Chris Grayling

Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con): I beg to move,

That this House expresses its very great concern that National Insurance numbers appear to have been issued to illegal immigrants.

Britain today has nearly 5 million people claiming out-of-work benefits. Despite £3 billion spent on the Government's new deal, we have higher youth unemployment than 10 years ago. We have half a million people under the age of 35 claiming incapacity benefit. According to Ministers, a million IB claimants in all want to work. We have parts of Britain where as few as one in four adults of working age are working. We have a greater proportion of children being brought up in workless households than any other country in Europe.

And what are the Government doing? Handing national insurance numbers to tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants. Some people might call that incompetence. Just when the Secretary of State thought that things could not get any worse, the chaos spreads to another part of his job. What we know for certain is that 6,000 illegal immigrants have been issued with national insurance numbers by his Department, giving them an official stamp of approval to go and get a job. We have figures that strongly suggest that the real number is much higher. That is Britain today under this Government. All that happened while the Secretary of State was too busy getting on with his two jobs in Government to sort out the confusion with his campaign finances. What utter chaos!

To be frank, in the past few months we have seen a whole series of calamities for the Secretary of State on this important issue. We first had a sense that something was wrong last September, during the fiasco over the statistics on migrant workers; you will remember that, Mr. Speaker. The Secretary of State told us then that only 700,000 of the jobs created in Britain since 1997 had gone to migrant workers. We disputed his figure and suggested that the number was much higher. "No," said the Secretary of State, "It's 700,000." A month later he said, "We've got the figure wrong-it's not 700,000, but 1.1 million." We know that the Secretary of State is not much good at adding up, but losing 400,000 people is almost as improbable as losing £100,000 of campaign contributions. Even the 1.1 million figure may not be right; the Office for National Statistics has since told us that it thinks that as many as 80 per cent. of the new jobs created since 1997 may have gone to people moving to the UK from overseas. No wonder the Secretary of State wanted to keep things private. Can he really tell the House today exactly how many people from overseas have come to Britain to work in the past 10 years?

Keeping things private is becoming a bit of a habit with the Secretary of State. We have been trying to get answers about national insurance numbers and this issue ever since it became clear, two months ago, that thousands of illegal workers were being cleared to work in the security industry. The written questions remain unanswered to this day. On 13 November last year, my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) asked the Home Secretary about the issue during questions on the Security Industry Authority. She waffled and said almost nothing, telling us that sharing intelligence would be important in the future. It seems that the Secretary of State is not alone in wanting to keep us guessing about what is really going on.

I believe that yesterday's admission represents the tip of the iceberg of what is really going on with the Department for Work and Pensions' management of the system for migrant workers coming to Britain. We now know with cast-iron certainty that at least 6,000 people, illegally in the UK, have been given national insurance numbers by the Government. Yet nearly two years ago, the Government promised us that in future no national insurance numbers would be issued to anyone who did not have a right to work in the United Kingdom.

If the Government had done their job, those latest revelations should not have been possible. On 5 June 2006, Ministers told both Houses of Parliament:

"Any individual applying for a NINO"-

that is, a national insurance number-

"...who does not have the right to work here legally will be refused one."

They passed regulations that were supposed to enforce that. The guidance notes state clearly that an individual applying for a national insurance number because they are in employment or self-employment must provide a specific document proving that they have the right to work in the United Kingdom. That was nearly two years ago, but we now know that every single one of the illegal immigrants in the security industry who caused such controversy before Christmas had been issued with national insurance numbers. Even when the regulations were passed, the Government strongly implied that the problem was small in scale. They had managed to find only about 3,000 cases in which something was amiss. It is now clear that that was a hopeless underestimate; the figure is much higher.

The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr. Peter Hain): The hon. Gentleman asked about an outstanding answer to a written question. May I give him the information? The answer has remained outstanding because it has taken time to understand the extent of the national insurance number-related element captured as part of the Security Industry Authority review. As the review is nearing its completion, we now have a better understanding of the issue and we will be making the necessary checks against the SIA data. That is the answer to the hon. Gentleman's question; we wanted to give an accurate one.

