It has been reported that a minister’s laptop, which contained very sensitive information, was stolen when he was sitting at a pub in London.
Only days before the largest day of strikes in the UK’s history, which involved thousands of workers, it was stolen from Rail Minister Huw Merriman.
Just last month Metro.co.uk exclusively revealed that a laptop containing ‘sensitive’ data was stolen from an MP’s office on the parliamentary estate.
The Evening Standard reports that Huw Merriman’s work computer was taken from under his seat at a bar in London’s Covent Garden on February 2.
It was the same week that train drivers launched their last round of mass walkouts, causing huge disruption in London and across the UK.
Sensitive information relating to negotiations over the then-recent strikes was contained on it at the time, but was wiped remotely once the theft was raised with police, sources said.
The reported theft from the pub on James Street came just a day after the biggest rail walkouts for more than a decade.
RMT and Aslef workers at 14 train companies took industrial action on February 1 and 3 in a dispute over pay and conditions, which continues.
It isn’t the first time a laptop belonging to a minister has been stolen from a pub.
Minister Stuart Andrew’s laptop was taken as he enjoyed a drink in a pub close to Downing Street in February last year.
Mr Andrew had his work computer, personal device and house keys stolen from the Red Lion in Whitehall.
The pub is a regular haunt for MPs, government aides and journalists and is just a few hundred meters from the Houses of Parliament.
The Conservative MP for Pudsey was a housing minister in Boris Johnson’s government at the time of the theft, and now holds jobs in the Department of Culture and the Department for Business and Trade.
His computer, which had been at his feet when taken, was also accessed and wiped remotely after he reported it missing, it was reported.
Sources said that Mr Merriman, the Conservative MP for Bexhill and Battle, told the police about his stolen laptop at around 7.30pm, with the Metropolitan Police confirming the theft was reported to them.
However, they said no arrests had yet been made.
A government spokesman said: ‘We take the security of government devices extremely seriously, which is why devices, such as laptops and mobile phones, are always encrypted so any loss does not compromise security.’