Finding past job dates

Hi all,
Does anyoneknow of a one stop / one shop solution to finding previous employment dates? Iknow you can contact previous employers individually but as I have worked forquite a few companies (including a couple that are no longer in business) Iwould rather avoid investing a large amount of time to find these dates out.
Apparentlyin the US you can just use your social security number but I wondered if we hadanything similar in the UK and if so whether it would be through the taxoffice, national insurance or another government department.
Thank inadvance for any help!