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Brown's govt losing support
24/11/2007 20:40 - (SA)
London - A series of setbacks, including the government's loss of disks containing personal information about millions of Britons, has reduced public support for the governing Labour Party, according to a poll published on Saturday.
However, the ICM poll also showed that Britain's largest opposition party, the Conservatives, has failed to capitalise on the problems of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour government.
The poll put support for Labour at 31%, a four-point fall from a similar poll last month. It gave the Conservatives 37%, a three-point decline, and the opposition Liberal Democrats 23%, up three points.
The survey of 1 005 adults who were questioned on Wednesday and Thursday appeared in The Guardian newspaper on Saturday. No margin of error was given, but in samples that size it is usually plus or minus three points.
Brown's government's recent setbacks include the loss of two computer disks bearing information about 25 million people.
The disks disappeared while being sent by internal mail from the tax and customs department to the government's audit agency. They contained names, addresses, birthdates, benefits registration numbers and, in some cases, banking details for all those adults and children.
The government's HM Revenue and Customs also confirmed on Saturday that six other data disks disappeared while being taken between its offices in the cities of Preston and London by a courier company, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported.
The disks, reported missing on October 30, contained recorded conversations between the department's staff members and customers who had called to make complaints, the BBC said.
On Friday, Brown set a deadline of December 10 for all government departments and their agencies to review their systems for handling personal data.
His government also is dealing with a crisis at British bank Northern Rock.
The company has borrowed £s;25bn from the central bank under an emergency loan facility that was extended in September when the global credit crisis left the lender without funding from the short-term money markets.
On Friday, Brown also had to defend his government's treatment of the country's soldiers, including those fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, after five former British defence chiefs accused him of neglecting the armed forces.
The retired military commanders charged that the Defence Ministry had put the lives of soldiers at risk with funding cuts.
The ICM poll mirrored a Populus poll on Friday in The Times newspaper, which said the share of voters who trust Brown and his finance minister, Alistair Darling, to handle the economy has fallen to 28% since September.
- AP
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