N.I Numbers: Govt now admits to losing them as well.

Millions of national insurance numbers have been "lost", the Government has admitted, raising fears that they are being misused by fraudsters and illegal immigrants.

The nine million numbers were issued by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and are registered on its database, but officials do not know if they are held legitimately.

National Insurance (NI) numbers can be used to claim benefits and tax credits, and are sometimes accepted by employers to prove the right to work legally in the UK.

An internal investigation has been launched to try to categorise the numbers, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. It will report to ministers later this year. It is not known if the findings will be made public.

The Government admitted in a recent parliamentary answer that there are now 76.7 million numbers on the database, well in excess of Britain's adult population of 49 million.

Some of the surplus numbers are legitimate. The DWP estimates that 16.5 million are registered in the names of dead people whose surviving spouses can lawfully claim a pension against their late spouse's NI contributions. Another 1.5 million are thought to belong to pensioners living abroad who can claim UK benefits.

However, a spokesman for the DWP said the remaining nine million had yet to be categorised.

"The purpose of this piece of work is to try to strip away those who have legitimate reasons for having a number, and to identify those who don't," she said. "We don't know, for example, how many British people have moved abroad. And a lot of the NI numbers relate to foreign nationals who have worked in the UK legitimately and now live in another country."

It has also emerged that the Government only began recording the nationality of those issued an NI number on March 26 this year.

Last year, three fraudsters were found guilty of conspiracy to defraud HM Revenue and Customs after stealing dozens of numbers and attempting to obtain £357,000 in tax credits.

Adesola Adelana, Stephen Ayankoya and Adetutu Olowe stole 37 numbers in total and used them to help open 11 bank accounts, obtain eight forged driving licences and access nine credit cards. They were sentenced to between 30 months and four years.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said he was alarmed at the admission, primarily because the Home Office intends to use the NI database as the model for setting up Britain's national identity card scheme in 2009.

"The Government cannot know who is in this country and who is entitled to what," he said.

"How can they claim the integrity of their £20 billion ID card database, which will hold dozens of pieces of information on every citizen in the country, will be protected?"

The DWP was embroiled in controversy last year when a loophole allowed at least 3,300 NI numbers to be issued to illegal immigrants. A month later the rules were changed.

**So yet more clowning from the government, I am sure that red noses, silly outfits and large shoes should be issued to the government ministers responsible. So we have 76.7 million NI numbers in total, a population of 49 million - give or take a few million illegals - so that gives a total of 27.7 million more NI numbers than there are people in the UK.

Tags DWP
Cool Britannia
NI Numbers
lost data

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