£20,000 reward for benefit discs

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The offer comes after more than two weeks of fruitless police searches along the likely route of the discs, including a trawl through a rubbish tip.

The CDs, containing the details of 25 million parents, went missing after being despatched from HMRC offices in Tyne and Wear to the National Audit Office (NAO) in London.

Chancellor Alistair Darling revealed last month that the names, addresses, birth dates, national insurance numbers and bank account details of every child benefit claimant in the country had been lost.

The Metropolitan Police, which is leading the hunt, said on Wednesday that dozens of detectives and specialist search officers had so far been unable to track down the discs.

As the search now turns to places thought less likely for them to have ended up, police are appealing to staff at HMRC, the NAO and the Treasury to check their working areas. Workers at couriers TNT, which operates HMRC's internal post, are also being informed of the appeal.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Met said: "The enquiry has been particularly challenging due to how common CDs are within offices, the number and size of the offices requiring searches and the number of organisations where the package may have travelled through.

"The main searches have concluded and we are now extending to areas that require searches or enquiries to be made in order to rule them out.

"However, indications suggest that these locations are less likely to have been a transit route for the parcel than the areas already searched."

A team of 32 Scotland Yard detectives - down from 47 initially - is currently working on the search, which has been assisted by specialist search officers from forces around the country.