UK govt's secrets found on train, given to BBC

SHODDY PAPERWORK: Opposition Security Spokesperson, Pauline Neville-Jones slammed govt of carelessness.

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New Delhi: It’s a reporter’s dream and a bureaucrat’s nightmare. A British government official accidentally left a set of confidential government papers in a local train.

The documents were found by a passenger and turned in to the BBC

"The information that could've been exposed is potentially prejudicial to national security and certainly to the public interests of this country. It also tells foreign governments that this is a government in the United Kingdom that really isn't in control of the situation, isn't in control of its government machine,” said Opposition Security Spokesperson, Pauline Neville-Jones.

The documents detailed Britain's efforts to tackle terrorism financing, the drugs trade and money-laundering, a British newspaper.

AP adds from London: The Independent on Sunday, in a preview made available late Saturday, said the files were found on a London-bound train on Wednesday, the same day classified documents on al-Qaeda and Iraq were handed to the British Broadcasting Corp.

The BBC said those documents, also left on a train and stamped ''UK Top Secret,'' carried assessments of al-Qaeda's vulnerabilities and the capabilities of Iraq's security forces.

The newspaper said the papers were given to it, that it had returned the latest documents and would not be publishing any of the details they carried.

It was not immediately clear where the documents came from or which government body was responsible for their security.

Britain's Cabinet Office, which coordinates policy across various government departments, did not immediately return a call seeking comment late Saturday. Neither did the country's Treasury.

London's Metropolitan Police said they were not investigating the incident.

The British government has suffered a series of highly embarrassing security breaches, including the theft of an unencrypted computer carrying information on 600,000 prospective military recruits from a recruitment officer's car.

But recent incidents were dwarfed by the admission, in November, that tax officials lost computer discs containing information _ including bank records _ for 25 million people, nearly half the country's inhabitants.