UK population from Census 2001 59M
So the UK population is 59M and there are 73M entries in the National Insurance register (It is allocated at the age of 16 automatically). Some people with NINOs will live abroad, but there are so many rumours floating around about fraud it is amazing.
NINOs are used both to receive tax and pay benefits and one would hope, therefore, that the government would make some effort to ensure that the register is OK.Information about NINOs
This fits within the context of the debate about an ID database. In one sense we already have two. One is the National Insurance register.
Superficially, there are 73 Million live records on the National Insurance register and according to the census in 2001
there are 58,789,194 people in the UK. 3,486,253 are 0-4, 3,738,042 are 5-9 and 3,880,557 are 10-14. That leaves 46,684,342 of ages 15+. At a guess with just under a million a year there are say 46M people of ages 16+ and a National Insurance register of 73M.
Figures as high as 16M have been quoted for UK nationals working abroad (who probably have a live NINO. That gives 46+16=62M. It still means something like 10 Million ghost records on the National Insurance register if that stacks up.
The government, of course, seem to be unconcerned that they have no idea how many false records there are.