his handling of the Northern Rock bailout, losing the personal details of half the country should not just cost the Civil Servant in charge of the the HMRC his job.
The Government sets the standard by which ordinary men and women live their lives. Where we have a situation where ministers absolve themselves of ultimate responsibility, this permeates down to ordinary people not taking responsibility for the ultimate outcomes of the decisions and the actions that they make in their everyday lives.
Ministers are always more than happy to take the credit for the successes delivered by their departments, but always seem to be absent from the tiller when the boat runs aground.
True, the middle ranking civil servant facing an employment tribunal and [probably] dismissal is along way down the food chain, but this error is of such a magnitude that it will colour everything that our government will seek to do over the forthcoming two years. Everything. We may never regain a reputation for competence and regain the electorate’s trust.
How can the public have confidence that the “53 pieces of personal information” that we will need to provide for a day trip to France can be stored securely? Why would the electorate believe that the biometric details and fingerprints we will give for our ID cards won’t be down loaded onto a disk and sent by cycle courier to oblivion. What happens when all of our medical details are on one database. Already 2/3 of doctor’s do not believe that security is adequate. And they are the end users!
Even if these discs are recovered, there will be no evidence of who has had access to the information whilst it has been missing (since it appears that this information was password protected but not encrypted). And criminals would not use this information immediately. Half the country has permanently been exposed to a real possibility of identity theft. We cannot change our date of birth, (or for that matter our mother’s maiden names). Changing your NI number is difficult. And they will know where we live.
And this appears to be a systematic failure of how sensitive personal information is handled at HMRC (as many as seven instances this year). The Government fails to give the Information Commissioner the powers to properly regulate the storage and dissemination of sensitive personal information, whilst at the same time forcing the electorate to provide more of it.
When people accept the grace of high office, they also accept the responsibility that that high office brings to them.
No, this was not directly Mr Darling’s fault, but this is a mistake of such magnitude that only a resignation from the top can cauterise this wound. Darling should go and go quickly. Hanging on only risks taking the whole government and its programme down with him.
Bye-Bye Darling. It's for the best. | 11 comments (11 topical)
Bye-Bye Darling. It's for the best. | 11 comments (11 topical)
