The NFI has denied having any connection with the pilot data mismatching exercises carried out in Lancashire.
Oddly at least one of the councils involved asserted that they had to behave as they did because their auditors insisted on it. Moreover, NFI internal minutes make it clear that the NFI was connected with the initiative to the extent that legally false accounts of it were presented by NFI staff.
In October 2006 NFI staff reported that four Lancashire authorities (including Preston)
'Matched CT SPD v Credit Applications/payments'
This false assertion was made by at least one authority officer dealing with the large numbers of distressed and harassed taxpayers who complained about the threatening letters they had from the council half way through the tax year (September, to be precise). Obviously, being told that a person about whom one knows nothing is applying for credit using one's address causes serious worry and distress. And this happened to local residents at the time. It appears to be the case that authority employees believed this false information, and that they may have passed it on to the NFI who then parroted it without questioning it.
One such taxpayer complained to the Information Commissioner. ICO staff, who said they had never heard of anything like it, and who later stated a view that the exercise had been in breach of DP law, visited Experian Ltd of Nottingham. They subsequently stated that, though it appeared to be difficult to find out the reasons why particular households had been flagged up for investigation, it was clear that this could arise in cases where there was NO CREDIT APPLICATION OR PAYMENT by a third party. A 'hit' (though this term was not used at the time ) could arise purely and simply on the basis that a second adult appeared on the electoral register.
The Council disagreed with the decision of the ICO on the DP legality of the exercise, and, presumably, this is why officers have apparently failed to mention this fact. They do not seem to have told elected members of this, or EURIM, or whoever they were communicating with at the NFI. Perhaps the NFI was never told.
The NFI may not like its documents being referred to as 'crap', but this is a descriptive term which is wholly apt for the case in question. They are shot through with self contradiction, legal inaccuracies and incompetence, and they also appear to fly in the face of legal advice on the duties of auditors with which their own barrister provided them.
