A database containing private details of 100,000 Armed Forces personnel has gone missing.

The portable computer hard drive has names, addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth and driving licence details of personnel across the Army, Royal Navy and RAF, plus their next-of-kin details.

It also has data on 600,000 potential services applicants and the names of their referees.

Officials are "not ruling out" the risk that bank account details of personnel were held on the drive, which belonged to its IT contractor EDS.

The Ministry of Defence Police are investigating the disappearance.

It is the latest information security breach to hit the MoD. In July it admitted 658 of its laptops had been stolen over the past four years and 26 portable memory sticks containing classified information had been either stolen or misplaced since January.

The Liberal Democrats described the loss as a "disturbing breach of security" and called for an urgent inquiry into how it had occurred.

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