Secret documents left on train

Secret Whitehall documents relating to al-Qaeda and Iraq were left on a train in London, it has emerged.

The Cabinet Office has confirmed that the Metropolitan Police has launched an inquiry into the incident, which occurred on Tuesday.

It is understood that the two documents - both marked "Secret" - relate to al-Qaeda in Pakistan and the security situation in Iraq.

A spokesman for the Cabinet Office said: "There has been a security breach, the Metropolitan Police are carrying out an investigation."

The spokesman said the papers had been in the possession of a senior intelligence officer based in the Cabinet Office.

He was later suspended from his post, the Cabinet Office said.

Asked how many people would have had access to the papers, he said: "'Secret' is a high classification so they would have had limited circulation."

The incident is the latest in a series of embarrassing losses of Government information, including the disappearance of personal details of millions of child benefit recipients on a disc sent through the post.

The documents were reportedly left in an orange cardboard envelope on a train from London Waterloo to Surrey by a "very senior intelligence official" working in the Cabinet Office.

Mr Gardner said the envelope was picked up by a passenger, who found it contained a seven-page document setting out the latest Government assessment on the Islamist terror network al-Qaeda, along with a "top secret and in some cases damning" assessment of Iraq's security forces.

The al-Qaeda document, commissioned jointly by the Foreign Office and Home Office, was classified "UK top secret", he said. It was so sensitive that each page was numbered and marked "For UK, US, Canadian and Australian eyes only".

The second document, on Iraq, was commissioned by the Ministry of Defence.

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