David Cameron is apparently going to control immigration by denying UK national insurance numbers to some immigrants.
Whatever the legalities of the proposal (and I suspect it is a long way from meeting any required standard of European legality) the plan is straightforwardly naive because any UK immigrant may quite legally get hold of a UK company for under £100 with no questions required to be asked as to their identity or what they intend to use the company for.
Then the UK immigrant can use their newly acquired company to sell their services as a contractor to just about anyone with few or no questions asked, and if they are trying to be legal they can then withdraw all the rewards of their efforts by way of dividend fro the company, for which no NI number is required.
Of course, if they are not trying to be legal then they might know that many hundreds of thousands of companies (at least 400,000 a year) fail to comply with their legal obligation to file accounts and tax returns - or any other return required by law. This fact is now so widely known it provides the perfect opportunity for abuse. If the immigrant wishes to simply take their money and run right now there will be almost nothing to stop them because neither HMRC or Companies House almost ever do anything to chase these companies.
And as a result what David Cameron has proposed is absolutely absurd precisely because he is so wedded to cutting what he calls the burden of red tape on business that he has created the perfect opportunity for anyone to abuse what he wants to do on immigration, even if it were legal.
He really ought to learn that if you want to use the law as a weapon you do have to both uphold it and be seen to do so, and we are a million miles from doing that with UK company and tax law right now.
For more information on this read my report from earlier this year on this issue.
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The description “Fred Kano’s army” comes to mind. That or the inability to organise a p***-up in a brewery! How did those supposedly “born and trained to lead” (on the playing fields of Eton, no less) ever rise so high? Cameron’s whole Administration is a classic exemplification of “the Peter principle” of promotion to one’s levelbof incompetence!
True.
Although even if we cracked down the immigrant could set up their personal services Co in Jersey or Guernsey, & we know how rigorous their laws are!
Also, it isn’t unknown for people that aren’t working, at least aren’t working in the legitimate economy (dealers, pimps, girls of the night etc) to sell their NINOs.
All ways round it is, like so many of Cameron’s ideas, as much use as a chocolate fire-extinguisher.
I saw a really interesting interview a couple of years ago of the Mayor of Calais on Local BBC South East who basically said the same thing – our failure to properly regulate work with work permits was chiefly responsible for the flood of legal and illegal immigration and we could issue work permits at any time and enforce that just like the French.
But the issue is more than just regulation – who benefits from illegal workers? – not just unscrupulous employers but all people who’s income comes is mostly derived from the possession of monopolies in the UK (chiefly land) as those assets and revenue are pushed up in value while at the same time lowering the cost of labour which means a double benefit to rent seekers. So the solution is to shift taxes and government ‘fees’ from labour to monopolies
It’s called “playing to the gallery”.
At least one daily rag has stated that the EU considers CMDs’ proposals to be illegal.
But we have an election coming, and wrong-footing labour has priority. With Nigel [tax-avoider] Farage having stated a few times that he will support CMDs’ party, what else do you expect?
The electorate have the attention span of a snail on brandy, with TV soaps having a higher priority than politics.