PAYE Coding Notice - What are HMRC UP to?

[MrRobin]

1. Mixed you with someone else - NI numbers are not all unique

Are you serious?? Surely this is an ideal primary key

[Clare@InTouch]

Are you serious?? Surely this is an ideal primary key

It's mainly due to transcription errors apparently.....


National Insurance

Chris Grayling: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many duplicate national insurance numbers there are in the national insurance database. [149969]

Mr. Plaskitt: From March 2007, DWP’s Customer Information System replaced the Departmental Central Index as the national insurance database. Due to the way the Customer Information System is set up, the same national insurance number cannot be allocated twice. However, from time to time we identify national insurance numbers that are being used by more than one person, usually through transcription errors.

The number of instances where this has occurred is shown in the following table.

Cases of a national insurance number being used by more than one individual

Number of cases
2001 2,539

2002 2,418

2003 2,533

2004 1,896

2005 1,991

2006 1,984

Note: In these cases we take corrective action with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to correct the account.

House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for 17 Sep 2007 (pt 0029)

[SueEllen]

Are you serious?? Surely this is an ideal primary key

Causes:
1. Human error in giving out the numbers I actually met someone who had been given the same number as someone else. They got given their NI number as an adult in their mid-twenties when they came over to work here. I was told this use to happened a lot by a relation who is an accountant.

2. Fraud - some illegal immigrants use other people's NI numbers so they can work.

3. Official line - Transcription errors - if you design a system to give out numbers you should design it so that numbers that are easily swapped aren't given out.