Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government why the statistics on National Insurance numbers issued to overseas nationals were delayed two days before the due publication date of 25 November 2021; why they have now been suspended; and when they expect them to be published.

All statistics produced by the Department for Work and Pensions are subject to routine quality assurance procedures before publication. During one of these procedures an underlying data issue was discovered in the quarterly National Statistics for ‘National Insurance number allocations to adult overseas nationals entering the UK’, which was due to be published on 25 November 2021. An assessment was made to understand the cause and identify if a solution could be swiftly implemented before the publication date. However, as it was not possible to do this, a decision was made to notify users both of the delay to the November release and that an update would be provided in January 2022.

The investigation is taking longer than first anticipated and will therefore impact the production of the next quarterly release of the statistics, so the update provided on 26 January 2022 informed users of the decision to suspend the release of the statistics. The statistical series will be reinstated as soon as possible after a solution is implemented, in line with the UK Statistics Authority Code of Practice for Statistics and a further progress update will be provided in early April 2022.