§ Mr. FieldTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what changes have been made in the past year to identity checks on staff issuing National Insurance numbers. [104612]
§ Mr. RookerA number of changes have been made in the past year to control procedures for the staff who are enabled to issue adult National Insurance numbers. Firstly, reductions have been made in the number of staff who have access to the allocation process. The introduction of these new procedures has reduced the number of people who are able to allocate new numbers from over 1,500 to less than 525.
We have also created a database of the staff who are able to allocate numbers. This allows checks to be made on exactly how many people have access to this process at any one time, who those people are, why they need access and how many National Insurance numbers any one individual has allocated. This process is controlled via a security procedure agreed between this Department and the Inland Revenue.
Finally we have introduced automatic security checks which enable managers to investigate whether staff have a continuing need to have access to the allocation process. The system will highlight unusual activity and prompt a Management check.