UK banks will seek recompense from HM Revenue and Customs if its recent loss of two discs containing the personal data of 25 million taxpayers results in financial fraud, said the chief executive of the British Bankers' Association. "Few can have failed to recognise that not only has it taken some weeks for HMRC to report to those who need to know – the individuals and the banks – but that it is a breach of duty of care which would not be countenanced in the private sector," Angela Knight told the BBAs fifth Annual Conference on Financial Crime. "The industry has committed and continues to commit to protect its customers from suffering any financial loss as a consequence. We are also hoping that the data will be found. Nevertheless, the industry has informed HMRC that it will be looking for recompense should any bank suffer financial loss as a consequence." In a wider context, she said it was clear that the UK government has not yet accepted properly the case for making fraud and financial crime a priority for law enforcement in its own right. Given the proven links between financial crime and other types of criminality, the police's performance framework should have financial crime as a high agenda item. But resources allocated to tackle both money laundering and fraud risks are on the decline. "Efforts to reduce fraud and money laundering are essential, not just from the proprietary position of the industry because it flags the UK as a good place to do business, but also because it cuts off the funding for the other types of criminality and threats that we all see around us," said Ms Knight "It is quite extraordinary that the industry does so much on anti-money laundering, on fraud prevention and on identifying suspicious transactions, and yet this doesn't feature among the priorities the police has been given by the Home Office."