The case of the lost Mark Duggan disc and a “faceless” civil servant

Information concerning three of the UK’s most sensitive inquiries has been lost in the post.

(Photo By Sensitive files on Mark Duggan and others have gone missing. Photo: Getty)

It’s one of those Whitehall clichés. A civil servant leaves their briefcase full of weapons-grade government secrets on the train. Following the story of a bungling UK spy who did just that back in 2008 with documents on Iraq and al Qaeda, the legislative lost property tale has become a bit of a parable for government incompetence.

And now it’s happened again. This time, the Ministry of Justice appears to have lost some very important discs in the post containing information about three of the UK’s current most sensitive inquiries: the role of the police in the deaths of Robert Hamill, Azelle Rodney and Mark Duggan. The latter is the most recent case; the fatal police shooting in 2011 sparked the London riots.