Chris Grayling: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that answer. However, given that the Security Industry Authority said yesterday that every single one of those people had national insurance numbers, I am at a loss to see what review needed to take place, as all those people were affected.

The original figure cited by the Government 18 months ago referred to 3,000 cases, but that is a hopeless underestimate of the level of the problem. Over the past three years, the Government have issued work permits to 270,000 people from outside the European economic area.

Mr. Henry Bellingham (North-West Norfolk) (Con): My hon. Friend is making an extremely impressive case. Is he aware that the Department that is to reply to this debate estimated in May 2004 that there would probably be 15,000 workers from the EU accession countries working in this country, yet in fact the figure is nearly 700,000? Is it not deplorable that a Government Department got its figures so catastrophically wrong?

Chris Grayling: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those comments, which amplify the point that the Department is in a state of chaos as regards dealing with the whole system of migrant workers coming to the UK to work.

That is highlighted by the comparison between the number of work permits issued and the number of national insurance numbers issued. Over the past three years, 270,000 people from outside the European economic area have been given work permits by this Government-

Paul Flynn (Newport, West) (Lab): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Chris Grayling: I will in a moment; let me just repeat this figure to the hon. Gentleman, because he may be particularly struck by it. The Government have issued 270,000 work permits to people from outside the EEA, but at the same time they have issued nearly 900,000 national insurance numbers-that is a difference of more than 600,000. Before I give my thoughts on what the meaning of that may be, perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to give us his.

Paul Flynn: I am one of the many Members who wished to come here today to draw attention to the Government's very creditable record on dealing with pensioners. Is it not clear from the hon. Gentleman's remarks that he is denying us that opportunity in order to pursue a nasty, vindictive witch hunt against the Minister?

Chris Grayling: I look forward to debating pensioner poverty with the hon. Gentleman at the earliest opportunity, as we have every intention of holding that debate. However, I think he will agree that these issues have a direct correlation with levels of worklessness and child poverty, and when we, as the House of Commons, discover that the Government are failing as they now clearly are, it is right and proper that we should bring Ministers to this House to hold them to account as quickly as we possibly can.

Mr. Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con): My hon. Friend may share my concern that the Government's sheer incompetence in their handling of immigration means that in housing, for instance, we have a situation whereby the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright), wrote to tell me:

"Information is not available centrally on the local impact of migration on household growth."-[ Official Report, 25 October 2007; Vol. 465, c. 516W.]

He informed me, however, that one third of projected new housing would be allocated for new immigration. Is that not a disastrous situation that leads to further problems of community cohesion and delivery of public services?

Chris Grayling: My hon. Friend is exactly right. The reason for holding this debate is that the fact that the system is out of control has direct, human consequences as regards levels of deprivation and the serious challenges faced by many British families in many communities around the country.

John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con): Surely this shows the Government's complete incompetence in trying to pursue their stated policy objective of British jobs for British workers. If they do not even know how many people are coming here from outside the EU and how they will control their access to work, that makes it impossible for them to pursue one of the central aims that the Prime Minister has repeated in this House on many occasions.

Chris Grayling: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will set out in more detail why this completely undermines many aspects of the Government's current strategy.

Let me return to the gap of 600,000 between the number of work permits issued and the number of national insurance numbers issued-

Mr. Hain: Could the hon. Gentleman give the House his precise understanding of the difference between a work permit and a national insurance number?

Chris Grayling: The Government explained that at the time of the publication of their regulations. If we are to believe them, given that it is clearly not the case, a national insurance number can be obtained only by someone who has the right to work in the UK. Is the Secretary of State saying that that is no longer correct? The Government told us that that was their policy, although it is clearly not what is happening on the ground. My understanding of the difference, and I think the understanding of any employer, is that if somebody turns up for employment with a national insurance number, that is taken as a stamp of approval from the Government-the right to work in the United Kingdom. If the Secretary of State wants to tell us otherwise, I should like to hear from him.

