Audit Scotland

I do regret that the ad hoc committee did not call Robert Black to account for some of the misleading and apparently ill-informed advice put out by Audit Scotland in the past.  Remember that council tax discount law in Scotland and England are more or less identical.  There is no such thing as a 'single person discount' in Scotland any more than there is in England. The main responsibility for the belief of some within Audit Scotland that there is such a discount, appears to rest with the Audit Commission, because when challenged Audit Scotland tends to repeat what the Audit Commission has told it.

Here are some examples of misleading and/or plain inaccurate assertions about council tax discount and electoral register 'matching' from Audit Scotland

Finally, a small minority of Scottish councils have argued that the ER is not a document ‘relating to the accounts’ as specified in the auditors’ powers of access in s100. While we respect this view, we do not agree with it. The Council Tax Income Account is one of the main financial statements subject to audit, it reflects the amount of discounts awarded, and the electoral register is an effective source of the number of persons that appear to reside in a household when testing the validity of an SPD.

They are testing the 'validity' of a discount which does not exist in Scotland or in England.

They then referred me to the very National Fraud Initiative Annual Report which the Audit Commission's own legal team agreed could more accurately reflect council tax discount law. It looks as if the Audit Commission may have forgotten to inform Audit Scotland about this? 

Then they wheel out Clive Lewis again, who obligingly provided them with an opinion containing this

The provision of the electoral roll and council tax records for a particular local

authority will enable the appointed auditor for that authority to match or compare

the two sources of data. The electoral register may indicate, for example, that

there is more than one person living in a particular property but the council tax

records may show that the person liable for paying council tax is claiming the

single occupant discount. That may indicate, amongst other things, that fraudulent

claims for single person discounts are being made.

This is more or less the same quotation which the Audit Commission says means not but, but and.

See the Blog here about whether Clive Lewis can understand the difference between 'but' and 'and'.

On the basis of this, however, Audit Scotland - apparently dangerously confident that Clive Lewis had been instructed accurately about council tax discount and electoral law, and that he DOES know the difference between 'but' and 'and'  - believes that there is such a thing as a single person discount and that you can use the electoral register to throw up evidence of inconsistencies.

I assume that the NFI has convinced them that either the discount or the register must be false.  Whatever, Scottish councils have recently started one after the other to list disregard categories as different discounts and to provide legally false information to residents.  Edinburgh is a very good example.  One supposes that Audit Scotland started in its own back yard. One can only hope that some well connected discount recipients in Morning Side take the matter to their lawyers.  

Not only that but it called together lots of important people at important meetings and passed on this utterly misleading information to them, ignoring everything councils had said about the electoral register not being a document relating to the accounts of councils.  Of course on the basis of what Clive Lewis says about the powers and duties of local authority auditors, read in the light of a proper understanding of council tax and electoral law, it is clearly not a document relating to the accounts of the council.  

In another 'Scottish Opinion' Clive Lewis says

Furthermore, potential cases of fraud which are identified when the electoral register is compared with council tax records are referred back to the local authority for investigation.

Having obtained a legal briefing on parts of council tax discount law, and complaints, the NFI started to actively deny that people on 'hit' lists were labelled as potential frauds.  I think it is plain that in denying this the NFI was not being up front about matters.   

If only the ad hoc sub committee had thought to ask Robert Black about all this.  I wish I had been on the committee.