First up the DVLA selling off data to anyone for £2.50The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) is still selling the names and addresses of motorists to wheel-clamping firms without carrying out checks on their background and credentials, despite a pledge by Ministers to introduce tougher controls.
Three years ago, the Government said more would be done to prevent data on car owners falling into the hands of rogue parking firms.
Action was promised after The Mail on Sunday disclosed that drivers' details were being sold by the DVLA for £2.50 a time to unlicensed operators and even to criminals imprisoned for extortion.
The Department for Transport responded by bringing in fresh checks on about 80 companies entitled to receive information via a secure electronic link to the DVLA database of Britain's 38million motorists.
These involved a six-month probationary period for firms wishing to join the register, criminal-record checks on their directors and compulsory membership of an accredited industry organisation such as the British Parking Association.
Announcing the crackdown, the then Transport Minister Stephen Ladyman declared: 'Protecting the privacy and confidentiality of individuals is critical.'
Now, however, it has been revealed that personal details of hundreds of thousands of motorists continue to be sold to firms that have not undergone rigorous vetting procedures - simply because they make individual applications for the information, bypassing the vetting system.
The firm that lost highly sensitive taxpayer records in a pub car park faced fresh criticism last night over its handling of nurses' personal details.
Last weekend the Department for Work and Pensions closed down a key online services system - the Government Gateway - after a memory stick containing confidential documents and passwords was found outside a pub.
It is feared that the data of around 12million people was jeopardised.
The memory stick was lost by an employee of the French firm Atos Origin. Now the same firm has come under fire from a nursing union for putting its members at risk.
Under the Government's policy to get those on incapacity benefits back to work, each claimant must have a medical.
Atos Origin, which gathers information on claimants, has stipulated that nurses carrying out the medicals must include their Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) identification numbers on the case files.
But officials at the Independent Federation of Nursing have found that if the PIN and name of a nurse are typed into an internet search engine, the user is given access to the NMC database of all registered nurses, containing names, addresses and other details.
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