§ Mr. WebbTo ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many national insurance accounts the(a) National Insurance Integrity Programme and (b) National Insurance Work Programme identified as inactive, broken down by category, in each year since they were established. [116728]
§ Malcolm WicksThe National Insurance Integrity Programme was superseded in mid-2000 by Personal Account Security, now known as the National Insurance Number (NINO) Allocation Project. The NINO Allocation Project has responsibility for taking forward the Departmental for Work and Pensions National Insurance Work Programme.
The overall stock of NINOs is 71.5 million; 49 million of these accounts are active. The NINO Allocation Project has identified a total of 14 million accounts as deceased records. Of the remaining 8.5 million records, analysis has taken place and we have concluded that 6.7 million of these records are not being used because either they are deceased records or the customers have gone abroad. The remaining cases have all been dormant for over 3 years and we are currently looking at ways to police these accounts in future.