EU Migrants: National Insurance Numbers Debate

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Department: Home Office

EU Migrants: National Insurance Numbers

Peter Bone Excerpts
Thursday 12th May 2016

(8 years, 6 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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James Brokenshire Portrait James Brokenshire
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I will certainly ensure that his comments about people’s ability to obtain national insurance numbers are passed on to colleagues at the Department for Work and Pensions. I point the hon. Gentleman to the ONS’s clear statement on the lack of a connection between national insurance numbers and long-term migration and to what I have already indicated about the best measures.

Peter Bone Portrait Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
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It is quite clear from the Minister’s answer to the urgent question that there are more EU migrants here at any one time than was previously thought. That is now not in doubt. I suspect that the Minister is a good poker player, because he can clearly bluff and misrepresent the facts.

John Bercow Portrait Mr Speaker
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Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not wish to suggest that a Minister had misrepresented someone else.

Peter Bone Portrait Mr Bone
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Indeed, Mr Speaker. What I was trying to say, clearly rather clumsily, was that the Minister would be a very good poker player. He is an excellent Minister, and I want to give him some career guidance. The Prime Minister clearly requires that immigration numbers come down to the tens of thousands, but these NI numbers prove that that cannot possibly happen while we are in the EU, so could he advise the Prime Minister to change his position on the EU and recommend that people vote to come out, and the Minister can keep his job?