Paul Smee: Man in the middle of the child benefit security storm

A Day in the Life: When officials lost the bank details of 25 million people, the head of Apacs knew he would have a difficult day

6.25am

The events of 20 November may yet be seen as the beginning of the end of Gordon Brown's government. The loss of confidential data on millions of child benefit claimants has dealt a hammer blow to the public's perception of its competence.

Paul Smee and his team at the banking industry body Apacs have the job of helping to clear up the mess – and ensuring that there are no malign consequences of the disappearance of those now infamous discs.

The Association of Payment and Clearing Services is the organisation charged with leading the battle against payment fraud. It is therefore no wonder that Mr Smee is up early on the day that the Government plans to fess up. Because when it does, Apacs will be right in the middle of the storm.

8am

Mr Smee is in the office and starts his day like many chief executives, dealing with emails and correspondence.

Apacs' aim today is to provide reassurance in the hope that there will be no repeat of the crisis that engulfed Northern Rock, when queues of fearful depositors ran the length of high streets up and down Britain.

Apacs' other key job is to ensure that if the data does fall into criminal hands any fraud is swiftly dealt with, its member banks are informed and action is co-ordinated. Some 25 million people are affected in total, with details of 7.5 million bank accounts, representing one seventh of the "banked" population of Britain, going walkabout, along with names, addresses, dates of birth, etc. Apacs' job is a big one.

It is fortunate, therefore, that Mr Smee, himself a former civil servant, is a phlegmatic character, and a man who expresses great confidence in his team, several of whom have been working on how to deal with the issue of the missing data over the weekend.

Mr Smee says they first had to get the information on exactly what had been lost and who had been affected from the Government. The information then had to be supplied to member banks in such a form that they could identify which accounts were at risk and monitor them for any fraudulent activity.

"Fortunately we have a very good computer chap here. We drafted Nick in on Friday, when he was actually off sick, but he was able to get started on it from home. I was on the conference call when he was asking all sorts of geeky computer questions. But he put a programme in place, and did a great job."

The early part of the day is generally calm, ahead of the storm to come.

9am

Mr Smee begins his schedule of meetings for the day, starting off with his senior management team. They have already been briefed on what is to come, and Mr Smee's first session involves the more mundane business of running Apacs, discussing forthcoming initiatives, issues facing the industry and other business with his senior executives.

However, an hour later he is back on the data issues, running through the list of prepared Q&As that his press team have put together and will make use of in a series of broadcast interviews later today. A team of four will be responsible for getting the Apacs message out, and Mr Smee wants to be sure everything is in place.

This is just a last-minute run-through, because Mr Smee says the preparations were done very early. The reason: "I was convinced that it would leak." And it is no wonder. Apacs has needed to ensure a number of different organisations have been notified of what has been going on and are ready to deal with the issue, including the Building Societies Association, the British Bankers' Association, and Apacs' members.

Satisfied that his team are ready and at the top of their games, he returns to his schedule of meetings and the day-to-day business of running the organisation – such as finalising its strategic plan.

12pm

Mr Smee heads to Canary Wharf to take lunch with the Financial Services Authority. News about the missing discs has just started to seep out ahead of the Chancellor's statement to the House of Commons. He is meeting with regulators, however, to discuss a forthcoming European directive on payments. "I want to have a discussion with the FSA about what the implications of the directive were for us," he says. "And I also want to introduce them to some of the complexities we face. There are lots of relatively simple questions that can be raised about payments but, unfortunately, the answers tend to be very complex. At this stage the issue of the discs is in a holding pattern. We'd been told to keep it tight until the Chancellor's statement."

3pm

Mr Smee is back at the office and, with the news now out, he admits: "All hell has broken loose." His media team are heading to various broadcast studios to get the Apacs message out. They will do more than 50 interviews by the time the day is done. Mr Smee explains: "What we need to do is project a message of basic reassurance, tell people what banks are doing to ensure they can pick up any fraud, inform people of the fact that there has been no criminal activity detected."

Mr Smee is keeping in touch with the various organisations that are also involved in the issue, and is on hand to deal with anything that might arise.

He also, he says, needs to be on the floor to reassure his own staff. "There are 140 people here, and a lot of them are child benefit claimants and have worries themselves," he says. "I need to be here, on the floor, making myself available. I make sure the team knows what is going on and that everything is going well. I keep in touch with the media team and the other organisations that are involved, as well as our member banks."

Apacs has a secure section on its website to allow them to work out which accounts have been affected so they can be monitored. "The software available is now quite sophisticated," he says. "It can pick up unusual activity on accounts so that banks can then get in touch with account holders to check that everything is alright."

7pm

Mr Smee is confident that Apacs is getting its message across, reassured that queues are not forming outside banks, and comfortable that his team can deal with the remainder of the interviews they must do during the rest of the evening. He therefore heads to a dinner in the City hosted by the Guild of International Bankers, although he ensures that his mobile telephone is on throughout the evening.

He will attend this sort of event two or three times a week in the course of his job, and will typically not arrive home until 11pm.

He admits that several senior bankers he meets all ask him: "How could this have happened?" Mr Smee was a civil servant in a previous life, although he left in the 1980s, before the widespread computerisation of records in Whitehall. Faces, procedures and the Government have all changed. However, he does still have some insight into the way the place works.

"I can see how it could have happened," he muses. He pauses for a second before adding: "But it shouldn't have happened."

The CV

Name: Paul Smee

Age: 51

Education: Wadham College,Oxford.

Career: 1978-1988: Civil servant, Department of Trade and Industry, including spell as private secretary to joint permanent secretary. Member of team handling Financial Services Act 1986.

1988-1994: London Stock Exchange. Jobs included head of government relations, speechwriter to chairman and chief executive and head of international relations, responsible for relations with emerging economies of Eastern Europe.

1994-1996: Association of British Insurers, head of life insurance.

1996-1999: Independent Television Commission, director of regions and public affairs.

1999 - 2005: Director general, Association of Independent Financial Advisers.

2005-present: Chief executive, Apacs.