LOCAL MP Richard Bacon, who is a member of Parliament's spending watchdog, the Commons public accounts committee, has asked the National Audit Office to investigate how the Inland Revenue has managed to lose an unknown quantity of taxpayers' records.

Richard Bacon, Conservative Member of Parliament for South Norfolk and a member of the Commons public accounts committee, has written to Sir John Bourn, the Comptroller and Auditor General and head of the National Audit Office, asking for an investigation into the Inland Revenue's accidental deletion of an unknown quantity of taxpayer records.

The Inland Revenue became aware of the problem in Autumn 2003 but it has only just been reported in the National Audit Office's Standard Report on the Inland Revenue for 2003-04 (click here to read it). The Inland Revenue has still not solved the problem or identified its scale.

In his letter to Sir John Bourn, Mr Bacon writes:

"It is odd that the Revenue should not have a system that would enable it to keep track of all its core data. I would have expected this as a matter of course. How an organisation doing something as important as the Inland Revenue can be so sloppy as accidentally to delete potentially large quantities of data is difficult to understand".

"Your Report states that the Inland Revenue 'became aware' of this problem in Autumn 2003. It is therefore reasonable to ask why one year later the Revenue has still not been able to solve the problem or even identify how many records have been deleted. Since the Revenue holds over thirty million records, this issue could easily affect many hundreds of thousands of taxpayers".

"I would be most grateful if you would investigate this issue so as to enable members of the committee to understand the scale of this problem as well as the steps that the Inland Revenue is taking to solve it".