Brown blamed for 'wholly inadequate' care that led to loss of 25m records

The accusations follow two reports into the loss of discs containing the personal details of 25million child benefit claimants.

Alistair Darling surprised Westminster by failing to defend the Prime Minister against charges that he was ultimately responsible for 'serious institutional deficiencies' at HM Revenue&Customs.

Blunder: Alistair Darling at the Child Benefits Agency HQ where two data discs containing the confidential records of 25 million people went missing after being sent to the National Audit Office

Instead, Mr Darling appeared to go out of his way to point out the department's failings when it was run by his predecessor.

His comments yesterday follow two inquiries into the child benefit discs fiasco, one by an independent management consultant and the other by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

One concluded the incident was 'entirely avoidable'.

The data watchdog, Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, has now threatened HMRC with prosecution unless it improves procedures.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown leaves Downing Street earlier for Prime Minister's Questions

A similar warning was given to the Ministry of Defence, which was castigated over the loss of the records of 600,000 armed forces recruits.

When Mr Darling admitted the loss last November, he told MPs a 'junior official' had been responsible for posting the information 'contrary to all HMRC standing procedures'.

But yesterday's report concluded that staff members could not be blamed for the scandal because there was 'little or no security training'.

It revealed that one unnamed official anticipated the discs going missing - but his warnings were ignored.

He emailed a colleague saying: 'Things do get mislaid and imagine the uproar if the discs containing the (child benefit) data went astray and turned up where they shouldn't.'

The discs have never been recovered, despite a police investigation.

There have been 30 serious breaches of data security by Whitehall departments since the loss of the two discs.

The IPCC inquiry suggested that cost-cutting by Mr Brown was partly responsible.

It found that the child benefit records of the entire nation could have been divided up for posting, but cost pressures persuaded staff it was cheaper to bundle all the data together.

It was also revealed that the details of 355 high-profile people were included on the discs.

These are thought to include senior politicians such as Mr Brown and David Cameron.

Both the Tories and the Liberal Democrats said that Mr Brown - who oversaw the merger of the Inland Revenue and Customs - was ultimately responsible, rather than the junior official who sent the discs.

Mr Darling insisted action was being taken to improve data security.

But in the Commons, he pointedly ignored invitations to say that he did not think Mr Brown was ultimately to blame for the HMRC loss.

He said the report did not blame the scandal on Mr Brown's merger of HM Customs and the Inland Revenue, but he pointed out it concluded that the ' complex system of management installed after the merger was not suitable'.

He also agreed with Opposition MPs that 'morale' at the department had been a problem but said it was improving.

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said: 'Alistair Darling could hardly have made it clearer that he wants to distance himself from the failings of his predecessor at Number 11, Gordon Brown.

'He ducked numerous chances to stand up for the Prime Minister because it's clear now that HMRC, the department created and run by Gordon Brown for ten years, had institutional failures and a 'muddle-through' ethos.'

Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said: 'The responsibility does indeed lie with the present Prime Minister, for a specific decision which he made, which is the decision to remove 24,000 of the Inland Revenue's staff.

'The consequence of that is that the Inland Revenue is now hopelessly ill-equipped to handle the growing complexity of the tax system and tax credits.'

Mark Serwotka of the Public and Commercial Services union attacked the Government for attempting to 'scapegoat an individual junior civil servant'.

Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell, who was asked by Mr Brown to review information security across Whitehall, said that all civil servants handling personal data will now be forced to undergo annual training.

But he was unable to offer a cast-iron guarantee that the database for planned compulsory ID cards would be secure.

Gordon Brown has been blamed for 'woefully inadequate' care of sensitive data that led to the loss of the personal details of 25 million people.

Alistair Darling stunned Westminster by failing to defend the Prime Minister against charges that he was responsible for 'serious institutional deficiencies' at HM Revenue & Customs, which he ran when he was Chancellor.

Instead, the Chancellor appeared to go out of his way to point out previous failings under his predecessor.