"With the statistics showing that nearly 500 government devices have gone missing since 2001, it was only a matter of time before a confidential disc inadvertently ended up on Ebay,” said newsjacker Brian Spector, general manager of the Content Protection Group at Workshare.

However, Spector said that at least the public sector finally seems to be learning from its repeated mistakes, as the laptop and disc were both encrypted.

“Unfortunately accidents like this are not going to stop happening so we can only hope that other government departments follow the Home Office's lead and adopt full disc encryption,” he added.

“Technology that will easily safeguard such confidential data is readily available – the British public needs to know that the government is using it to ensure that all the information it holds on its citizens is secure and properly protected."

The latest apparent lapse follows a string of security errors and a number of laptop thefts, including a recent NHS computer containing patient data.