Carr in hiding after blunder

Maxine Carr was today spending her first day of "freedom" locked in a police station after plans for her new life collapsed in an astonishing security blunder.

A file containing the list of addresses of "safe houses" in north-east England, where Carr was supposed to be relocated, was stolen from a senior civil servant's car as she partied in Hampstead.

It was later found on Hampstead Heath - but left prison and probation officials with no choice but to move Carr out of jail early and keep her in a police station for her own protection.

The taxpayer now faces footing the bill for finding a series of new safe houses - having already paid £ 1million in preparation for the release.

Carr has now been moved from lowsecurity Foston Hall prison in Derbyshire to the police station where she will meet members of the team who will oversee her new life.

The mixed unit of probation officers and police is known as a multi agency public protection arrangement. They will work on details of her new identity, which Carr had only recently been persuaded to accept. It is believed they will still use the same name they had planned, but it is possible Carr will decide to keep her own name.

But as they began their work, serious questions were being asked about the blunder involving Carr's file.

Home Secretary David Blunkett was expected to be dragged in front of the Commons to make a humiliating statement on what the top-secret file was doing in a civil servant's car miles away from the Home Office days before Carr's scheduled release.

The document should have been kept under lock and key at the Home Office in Queen Anne's Gate, where only a handful of civil servants were allowed to know the details of Carr's new life.

It was considered so important not to compromise the addresses where Carr would live that some of Mr Blunkett's "inner circle", including his advisers and heads of Home Office departments, were not allowed to see it.

But instead of observing the strict security, the civil servant put the secret details in her briefcase, drove to a birthday lunch for a friend in Hampstead on Tuesday afternoon and left the case on the back seat of her Ford Fiesta, where it was spotted by a thief who broke into the car.

The woman made a frantic 999 call and was forced to tell police the explosive contents of the briefcase - prompting a massive response to an otherwise routine crime.

She also had to tell Martin Narey, the head of the prisons and probation services, about the theft. Mr Blunkett was said to be "incandescent", but the civil servant has yet to be suspended for her breach of strict rules on top-secret documents.

There was fury among probation officers and police who were supposed to keep Carr safe from the vigilante attacks they fear will be launched on her because she lied to police to provide a false alibi for her former boyfriend Ian Huntley, the murderer of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, said: "It is seriously embarrassing."