Written question asked by Lord Willetts (Conservative) on Thursday, 1 March 2001, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 14 March 2001. It was answered by Lord Rooker (Labour) on Wednesday, 14 March 2001 on behalf of the Department of Social Security.

Dept of Social Security

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security, what action will be taken to identify and remove inaccurate, duplicate and fraudulent national insurance numbers once the Data Cleaning Project comes to an end. - Inc figures.

Answer: Mr. Willetts: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what action will be taken to identify and remove inaccurate, duplicate and fraudulent national insurance numbers once the Data Cleaning Project comes to an end. [152437] Mr. Rooker: The Data Cleansing Project removed 182,000 National Insurance numbers (NINOs) during the last financial year--more than during the whole of the last Parliament. The Data Cleansing Project will move from departmental project status to departmental core business status on 31 March. Therefore the process of analysing our database to identify and remove inaccurate, duplicate and fraudulent NINOs will continue at current levels as part of our core business. In addition, from 31 March onwards there will be a rollout of an enhanced process for allocating NINOs. The new process will involve far more stringent tests before a NINO is allocated thus preventing fraud and error entering the system in the first place.

Secondary information