I’m a minister and my identity was still stolen

A few weeks ago I read the case of a reader who had been contacted by Companies House congratulating him on becoming the director of a new business. A business he had never heard of.

I read that piece with interest because I too have had the ordeal of finding myself registered to an unfamiliar and bogus company, during my time as work and pensions secretary.

Finding out someone has stolen your identity in this way and used your name to set up a fake business is completely unnerving.

Your name is there in black and white attached to a company entirely alien to you— in my case listed not as a director, but as company secretary.

My identity had been stolen and yet