§ Mr. Cryerasked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many employees of Staflex Ltd., have had insufficient national insurance contributions paid by their employer prior to Staflex Ltd. going into liquidation in January 1979; if he will carry out investigations into these deficiencies; and if he will institute prosecutions against former directors of Staflex Ltd. for breaches of their obligations regarding payment of national insurance contributions.
§ Mrs. ChalkerI assume that the hon. Member is referring to Staflex International Ltd. which, together with two subsidiary companies, went into voluntary liquidation on 29 December 1978. An investigation has been carried out to assess the amount of unpaid contributions and a claim is being submitted to the liquidators. The individual employees for whom contributions are unpaid do not have to be identified by the Department for the purposes of the claim in the liquidation and, indeed, they could not all be identified without disproportionate expenditure of time and resources; but our procedures are designed to ensure that the unpaid contributions will be treated for benefit purposes as having been paid and will be duly allocated to claimants' accounts. If the hon. Member knows of any case where these procedures appear not to 759W have been followed, I should be grateful if he would let me have details.
In deciding whether prosecutions should be instituted against directors under section 147 (7) of the Social Security Act 1975, the Department has to consider a number of factors. In the present case, difficulties experienced by the Department in obtaining the necessary information would, in any event, have made it impracticable to start proceedings within the statutory period, which has now expired.