Mr. Hain: I warn the hon. Gentleman gently, and in a friendly way, that he is digging himself into an even deeper hole. I asked him about his understanding of the difference between a work permit and a national insurance number, because he seems to think that they are the same thing.

Chris Grayling: I have never said that they are the same thing, but the Government's own statements show that they regard the issuing of a national insurance number as being linked directly to the right to work in the United Kingdom. They have clearly not managed the system properly given that, as we know as a matter of record from yesterday's revelations, national insurance numbers are being handed out to a large number of people who do not have a right to work in the UK. That is the point. Nearly 1 million people have received national insurance numbers: the question is how many of them really have a right to be working in the UK. We know that some of them do-for example, overseas students or dependants of people who do have permits to work here.

Lest Members should have any doubts about this issue, let me give a couple of examples of why I sincerely believe that the 600,000 figure masks a significant number of people who should not be here. Take Ghana. Over the past three years, the Government have issued 755 work permits to people from Ghana, but over the same period they have issued more than 21,000 national insurance numbers to people from Ghana. Take Albania, with 110 work permits issued and more than 4,000 national insurance numbers issued. Try persuading me that all those numbers were issued under the normal- [ Interruption. ] The Minister for Borders and Immigration asks how many are students. Let me answer that question for him, because I have taken a look at the website of the Higher Education Statistics Agency, whose most recent figures show that a grand total of 235 Albanians are studying in the UK-hardly equivalent to 4,000.

What do we know about the rest of those people? We have sought to do the right thing by probing the Government to find out who they really are. When my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere asked Ministers whether they could provide us with a breakdown of the gap between the number of work permits that they issue and the number of national insurance numbers that they hand out, their response-surprise, surprise-was that they did not have that information. So how do we take them seriously when they tell us that they know what is going on?

Let me say what I think. I do not believe for a moment that all those national insurance numbers were issued to people who are legitimately in the United Kingdom. I have suspected for a while that the current system is simply out of control-that the Government are handing out national insurance numbers to people who have no right to be here, and that Ministers have told employers that the national insurance number system is something they can rely on when the opposite is the case.

Angela Watkinson (Upminster) (Con): What chance does my hon. Friend think that the average employer has of knowing whether a national insurance number is legitimate, given the sophistication of the scams that illegal immigrants employ to obtain them and the apparent ease with which it is possible to do so? Are they not liable unwittingly to employ somebody who is not entitled to be here?

Chris Grayling: My hon. Friend is right. If the Government themselves cannot work out who is or is not entitled to a national insurance number, why should we expect the small business down the road to be able to do it?

We now know for certain that this is precisely what is happening, not from the Government, who did not want to answer the questions-we have heard the Secretary of State's explanation, and I will leave hon. Members to reach a view on that-but from the Security Industry Authority, which had no problem in doing so. Yesterday, it confirmed publicly and openly, and Ministers finally accepted grudgingly, that every single one of the 6,000-plus illegal immigrants appointed to security posts had a national insurance number. After two months of not answering questions, in the end the truth had to be dragged out of them. Even as late as yesterday morning, the Department for Work and Pensions was still claiming that it did not know the answer, which, I have to say, stretches credibility. It was another attempt to hide bad news, this time for as long as possible. This comes at a time not just when the leadership of the Department is in a state of chaos but when the Government want more bad news like a hole in the head, and not surprisingly, on a serious issue we cannot get the information from them.

With supreme irony, this revelation comes a week after the Government launched a campaign to warn employers that they face prosecution if they hire someone who does not have a right to work in the UK. The slogans are direct:

"If you hire illegal migrant workers you're as illegal as they are"-

an interesting message for the Secretary of State to contemplate. The campaign even points out that offenders can be sent to jail. The Government could not have been more direct about it.

"Illegal working attracts illegal immigrants and undercuts British wages"-

I quote the Minister for Borders and Immigration, who launched the campaign last week. He also said:

"That's why the Government is determined to shut it down. The message is clear for employers-we will not tolerate illegal working."

