Clause 7 - Loss of benefit for commission of benefit offences
Social Security Fraud Bill [Lords]
5:00 pm
Mr Jeff Rooker (Minister of State, Department of Social Security; Birmingham, Perry Barr, Labour)
I think that I can satisfy the hon. Lady--I cannot accept the amendment, but I can do the next best thing. I shall not read my speaking notes, but shall use the pre-note. I am told that amendment No. 52 would have no effect; what it states is precisely what the Department intends to do. Regulations will be made once the Bill is enacted. I shall not speak about the technicalities of amendment No. 51. The argument is flawed, but that is inevitable because of the way in which such measures are drafted. However, such a measure is not needed.
We intend to prescribe in regulations made under the powers in clause 7(6) that the disqualification period will start either within 28 days of the second conviction if, at that point, the person is entitled to a sanctionable benefit or, if the offender is not entitled to a sanctionable benefit at the time of the second conviction, when he first becomes entitled to a sanctionable benefit within three years.
I shall try to be as brief as I can—I could be a lot more wordy if I used my speaking notes. We can deal with the points raised by the hon. Member for Beckenham. First, I have outlined how we intend to operate. Secondly, that will be made clear in regulations. There will be no doubt about when the ``two strikes and you're out'' provision will be used, and I repeat that it cannot be used unless there has been a second conviction. The Department will not operate on the basis of punches; it will require convictions in a court of law before the ``two strikes and you're out'' sanctions can be applied.
There are not 9 million missing NINOs or missing people. Without the benefit of my notes, I can tell the hon. Lady that the figure of 60 million, to which she referred, plus the 12.5 million numbers relating to deceased people, which are kept on the system, make up the 72.5 million. That leaves another 9 million to make up the 81 million. Since the national insurance system started, anyone who has worked here or who was born here and left the country permanently has had a NINO. Those numbers still exist.
Anyone who came to the country for a couple of weeks' fruit picking in East Anglia or in Scotland was allocated a NINO. They might never come back to the country, but they have been given a number. Millions of people have left the country since 1948 and, over those 50 years, others came to work here temporarily. They were given a NINO, but they may have left and might not come back. They amount to a substantial number of people. I am not saying that that represents the grand total, but it is substantial. There are not 9 million missing people or missing NINOs.
As to data cleansing, on Second Reading I said that in the last year for which we have figures, we cleansed and removed more NINOs than we did in the previous few years combined. However, I do not have the exact number. During the cleansing operations, we have found instances of either one person with two NINOs or two people sharing the same one. Such things happen, perhaps because an employer supplies the wrong number or because of human error during data inputting, but discovering such discrepancies is part of the cleansing operation; then we can upgrade the system.
The NINO system is an actively managed operation. It is not a static list of 80-odd million numbers, locked away in the Department's computers and left there. Where there are doubts or suspicions, flags are placed on numbers so that if they are ever activated again, the system will show that that has happened and that we need to investigate why and by whom the number is being used.
The hon. Member for Beckenham referred to the Balham project, which was a pilot. We have put it on record that the Balham techniques of in-depth analysis and more systematic questioning about NINOs are being rolled out across the country, virtually as we speak. They will be fully rolled out by October, so there will be designated people across the country trained in those techniques. I have sat behind an interviewer at Balham who was going through the process and I know that we shall apply what we learned at Balham across the country. That is not to say that we can in any way extrapolate the Balham arrests and deportations. However, we can say that those who were interviewed in Balham about national insurance numbers were spoken to on the basis that they had a job offer, but did not have a NINO.
That situation can apply only under a peculiar set of circumstances. It does not occur in the case of 16-year-olds born in this country, because their NINOs are activated automatically. In the light of the Balham project, the issue of national insurance numbers will be a much more tightly controlled and systematic operation. The fruits of that will become clear as the months pass.
I have been as brief as possible, and I hope that I have answered the hon. Lady's points about the amendments and about the Balham project. However, I am happy to answer any other question that she has.