How are NI nums issued, out of interest?

System

withabix wrote: »

You appear to be confusing the actions of incompetent civil servants with the rights of parents to choose names starting with the same letters, for some reason.

Not quite, and I wasn't criticising the parents just pointing out the mixups that can occur when national insurance numbers for siblings are nigh on identical as are their initials.
Some mixups are caused by incompetent civil servants, true, others by employees who give the wrong number to their employer and others by employers who don't put full names and dates of birth on P14's - there's a variety of reasons for the mixups but don't let stop you from picking on civil servants as the route of errors.