Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government why their systems use National Insurance numbers as personal identifiers if, at any given instant, they do not know whether such numbers are valid.

National Insurance Number are used as Identifiers for National Insurance Number Records; held for each individual who has been allocated a National Insurance Number.

Robust identity checks are undertaken when an application for a National Insurance Number is received. At the point of creation of a National Insurance Record the validity of the record has been confirmed.

Whilst a National Insurance Number is the identifier for a National Insurance account within the Department of Work and Pensions and HMRC, to enable Tax and Contributions to be posted to the citizen’s record and/or the administration of Department Benefits and Pensions, there are robust processes in place to validate a citizen’s/customer’s identity before a benefit/pension will be paid.