The Liberal Democrats have uncovered figures that show nearly 50,000 Government security passes have been lost or stolen since 2001 - that’s 16 per day. Over 37,000 of these were from the Ministry of Defence.

A MoD spokesman said: “There are approximately 108,000 personnel in the Armed Forces and the number of lost/stolen ID cards for 2008 equates to less than 5 per cent of this total.

Here at Barcode Nation, we think 5% is still an unacceptable amount!

How can we trust this Government with our personal data when its own departments are so careless with theirs?