Police are investigating the theft of a laptop from the Ministry of Defence.

The laptop was stolen from a Royal Navy officer in Birmingham on the night of January 9 but the theft has only just been announced by the Ministry of Defence.

It contained personal details of 600,000 people who had joined up to the Royal Navy, Royal Marines and Royal Air Force and from people who had expressed an interest in joining.

Entries on the computer included passport details, National Insurance numbers, drivers' licence details, family details, doctors' addresses and NHS numbers, the MoD said.

The finding comes after hundreds of documents bearing people's personal details were found by a motorist for the second time in two months.

They were in files found scattered on a roundabout and road near Exeter Airport in Devon by 57-year-old Karl-Heinz Korzenientz.

He said: "If I was a criminal I would be having a heyday.

"It is ridiculous papers like these are so lightly lost - on two occasions," said Mr Korzenientz, from south Devon.

He spotted the papers on Thursday morning after dropping off a friend at the airport.

It was at exactly the same spot last year that he found similar documents, he said.

When he stopped yesterday he first thought the papers were rubbish, but then saw they were "all confidential papers".

His latest find included internal mail bags, files and loose papers, but there was no indication of who the carrier was or to whom they were being delivered.

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