A flaw in the Government's ID scheme has been exposed by the article regarding Stewart Cruse (Advertiser Sept 13) who has had his personal information misdirected by a commercial organisation and now fears fraud.

One of the key issues that has been brought to light with this case is the failure of a commercial enterprise to live up to its legal obligations to protect customer data.

Failure to have done so will have a direct impact on this organisation's profitability.

And potential customers will think very hard about using this company.

Certainly after reading Stewart's story, it is fair to say that this company will lose business, and rightly so.

This article exposes a key issue of accountability.

In the commercial world every care possible is taken to avoid events such as this for the reasons I have mentioned.

Firms know that failure will impact on profitability and a commercial organisation will work hard to ensure the law of data protection is upheld.

However, is that the case with the National Identity Register and the ID card? I don't believe so.

If the ID card becomes law, unlike services we subscribe to, we are bound by that law to put information on that system, we have no choice.

Unlike commercial customers, if the information on the NIR database is compromised we cannot move from the provider and the system remains intact with no real imperative to change, why should it?

Politicians will try to tell us that the personnel and the system are secure. They can even quote misuse laws.

These assurances can be tested by asking them if they will give assurance such that any recorded breach of the database will resolve in them resigning.

If they cannot give that assurance then they are aware that the system cannot be 100 per cent secure.

However, given that nobody in the Government has been held to account for the failures in foreign policy I am firmly of the mind that they are more than unlikely to accept responsibility for security of a database.

P Bridge.

Swindon