Hain's DWP faces national insurance criticism

Peter Hain faces more criticism

Wednesday, 16, Jan 2008 12:00

The government is investigating whether it has mistakenly issued thousands of illegal immigrants with national insurance numbers.

Last year it emerged over 6,600 non-EU workers had been cleared for jobs after being issued national insurance numbers.

And yesterday's Channel 4 News claimed 900,000 national insurance numbers were given out between January 2004 and April 2007 – during which 270,000 work permits for non-EU nationals were issued.

The row over whether illegal immigrants are receiving benefits and pensions available to all those holding a national insurance number is more bad press for Peter Hain, whose Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for their distribution.

Conservative shadow work and pensions secretary Chris Grayling described the situation as "shambolic".

He said: "After the fiasco over the overall figures for migrant workers last autumn, it's now quite clear that the government's management of our system of migrant workers has collapsed into chaos.

"It looks pretty clear that Peter Hain is no more in control of his department than he was of his deputy leadership campaign finances."

The DWP is checking with the Home Office, the Security Industry Authority and HM Revenue and Customs to establish whether national insurance numbers were wrongly obtained.

A spokesperson said the law said employers had to check the right to work before taking on new employees and warned a national insurance number did not constitute sufficient proof.

"There are claims that the number of national insurance numbers issued to non-EU nationals doesn't match the number of people given work permits," he added.

"These figures are bound to differ because they are not measuring the same thing. A work permit is just one of the permitted means by which a person can work in this country."