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WORKERS who maintain the records of millions of people have voted to take industrial action in protest at plans to offshore work to India.

Members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) said they will refuse to co-operate with shifting work from Tyneside and two other sites in the North to Bangalore, warning that 200 jobs could be at risk.

The staff, employed by Hewlett Packard, collect data for the Department for Work and Pensions.

PCS regional secretary Simon Elliott said: “These plans are not in the public interest. Our members in Newcastle are employed in skilled, mainly graduate IT jobs maintaining highly sensitive personal information.

“The idea that sending work offshore will save taxpayers’ money is bankrupt. Any savings made will be lost when staff lose their jobs.”

The union raised concerns that there could be “massive” security implications if private details of UK residents are transferred overseas.

But a spokesman for DWP said: “Our contract is explicit that suppliers may not transfer or store data overseas without a specific agreement from the department.”

Last month employment minister Chris Grayling pledged that the DWP will not move any departmental UK call centre overseas.

But the PCS said his promise did not have any bearing on plans to transfer sensitive information to India, and the possibility that jobs could be lost.

Hewlett Packard said in a statement that it had begun consultations on the “proposed transfer of some roles” to the company’s operations in India in 2012, adding: “We are working to redeploy staff affected into other roles in HP. We are optimistic that we can avoid compulsory redundancies.”

HP said it would not consider any transfer of personnel information until there was Government approval.