The government has announced that it is to spend £155 million on shoring up its data security capabilities following the publication of a damning report into its recent high-profile personal information losses.

On the back of the fiasco at HM revenue and Customs, which saw the loss of the personal details of 25 million child benefits claimants, PricewaterhouseCoopers conducted an investigation which has now concluded that the incident was "entirely avoidable".

According to the company's chairman Kieran Poynter, the department lacked adequate "awareness, communication and training on data security", adding that there was no clear chain of responsibility for the issue.

Now the cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell has confirmed that action has already been taken to encrypt some 20,000 government laptops, pledging further investment to ensure a "change of culture" within the public sector.

"Government departments must be able to share the information they hold - there are countless benefits in doing so...but we can only do this good work if the public trust us to keep their personal information safe and secure," he said.

Despite this, however, Sir Gus was unable to guarantee that a similar problem would not occur with the rollout of the new national ID card scheme.