A week later, it turns out that the Secretary of State's Department is handing out national insurance numbers to illegal immigrants. How on earth are businesses and employers supposed to take the system seriously when it is quite clear that the Department has lost control of it? That is what has been so worrying about the revelations from the DWP in the past few months. Almost every month at Question Time, the Secretary of State parrots the Prime Minister's favourite slogan, "British jobs for British workers", even though it was pinched from the BNP, and even though it is illegal under European law. But how does he get British people into British jobs if he has lost control of the system for managing the flow of people into the UK coming from overseas to work?

Let us be clear. The Secretary of State may only have been in his job since last summer, but the buck stops with him, and his grasp of the situation has been sketchy to say the least. In September, when he claimed that only 700,000 of the new jobs created since 1997 had gone to people from overseas, he was obviously wrong. It did not take rocket science to work that one out; one just has to go out for a walk in any of our cities to see the change that has happened. However, when I challenged him over that and told him that I thought he had got the numbers wrong, he was having absolutely none of it. Let me read to the House the letter I had from him. He emphatically stated:

"The net increase in the number of migrant workers is therefore 700,000."

He added:

"In future, I am more than happy to provide you with such clarifications in private, to avoid the need to expose such confusion to public scrutiny."

About three weeks after that, he had to make public appearances apologising for getting it wrong, so who is confused now?

Mr. Stewart Jackson: Is not the irony of this Government's appalling mismanagement of immigration the fact that the impact is felt most on low-skilled, low-wage people in a small number of communities in this constituency, including my own constituency of Peterborough? They are priced out of jobs by unfettered immigration, which causes enormous resentment and gives succour to the extremist parties on the right. I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that the Government are responsible for that. The Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire), might think it is an amusing thing to comment on, but it is not. It has ramifications for community relations throughout this country.

Chris Grayling: My hon. Friend is right because underlying the debate is a real human cost. Getting the system wrong has real consequences for people in communities up and down the country.

If we could all see there was something wrong, why did the Secretary of State not see it? Let me ask him this question. When the security staff story first broke back in December, it was clear that there could be an issue with national insurance numbers. I have a copy of the application form here. It is quite clear, and it says that applicants are required to fill in all their details with a national insurance number. That is why we asked the questions, so why did he not answer? When did he first realise that something was amiss? Why was his Department still claiming that it did not know the answer as late as yesterday morning, when the Security Industry Authority was able to say what it knew? Why did it say that the answer was 100 per cent. when the Department was still trying to find out? Did he actually talk to it to find out what had happened, and what changes has he ordered to the national insurance number system since the matter occurred? Why has no statement been made to the House about what is clearly a problem in the Department?

This is a matter of extreme importance, not for technical reasons related to our immigration system, but because of those nearly 5 million people stranded on out-of-work benefits. Not all of them can or will work again; those who cannot will rightly need the help of the state to support them. But very many of them can and they should be working again. It makes no sense to have millions of people coming to work here from overseas, or to be so lax with people coming to Britain illegally, while so many people are sitting at home doing nothing.

I am not sure the Secretary of State has fully grasped the seriousness of that issue either. When we met at the Dispatch Box last week, I pressed him about the level of child poverty in Britain. The academic evidence is clear-cut. Children brought up in workless households are more likely to fail at school, more likely to be workless themselves and more likely to end up in trouble in later life. Britain today has a higher proportion of children living in workless households than any other country in Europe, including the poorest new entrants to the EU such as Romania and Latvia. The Secretary of State does not seem to know that because when I pressed him on the issue, he said he thought we were "above the average" in Europe. I suggest that he goes back and looks at the figures again. He should cut through the Government's rhetoric, and take a look at the real picture in Britain today, where child poverty is rising again, where young people cycle on and off the new deal without finding sustainable jobs, and where, in some parts of our community, as many as one in three children are being brought up in workless households.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I say to the hon. Gentleman that what is before us is a very narrow motion, which he created. Therefore, he must keep to the terms of the motion. He is talking about the problems of families in this country, when the motion clearly expresses great concern about national insurance numbers being issued to illegal immigrants. According to his own distinction, the debate is very narrow indeed.

