The latest news reports today discusses a problem I was mulling over in my mind yesterday when this story broke: why did the National Audit Office ask for all 25 million records to be sent to them?

As an accountant and auditor by profession, it is virtually unheard of to test the whole population of data, rather than just a small sample. In addition, where you are performing either a risk or a controls audit, the auditor would expect stratified access to key financial or operational data in order to create “segregation of duties”, a fundamental test within an audit.

The news today reports that the NAO specifically did not ask for all of the data, and had just asked for names and National Insurance Numbers. For reasons that will hopefully become clear in the coming days, that request was ignored and the database downloaded to the lowest standards of security and transport. In addition, by necessity, someone more senior than the junior clerk must have known and sanctioned this.

If this is true, and if Alistair Darling knew about this, there may be a question here as to whether he misled the House yesterday in parliament, which would be a clear reason to resign. I am loath to pass judgement on this tragedy before independent reports have disclosed exactly what happened and how, but as time goes on, it is becoming harder to see how the Government is going to be able to escape blame for this.