What I mean to say is, we learn that the 25m child benefit records lost by HMRC were not mislaid by a single IT junior, but placed in the post only after managers had given the all clear for the hapless computer whizz to download all the data onto discs and stick them in the post.

So not only did our hero break HMRC rules, but so did his managers. I return to my earlier point, the staggering loss of all those records was not the work of a lone individual working in solitary ignorance of all rational thought, but that individual had help in making such a solid gold blunder.

Yesterday, I was reading the biography of Gerald Ratner who, as we all know made a speech remarking that his products were 'total crap', ending his career and bringing down the jewellery business he ran. That speech has been ranked as one of the worst blunders in corporate life. I think we can now rank the HMRC fiasco a notch or two higher. Simply because a group of people, not a lone individual, but a group, contrived to deliver perhaps the worst loss of government data in modern times.