BRITAIN:Britain's data fiasco will likely take a lasting toll on the prime minister, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
By Alistair Darling's own admission, this was "a huge, massive, unforgivable mistake".
Junior officials at HM Revenue and Customs - acting in response to an information request from the National Audit Office - downloaded the entire data system giving details of 25 million child benefit recipients, sent the disks by internal postal system, neither registered nor recorded, only to discover, as the chancellor explained to MPs yesterday, "that the data had failed to reach the addressee".
On finding that the package - complete with details of seven million families, including the names of parents and children, addresses, dates of birth, child benefit and national insurance numbers and, in some cases, bank or building society details - had not arrived, a further copy of the data was sent, this time arriving by registered post.
And again, as Darling was forced to admit: "HMRC should never have let this happen."
The chairman of Revenue and Customs, Paul Gray, has done "the decent thing" and resigned. At this writing it would be premature to say if, of itself, this "mistake" will be enough to cost Gordon's Brown's chancellor his job - although Iain Duncan Smith pressed him to say he would quit if the lost data eventually finds its way into "the wrong hands".
However, what might be said with greater certainty - and rather more importantly - is that this almost unbelievable episode may take a more lasting toll on Brown's hard-won and much cherished reputation for competence.
Darling had already found himself between "a Northern Rock and a hard place" yesterday, having failed to satisfy parliament that some £24 billion (€33.6 billion) of public money propping up the troubled bank will be repaid to the taxpayer.
And he certainly began to look unfortunate when forced to make his second emergency statement to the Commons in as many days.
Acting Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable had delivered a wounding blow on Monday, likening Darling to Conservative chancellor Norman Lamont, who famously sang in his bath after the pound dropped out of the ERM on "Black Wednesday" in 1992.
Having for years used that humiliation to repel any Tory criticism of his stewardship as chancellor, prime minister Brown was in the chamber yesterday to hear fast-rising Tory star George Osborne tell Darling he now faced a huge task in seeking to restore public confidence.
One cartoon yesterday had the chancellor selling buckets of "cold sick". Both prime minister and chancellor certainly looked sick as Osborne demanded: "what is the point of this House passing laws to protect the privacy of people's personal information if those laws are not even enforced at the heart of government?"
Osborne's most telling political comment may have been in suggesting this episode might mark a final blow for the government's ambition to create a national identity card scheme.
Most wounding, however, was when he downgraded expectations of the government, telling Brown: "never mind the vision - just get a grip and deliver a basic level of competence."
Since the fiasco of the "snap election" that never was, that suddenly seems a tall order.