Reading through the old debates in Parliament you can see how MP after MP and a few Lords too have been providing to Parliament misleading and insufficient information attributed to the Audit Commission.
Baroness Scotland was a prime example. She said she had been 'assured' that this was a narrow targeted approach and all the rest of it. I am sure she had, because that is the sort of nonsense that the Audit Commission routinely says. Even after being told by the Audit Commission legal department that it is perfectly legal and proper to be in receipt of a 'single person discount' when there is more than one resident, the Audit Commission's public relations and enquiries officer Robert Mauler was publicly denying that any NFI exercises were risk-based or statistical in nature and also falsely alleging that the primary SPD match identified inconsistencies. Even after having had the law spelled out to her, Nagina Akram informed a judge in a Tribunal Hearing that the taxpayer was making two inconsistent claims at the same time, one in respect of entitlement to a discount and one in respect of the electoral register. This was precisely the point which the AC legal team investigated and found to be false in terms of council tax administrative law. Having written to me once accepting that the output did not show failure to provide information required by law (via the Audit Commission Legal Department) they then wrote to me asserting that councils tell people they must inform them of any changes in residence, and since this came from Nagina Akram one has to suppose that in line with her denial that the NFI ever got this wrong, she thinks that councils are right. Since then Bob Neill wrote telling the NFI that the output did not indicate failure to provide information required by law as the other person might fall to be disregarded. In an outrageous piece of two faced self contradiction the Audit Commission asserts that it is acting in accordance with the advice of Bob Neill. But plainly it is not. The very Audit Guide which it hired a barrister and fought all the way to a Tribunal Appeal to keep secret from me includes a false allegation that either an electoral register 'claim' or the 'claim' in respect of council tax must be wrong. It is providing to council audit departments legally false information totally at odds with a) the legal briefing sent to it by the Audit Commission legal department and b) advice from the relevant minister who happened to be legally qualified at a much higher level than any of the Audit Commission staff appear to be. Indeed, one of the main Audit Commission commentators on the subject used to manage a department in Waitrose, which does not appear to be very suitable training for making comments upon accountancy and audit law, local taxation law, the ECHR or much else of relevance.
One of the most outrageous arguments in favour of the NFI put to Parliament was one that nobody had complained to the Audit Commission about an NFI investigation. Well one of the councils whose pilot was praised by the Audit Commission had to issue a public apology, but as officers felt they had the Audit Commission on side they clearly felt able to express their resentment at having to do this and did so in that the apologies were not real or genuine and carefully avoided admitting that falsely suspecting people of fraud was anything remotely problematic. Not only that, but many councils were advised that the SPD pilot involved criminal offences relating to electoral law and they did complain loudly about that. Finally, the first time I complained to the NFI that it was publishing legally inaccurate and false information about the output from this exercise I received an email from Peter Yetzes himself stating that it was not possible to complain about the National Fraud Initiative. THIS PROBABLY EXPLAINS WHY THE NFI CAN SAY IT GETS NO COMPLAINTS; ITS POSITION WAS THAT COMPLAINING WAS NOT POSSIBLE AND THEREFORE ANY ATTEMPTS TO COMPLAIN WERE REJECTED.
What I have stated here is consistent with and evidenced by the documents and materials sent to me by the Audit Commission, by heads of council Audit Teams and a range of other sources, including some fraud investigators, who, when they DO understand council tax discount law, find themselves having to make some very awkward explanations to people who DO object to being threatened with adjusted demand notices half way through the tax year.
This is not a case of 'publish and be damned'.
Pity that newspapers are so obsessed with the private lives of the victims of crime and the royals that they cannot or do not get to grips with the doings of murky and secretive and basically wholly unaccountable and uncontrolled bodies like the Audit Commission.
