Showing a birth certificate isn’t a particularly hard bar to pass if you want to fake that you’re a national to be fair. You need just that and a printed letter and there’s nothing an employer will do beyond copying that (afaik you can’t look up a birth certificate and check it’s valid)
This is where you get certified copies should you ever need that for interfacing with foreign governments that want them (the European country I live in very much wants a copy of my birth certificate).
It's not an identity check by any means but a legitimate birth certificate ought to be findable here.
But yes birth cert + utility bill is a very, very weak binding to identity.
Is this a real thing? It would be essentially identity fraud and having more than a couple of jobs linked on PAYE at the same time would likely raise a flag somewhere in the government
Yes - people are getting tax bills from HMRC after selling their national insurance numbers to dozens of people for them to work illegally, not realising they will be on the hook for the tax which will the affect their benefit claims (child tax credits, etc.)
But then the government should also know where to find all these unauthorised workers, I can't imagine how could anyone pull this off for more than a couple of months without getting arrested (or at the very least losing their job)
