Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what progress the Government has made on implementing a digital solution to the process of issuing National Insurance numbers.

We started testing a partial digital solution, on a small scale, in mid-October, to support the issuing of National Insurance Numbers, which is still ongoing. This solution enables collection of the applicant’s data, but not the online verification of their identity.