Chris Grayling: I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, but the whole point is that this is the human cost of what the Government are doing. The more national insurance numbers we issue to people who are in this country not by right, the more we cause a knock-on problem for people in communities around the country who suffer from deprivation. Those people are looking for work and those jobs are not always there. There are many people in this country who we need to get back into work, and if the Government are sanctioning, through the inefficiency of the way they operate, a flow of people into this country who should not be here by giving national insurance numbers to them, they are effectively giving a stamp of authority to employers, saying, "Actually, it is okay to hire this guy because the Government's ticked his box. It must be okay for him to be here." That takes opportunities away from people in this country, and it has a huge human cost as a knock-on effect.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman is perfectly in order to say that, but not in depth. He can touch on that point, but not in the detail he was going into previously.

Chris Grayling: I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker. The fact is that the Secretary of State is presiding over a Department that is focused on dealing with those issues, while at the same time it is giving national insurance numbers to illegal immigrants. That is not a record of which any Secretary of State of any Government should be proud.

The truth is that the Government's record in managing the flow of people coming to work in Britain is lamentable. They do not know how many people are here. They do not know who is working. They do not know whether or not people have a right to work here, and they seem to be handing out national insurance numbers without question. And yet the Department overseeing all of this is run by a Secretary of State who, by his own admission, cannot add up. He said that he could not manage his own finances because of the pressures of work, but he still thought it was okay to take on the Labour deputy leader's job. He had lost control of not just the numbers in his campaign, but in his Department as well. And all while he was trying to run not one, but two Departments of State. It all appears to be getting a bit much for him.

We know that the system he is overseeing is in a state of chaos. We know that handing national insurance numbers to illegal immigrants will undermine efforts to tackle deprivation and get people back into work. Will the Secretary of State tell the House why he believes that he is still the right man to do the job?

The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr. Peter Hain): I beg to move, To leave out from 'House' to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:

"welcomes the new checks and controls the Government has introduced to reduce illegal working by foreign nationals, which include measures to prevent illegal immigrants being issued with national insurance numbers."

I am very pleased indeed to be responding in this Opposition debate, and I am even more pleased having heard the speech of the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). Up to five minutes to four yesterday, the Opposition wanted to debate pensioner poverty today. Now they do not, and I can understand why. They treated pensioners appallingly when they were in power and now they have nothing to say to them. For our part, we will continue to work, speak and act for justice for pensioners.

I welcome this debate, not least because it gives me the opportunity to explain to the hon. Gentleman-and he clearly needs a proper education on this-what national insurance numbers are for and what they are not for, because he does not appear to understand. In fact, when he reads Hansard tomorrow, or online later today, I think he will be embarrassed by what he has just said. The hon. Gentleman makes accusations about national insurance numbers and compares them with work permits, but they are not the same. Total national insurance numbers issued to non-EU nationals and the number of work permits issued cannot be compared, which he tries to do.

National insurance numbers cover categories of people who are not required to have work permits but are eligible for national insurance numbers, for example, overseas students, whom we welcome into our universities and who bring the fees that help to finance those universities, and the dependants of work permit holders-relatives who are given permission to come to the UK to join a family that already lives here legally. There will always be more national insurance numbers than population, as, for example, national insurance numbers for deceased persons remain on the system to ensure that their surviving dependants can get benefits based on the deceased's national insurance contributions, including the widow's pension. That would also have been the case before 1997, when our Government came to power.

Chris Grayling rose-

Mr. Hain: Let me explain the facts that the hon. Gentleman clearly does not understand.

European Union workers are entitled to count on national insurance contributions paid here for their pension in their country so their national insurance numbers and contribution records have to remain on UK systems after they have come and gone. That is part of the reason for the figures for national insurance numbers being greater than the hon. Gentleman might suppose.

Chris Grayling: I was making a point about national insurance numbers that were issued in the past three years. I assume that the Secretary of State has not been issuing national insurance numbers to dead people.

