National Insurance Numbers and Illegal Immigrants

Part of Opposition Day — [6th allotted day] – in the House of Commons at 2:59 pm on 16 January 2008.

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Photo of John Penrose John Penrose Conservative, Weston-Super-Mare 2:59, 16 January 2008

I am glad to have the opportunity to respond. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could have made a proper speech on the issue, instead of just intervening on me. I plan to address the subject, because as he will know, an employer faced with a job applicant who says, "I am a British citizen and I do not have a passport" does not have any way of checking whether the applicant has a right to work. I am sorry, but compulsory ID cards for foreign nationals is no solution to the problem, if the person concerned says that they are not a foreign national. That is yet another example to show that the Government's arguments on ID cards, both on the hon. Gentleman's point and more broadly, are deeply flawed.

As for the history, the Government's approach to the issues over the past 10 years was ably summed up by my hon. Friend Mr. Jackson. Their usual stance is first to deny that there is any problem, and then to say that anyone who points out that there is a problem is in some way giving succour to racists. However, we all know that unless decent, reasonable, moderate people, such as all of us in the Chamber, are willing to debate this important issue in a decent, reasonable fashion, a vacuum is created, which is filled by terrible extremists from parties such as the British National party. The Labour party's next move is to say, "Oh dear, there is a problem, and we need to do something about it. We do not have much idea of what that should be, so we'll spend the next year or so rubbishing the Conservative party's plans, and then we'll put them into action." The Government have suddenly realised that there is a problem. The scales have fallen from their eyes, and they have swiped the suggestions in the Conservative party's 2001 and 2005 manifestos. They are busily trumpeting the fact that they plan to introduce the measures suggested in them.

The problem is not just with immigration and nationality; as has been made clear in this debate, there is a problem with the administration of national insurance, too. The terrible shame of it is that there is no disagreement on principle. As was pointed out in contributions from hon. Members of my party, there is a fair amount of political consensus on how the issue needs to be handled. The Secretary of State said earlier that a modest and controlled level of immigration—the right kind of immigration—is, on balance, good for the country, if it is managed properly. I think that everyone present would agree. Huge contributions are made to the country by people who arrived here recently, and who are working their socks off to make a better life for themselves, their communities and their families. I hope that no one present would disagree with that, and it is right to make that point.

There is no disagreement on principle, but there is a problem with competence. We have a problem with administrative ability, or the lack of it. I am afraid that the Government have a long and undistinguished track record of serial errors. I start with the immigration and asylum systems, which have been hugely overloaded in the past 10 years. Waiting lists are ballooning, and there is an inability to cope with people who overstay and with genuine applications. The system is bogged down, so people who are genuinely in need are having to wait months, and in many cases years, often with no hope of even a date on which their case will be considered and responded to. My hon. Friend Mr. Hands, who has a huge amount of experience on the issue, gave good examples of the kinds of problems that the situation creates.

As we have heard this afternoon, in addition to incompetence in the administration of nationality and immigration matters, there is incompetence in the administration of national insurance numbers. The Secretary of State was faced with the fact that roughly 900,000 people have been issued national insurance numbers, but fewer than 300,000 people have been issued with work permits. He was asked whether he could say, hand on heart, that the missing 600,000—the gap—was made up purely of people who have national insurance numbers but who are not eligible to work, such as students. I found it particularly disappointing and worrying that he ducked the question several times. He basically said, "We're looking into it." What worries me and, I am sure, everyone else who has listened to the debate is that after 10 or 11 years of a Labour Government, we should not be in such a situation—a situation in which the Government do not know the answer to such a simple, basic question.

Of course it is true that the international situation has changed, that there is far more pressure as regards migration, and that there is far more globalisation than there was 10 years ago. The systems have therefore had to be tightened up, but the problem is that they have not been tightened up quickly enough. The Government have consistently not been on the ball. That is why the problems have arisen. The issue is not one of principle but of competence, and when it comes to competence, the Government are sadly and badly lacking.

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Danny Rizo
Posted on 17 Jan 2008 6:17 pm (Report this annotation)

To be even more explicit, even if a jobseeker speaks with a very heavy foreign accent but he states that he is a British citizen of Romanian descent,(or Nigerian descent etc) and he doesn't have a passport but he has a NINO, what is the employer to do? Reject his application? What if that employer does reject his application and then the jobseeker sues that employer for discrimination on the basis of nationality?