More than 500 computers have been lost or stolen from the Inland Revenue, official figures reveal.

The revelation emerged in a response to a parliamentary question by David Laws, Liberal Democrat shadow chief secretary to the Treasury.

It follows concern about computer mis-use at the Revenue and the sale of 600 of its buildings to a company based in a tax haven.

The Revenue said it was hard keeping track of its 60,000 computers, and their loss was likely to have been caused by an auditing problem.

Security system

Since 1998, Revenue staff have lost nine laptops, and have had 166 stolen.

In addition, 386 PCs have been stolen.

More seriously, the Revenue told BBC News Online, that it had little idea about whether those computers had been recovered.

"We haven't got any numbers for that as yet," a spokesman said.

She said that with more than 60,000 computers in use at the Revenue there was a difficulty in "keeping track of everything."

She denied that taxpayers details would have been compromised by the loss of the computers.

All tax records were kept on a central mainframe, she said, and were not on the individual computers' hard drives.

"There are security systems in place to make it a secure as possible," she said.

Computer concern

Concern about the Revenue's computer systems emerged in January when it admitted a number of Revenue staff may have been "surfing" celebrity tax records.

The Revenue also admitted that some privileged tax information had been sold onto outside agencies by staff, for example to shop ex-spouses to the Child Support Agency.

Sir Nicholas Montagu, chairman of the Inland Revenue board, is coming under increasing pressure.

Reports that Sir Nicholas would be stepping down following criticism of the property tax haven deal were dismissed by the Revenue on Monday morning.

Sir Nicholas is unlikely to give interviews in the run-up to the Budget, as there is a code in place preventing media appearances during that period.

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