Liberal Democrats have revealed the huge amount of data that was lost or stolen from the police, local councils and the NHS in recent years.

Since December 2009 alone, Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS Board has reported stolen 8 laptops, 6 hard drives, 3 PCs, 2 tablet computers, a ThinkPad, a monitor and a projector.

This included 2 laptops stolen from the paediatrics department at Yorkhill in March of this year and a PC stolen from the X-ray viewing room at the Western Infirmary in April. Not all the devices stolen or lost were encrypted and some may have contained personal identifiable information.

West Dumbartonshire council has lost 60 PCs from schools and 6 USB sticks since December 2009.

Lothian and Borders Police have had 10 PDAs stolen and 7 PDAs lost since 2007. They have also had 4 PDA memory cards stolen and a laptop and a USB memory stick have been lost.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Justice spokesman Robert Brown MSP said:

“These are frightening figures. The public will be rightly worried that their personal data is at risk.

“Central Government, local councils, NHS Boards and the police hold a great deal of information on all of us. Our data is in their hands and we need to know they are taking this responsibility seriously.

“Liberal Democrats called for an urgent review into data loss in January. I want to know what the Government have done since then and why the situation has not improved.

“The Government is not in control of the situation. They need to get a grip on this right now.”