Mr. Hain: I think the hon. Gentleman will be even more embarrassed about those comments. Of course we do not do that. The national insurance numbers of people who die remain on the system so that their dependants, including widows, can claim the benefits that flow from their contributions.

Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby) (Con): As Secretary of State for work, will the right hon. Gentleman explain whether it is in order under employment law for a boss to call a member of his work force "incompetent"? How does it feel?

Mr. Hain: That question does not merit an answer.

Under Labour today, a national insurance number can never be proof of anyone's right to work, as the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell appears to believe and as he implied this afternoon. The previous Conservative Government believed that it should be and legislated to that effect. That is a crucial point. The Tories thought that a national insurance number should be a passport to work and legislated to that effect. I repeat that, under Labour today, the national insurance number on its own cannot be an automatic passport to a job. It is an administrative mechanism whereby we can track people's contributions to the national insurance system and record their entitlement to pensions and other benefits.

Of course, when the Conservatives were in power, illegal immigration and working were not the global phenomena they are now. That was not because they had well thought out policies to keep them under control. The main reason was that, under their stewardship, the economy was going to hell in a handcart. No one, especially not the 3 million unemployed, associated Britain with work.

Mr. Stewart Jackson: I am listening to the Secretary of State with interest. It is clear from the quality of his speech that it was written by one of his phoney think tanks; we are not sure whether it exists or whether it is a hologram.

The motion deals with immigration. If the Government are worried about immigration, why, two years ago, did they specifically opt out of sharing criminal records data with European Union countries? There are many cases throughout the country of national insurance numbers being given to people who have a criminal record in other EU countries. The Government do not seem to know about that and, what is more, do not seem to care.

Mr. Hain: Again, I am not sure what the hon. Gentleman's comments have to do with the debate, but I am happy to answer his question. We are putting together systems and procedures to share information with Interpol and I shall tackle directly the subject of illegal immigration, its flow into illegal work and the question of national insurance.

Mr. Speaker: I call Douglas Carswell.

John Penrose: John Penrose, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Penrose, I apologise.

John Penrose: I keep saying that I am a lot prettier than my hon. Friend.

If someone approaches an employer saying that they are a British citizen, that they have no proof of it, but have a national insurance number, how is that employer to be sure that the person has a right to work in the UK?

Mr. Hain: Employers must make the requisite checks. I shall deal with the matter shortly because it is another false premise on which the Opposition motion has been framed.

Unemployment was dire under the Conservatives, but it is no longer the case. This morning's figures again show that employment is at an all-time high, with nearly 3 million more people in work. Inactivity is historically low and a million people are off benefits. That is our Labour Government's record. It is a record of genuine achievement and competence, not Tory abject failure and incompetence.

David T.C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con): The Secretary of State says that 3 million more people are in work. He has plenty of figures at his fingertips; can he tell us how many of those 3 million people are British citizens?

Mr. Hain: As I have been explaining, employment has gone up, including for British citizens. Wages have risen and prosperity has increased. There are more house owners and the economic picture is completely different from the one that we inherited from the Conservatives.

Angela Watkinson: The amendment announces measures to prevent illegal immigrants from being issued with national insurance numbers-a clear admission that it has been happening. [Interruption.] Does the Secretary of State believe that he is introducing the measures unnecessarily? Their introduction implies that illegal immigrants have been issued with national insurance numbers. What additional measures will he introduce to retrieve or withdraw the national insurance numbers that have been issued to people who are not entitled to them?

Mr. Hain: I am sorry to say to the hon. Lady that the level of ignorance and misunderstanding among Conservative Members on the matter is astonishing. Given that they chose to switch at the last moment from another topic to this one, I am amazed that they have not checked their facts. I shall describe shortly exactly what happens. I shall also describe the way in which, under the Government whom the hon. Lady supported and who were in power until 1997, the relevant procedures were inadequate and incompetent and could not nearly have dealt with the problems that we have faced with the global flows of millions of people on a scale never previously experienced in advanced European countries such as ours.

