Examination of Witnesses (Questions 800
- 808)
TUESDAY 16 MAY 2006
MR JONATHAN
PORTES AND
MR JAMES
QUINAULT
Q800 Gwyn Prosser: I will take the
exhaustive version! Mr Portes, we have been told that although
your department carries out a number of checks before issuing
national insurance numbers you do not, as a matter of course,
check immigration status, the right to work or the right to claim
benefits. Is that right and, if so, why?
Mr Portes: I should preface my
answer by saying that national insurance numbers are, thankfully,
quite a way away from my responsibility at the department.
Q801 Chairman: Do you want to write
to us on the issue or get us a letter?
Mr Portes: I do have some notes
here. I will try and make an attempt at an answer and then, if
you want further details, I think we should provide you with a
note. The important point for us is that NINos (national insurance
numbers) are an internal reference number that lets us link an
individual with their social security, or their child support,
or their tax or their contribution record. It is not proof of
identity, and it is not supposed to be proof that you are entitled
to work. The interviewing process that we go through is basically
about identity fraud. It is to ensure you are who you say you
are. It is not supposed to provide a rigorous check on immigration
status. There can be quite legitimate reasons why you might require
a NINo even if you are not entitled to work in this country. If
we do become, or if Jobcentre Plus, who do the NINo allocation
process, do become aware of right to work or immigration irregularities—if
it becomes obvious that somebody is not entitled to work where
there is good grounds for them believing they are not entitled
to work and it is pretty clear that the purpose of their applying
for NINo is because they are going to work—then we do report
that to the appropriate authorities; but it is important to recognise
that NINos are not just about the right to work and that is not
what they are there for.
Q802 Gwyn Prosser: I take the point
that it is not your direct department, but I would think most
people would think it would be a pretty basic question to ask
(immigration status and the right to work) even if it is just
for information rather than a debar?
Mr Portes: It would be a major
change in the purpose of NINos and in the way the process went.
If you were to say that issuing a NINo is a certification, in
some sense, that Jobcentre Plus and the Government has checked
this person for not only their identity but their immigration
status and their right to work and that that maybe confers on
them the right to work, that would be a pretty major change in
the process that we do. I am not saying that it would be impossible,
but it would be a significant policy change.
Q803 Chairman: Without pretending
that it gives someone the right to work, it surely must be the
case that some employers would assume that, if somebody turns
up having got a national insurance number, it is a pretty clear
indication that they were entitled to work?
Mr Quinault: My understanding
is that they are not able to rely simply on the fact that they
have a NINo.
Chairman: Given that we know there is
very little enforcement, it might be sensible not to issue national
insurance numbers to people who are not legally in the country,
just by checking against the records.
Q804 Mr Winnick: Has that thought
never occurred to you?
Mr Portes: As a proposal, it certainly
is something that has occurred to us. As I say, it would be a
significant policy change and a significant change to the process
as we currently have it.
Mr Winnick: Millions of people in this
country would think it the most sensible thing.
Q805 Gwyn Prosser: Just listening
to this discussion here, my feeling is that this would be something
that will go into our report. Have you got anything to tell us
now to detract us from that?
Mr Portes: You have to recognise
what you would be asking Jobcentre Plus. At the moment the job
of the Jobcentre Plus person interviewing somebody for a NINo
is primarily about me assuring myself that this person is James
Quinault, that he has some proof and there are a number of different
documents he could show as proof that he is the person he claim
to be. It is not about me ascertaining whether he is legally in
the country and, if so, whether he has the right to work. Our
staff are not trained in Home Office procedures; they would not
be able to simply look at a passport and say, "Oh well, you
have overstayed your visa. Surely I cannot issue you with a NINo."
Q806 Chairman: They would be able
to check on a computer, would they not? They would be able to
put the name into a computer which Mr Quinault runs and be able
to say, "This person has overstayed their visitor's visa."
That is all we are suggesting
Mr Winnick: It is called joined up government.
Bob Russell: I think this question should
be addressed to government ministers in the relevant departments.
Q807 Chairman: That is on the list.
Mr Quinault: The down side, I
would point out, is that if you are relying solely on the NINo
and the checks carried out by the DWP, the right to work is only
as good as those checks, and, as Jonathan has said, at the moment
Jobcentre Plus staff are not trained to carry out immigration
controls.
Chairman: We will follow this up with
ministers, but I think we are struggling to understand that if
somebody turns up with a passport with their name on it, probably
the one that they applied for their student's visa with, it is
impossible for DWP staff to check with the immigration nationality
computer to see whether that person is an overstayer before issuing
them with a national insurance number. We may misunderstand the
technical complexities of doing that, but I think that is something
we will want to pursue further on in the inquiry.
Q808 Mr Browne: What proportion of
people are we looking at? The overwhelming majority will just
be standard cases where this will not apply. If it is only 3-4%
they could be put into a separate pool for closer inspection while
you plough on with the 96-97% of cases that do not need to be
looked at so closely.
Mr Portes: In terms of numbers,
I think we issue in the order of two to three hundred thousand
NINos a year to foreign nationals; so that is the sort of number
we would be talking about.
Chairman: According to the PQ I had answered
recently, you run immigration checks on less than 2,000 of those.
I believe you will find that is correct. We are going to have
to move on. Can I thank you both very much indeed.
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