UK official LOSES Mark Duggan shooting discs IN THE POST

Nobody’s found a politically charged package have they?

ID of Duggan marksman apparently in lost file

Duggan's death sparked riots that spread from north London to other cities across the UK in 2011. Reporting restrictions applied in the case mean that the identity of the police marksman who killed Duggan has never been made public.

Mark Duggan's aunt Carole Duggan told the BBC: "The criminal justice system went out of its way to protect the identities of the officers who killed Mark, issuing all manner of reporting restrictions and anonymity orders in court. Now we learn that this apparently sensitive information has been 'lost in the post' at the Ministry of Justice."

The Hamill family said: "We are at a loss to understand why any material relating to the Robert Hamill inquiry should have been posted or sent at this particular time, given the fact that the inquiry report itself was completed in February 2011."

In a statement, the Metropolitan Police said it had carried out a risk assessment on the lost material before taking "appropriate" steps.

We have carried out a full risk assessment on the material that is relevant to the MPS ... and have taken the necessary steps. Due to the nature of the material we are not prepared to discuss what those steps entail.

Police are NOT investigating the loss of the sensitive discs, which the MoJ is treating as accidental.

In a statement supplied to the BBC, the Information Commissioner's Office said it was looking into the incident.

We have recently been made aware of a possible data breach involving the Ministry of Justice. We will be making enquiries into the circumstances of the alleged breach before deciding what action, if any, needs to be taken.

The whole incident recalls the infamous loss of two discs containing ‪child benefit data back in 2007.‬ Records for 25 million people, relating to child benefit payments for 7.25 million families, were sent using the HMRC's internal postal system but never arrived.

The discs were password-protected but unencrypted, and sending them was a breach of HM Revenue and Customs procedures even at the time. A further copy of the information was sent, this time by registered post, and did arrive.

The MoJ has form when it comes to data loss screw-ups. For example, the UK prisons ministry was fined £180,000 last year over the loss of unencrypted back-up hard drives containing sensitive information. ®