Data Protection Act

It was sort of assumed that nothing could touch HMRC even after they lost 25 million people's data on two disks which were sent unregistered by courier.

But the present scenario is different.

Against this background, think of an ordinary company that had lost data in this way. They would be prosecuted right away. There is no exemption for Government departments as well.

Corroborating this is a recent incident of Nationwide, the building society, which was fined £1m recently after they lost some people's data.

Fine Our Money

Is there really a point in one Government department wanting to fine another Government department.  It’s all our money. Imagine, after a Government department loses our records which could potentially be used to extract money out of us and is then fined a sum which they will source it from our tax money.

At least, one can say, the Nationwide shareholders took the hit.

Management to Blame

Some people seem to think it’s unfair to put the blame on the department, when it could have been just the fault of a junior official in sending the information this way. However, since this shows the lack of systems and culture in place, it clearly shows the management are responsible for lack of a proper system right up to the highest level.

Management too often are quick to blame individual workers or contractors, conveniently glossing over the fact that it is the system that has broken down.

Incompetence

It is very obvious that if you are going to enforce a Data Protection Act you would  make sure that your own departments follow it to a tee and not cause an embarrassment.

The crux of the matter is if one takes into account the precious time wasted in pursuing thousands of PCG contractors for IR35 tax, including cases which dragged on for years, one also realizes that HMRC was able to win only a handful of cases.

Perhaps one thing that may come out of this could be that HMRC  could try and become a more competent department.