Being a junior minister at the Ministry of Justice can be mundane at times. The deal is that, before you’re allowed to make popularity-boosting announcements (rare as those are, these days), you have to do your share of the grunt work.

Thus, when the Conservatives’ Ben Obese-Jecty asked a parliamentary question on the number of electronic devices reported lost and stolen by the MoJ, it fell to the new boy at Petty France, barrister Jake Richards, to reveal the cringe-inducing total of 179 laptops, 475 mobile phones and 11 ‘other electronic devices’ going astray in eight months. 

‘All Ministry of Justice laptops and mobile phones are encrypted and protected to National Cyber Security Centre standards,’ Richards told MPs. ‘The department has mandatory reporting procedures for lost or stolen items, and incidents are investigated in line with security policy.’

So that’s all right, then. 

Topics