Chris Grayling: The Secretary of State accuses us of not checking our figures. However, his Department's figures show that both the proportion and the absolute number of British adults of working age in employment have fallen in the past two years.

Mr. Hain: It is important to note when considering proportion that the population has been increased- [Interruption.] The facts are stark: 3 million unemployed under the Conservatives, but record employment under Labour, including record numbers of British citizens.

I agree with Conservative Members that illegal working is an issue and I shall explain what we are doing about it. The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell should know that the Conservative Government in 1996 established a clear and unequivocal statutory duty on employers to check that new employees had the right to work. However, it is worth pausing and considering the key issue that, in doing so, they said that the possession of a national insurance number was sufficient proof of a right to work. The Tories said so and legislated to that effect. Perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that that was a stupid thing for the Tories to do-it was both administratively impractical and left the door wide open to abuse. Yet as we all know, despite the requirements on employers, illegal working has remained a problem. Employers cannot abrogate their responsibilities for that, which is a point to which I shall return later in my speech.

Stewart Hosie (Dundee, East) (SNP): Will the Secretary of State give way?

Mr. Hain: I want to make some progress, because I have been asked specific questions about changes and I want to answer them. Then I will give way.

The situation has evolved over the years. It became apparent to us that some employers, either wilfully or inadvertently, were employing illegal workers, in part because those people had been issued with national insurance numbers. Some of those NINOs will have been issued to students who then overstayed, for example. In other cases, employers will have created their own reference numbers, to record tax and national insurance deductions, which are not recognised by either the Department for Work and Pensions or Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs.

We have therefore taken action, and I have been asked what we have done. In 2004, we changed the legislation inherited from the Conservatives to provide that a national insurance number alone is not enough to prove an entitlement to work, as it had been under the Conservatives. Since July 2006, all employment-related national insurance number applicants have to prove that they have the right to work in the United Kingdom, which is something that no previous Government-and certainly not the previous Tory Government-ever required. That has made a real impact.

Since July 2006, more than 8,000 national insurance number applications have been turned down because they did not satisfy the right to work. Before someone can be given a national insurance number, they have to undergo an intensive face-to-face interview by a specialist member of Jobcentre Plus staff-I was asked about that by, I think, the hon. Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson), although it may have been one of her colleagues. Did that system exist when the Conservative party was in power? We all know the answer to that: no.

The fact that we have tightened up the national insurance number system does not mean, however, that we have changed the fundamental responsibility of employers to check that their employees have the right to work. It is positively irresponsible for the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell to go on the airwaves and try to mislead employers and the public into thinking that national insurance numbers prove the right to work. That positively encourages rogue or ignorant employers to flout the law. What the Opposition are saying demonstrates not only that they do not understand the first thing about the system, but that they are far more interested in making political points than in doing anything about illegal working.

The fact that some employers continue to ignore the law is the reason we are tightening up enforcement still further, by introducing increased fines from next month and, in extreme circumstances, prison for rogue employers, and why we are telling employers what their responsibilities are, through a major public awareness campaign. Will the hon. Gentleman put his and his party's weight behind those proposals? I give him the opportunity to answer that question.

Chris Grayling: We would be delighted to see any proposals that tightened up the system. The point that the Secretary of State appears to be missing, however, is that Ministers told the House in 2006:

"Any individual applying for a NINO in connection with employment who does not have the right to work here legally will be refused one."-[ Official Report, House of Lords, 5 June 2006; Vol. 682, c. WS68.]

That is clearly not happening. Why not?

Mr. Hain: But it is happening. The hon. Gentleman is sticking to his pre-rehearsed script. He came to the House brandishing a speech that he thought would demolish everything before him, but it is based on a total misunderstanding of the facts and the realities.

The hon. Gentleman asked about this, so let me remind the House what the Opposition's position was when the Security Industry Authority was established. Also, the motion that we are debating was inspired by problems that the SIA has been seeking to address and which are being addressed by the Home Secretary -