The Commission is also continuing to engage directly with DCLG with more detailed comments on the clauses in the draft Bill.

The Commission is also continuing to engage directly with DCLG with more detailed comments on the clauses in the draft Bill.

This is bad news, as the record shows that the Commission is quite good at misleading the DCLG, with its false statements relating to the primary SDP match being a good example. In fact, as the speeches of Baroness Scotland showed us, it is also quite good at misleading Parliament.  And that goes just for the UK Parliament.  It played exactly the same trick on the Scottish Parliament. 

And of course the Commission generally may be  'on the side' of auditors.

So in respect of arguments about an auditor's refusal to take up an objection it says this

We think that today such a right of appeal is anachronistic. Any elector who is 

unhappy with an auditor’s decision not to consider an objection, or with an 

auditor’s determination of an objection, already has the right to seek judicial 

review of the auditor’s decision. We think that judicial review is more 

appropriate in these circumstances and should be sufficient. 

Of course, electoral are all capable of and rich enough to ask for a judicial review.  (NOT!)

We also think there is a strong case for adding a fourth area: the prevention 
and detection of maladministration and error.

Coming from a body which still states, in the face of advice from two ministers and its own legal department that a non existent 'single person discount' has been incorrectly awarded or claimed if more than one adult is resident, causing injustice and wholesale maladministration, this is rich.  It actively encourages maladministration and error, and, indeed, its own favourite 'hit list' is predicated upon legally false allegations which it was advised were incorrect in February 2009.  

Who came up with this idea?  Follow the money....  who makes money out of this?

There are  already sufficient safeguards in the draft Bill to ensure that such wider powers 

could only be used to address clear and identified risks in a proportionate way. 

I am sorry but I do not think that in excess of 600,000 abortive fraud investigations every other year are necessary or proportionate.  The NFI is actively opposed to 'safeguards' and has actively considered eliminating these from the code of practice, succeeding in doing this in Scotland already.

We do not agree with the proposed removal of the criminal offence of not 
supplying information for data matching. Our experience suggests that, 
without this offence in place, it is much more difficult to secure the extent of 
compliance that, historically, has been the strength of the NFI.

You mean some councils went and got legal advice that some of your uses of personal data were unlawful?

Ah, bless!

The NFI’s success depends on auditors to follow up and reinforce the benefits 
of participation in NFI at the local level.

The electoral register is nothing to do with auditors and it never has been. It is not a document related to the accounts of the council.  Nor are many of the outputs of the NFI relevant to auditors.  It is not necessary or proportionate to tell auditors that hundreds of thousands of innocent entitled families are making two contradictory 'claims' one about the electoral register and one about an SPD which does not exist now and never did exist. It is more like libel.

What the NFI has been doing was well expressed at the time of the arguments about the SPD exercise: bullying local councils.

Regardless of who ‘owns’ the NFI, there should be a governance board, 
representing key stakeholder interests, to oversee the development and .... of the NFI

Well your own governance board had the wool pulled well and truly over its eyes, didn't it.  

I suppose the 'key stakeholder interests' won't include the victims of the maladministration and injustice?

And the AC wants the new owners to be people willing to invest in 'marketing' the NFI.  And it has found it in the Cabinet Office.   

I am sorry but the government should not be asked to 'market' anything. Were this really a consumer product, there is no doubt that the NFI's adverts would be found not to be in line with the requirements applying in law, for it frequently  makes false claims which it cannot substantiate to the point it would appear of actual libel. 

But it confirms my view that the AC has its own political and social agenda about the uses of personal data, and takes a strategic view on how to achieve its aims, though 'publicity' or a sort which is a disgrace to a public body and to the government which allows it to continue.

An incompetent firm Branch and Lee Consulting Ltd apparently offering to help councils to break the law

Branch & Lee Consulting Ltd will only cancel claims where the evidence shows that it is highly likely that another person over 18 years old resides in the property. As our fees are not based on the total number of cancellations generated it is not in our or the authorities interest to cancel SPD’s only for the customer to re-apply or appeal against the decision. It is essential to achieve long term financial returns as opposed to a quick but temporary income.

This firm must be complete idiots as it is perfectly legal to receive an SPD when more than one adult is resident.  

What are they talking about, and, more worryingly, which councils are incompetent enough to employ them?

And how is it lawful for them to do this with personal data?

If you get any communications about your council tax from Branch and Lee containing misleading information to the effect that you are receiving a discount 'on the basis' that you are literally the only resident, send them via your MP to the DCLG, and also to the Local Government Ombudsman. 

It was hardly a surprise to find that one of the apparent owners of this firm, Mr Lee, worked for the Audit Commission for some time.  This may well be where he acquired the false beliefs about local government taxation law which the firm now passes on to the public and councils via its marketing material and web site.  No points out of ten for Mr Lee.  (Prior to that did he manage a department in Waitrose?)

complaints about the national fraud initiative

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.

(uncorrected) evidence to ad hoc sub committee from Amyas Morse and Eric Pickles

Witness: Amyas Morse, Comptroller and Auditor General, National Audit Office, gave evidence

This evidence was published on Parliament's web site with a note that it may be quoted but it should be made clear that it is not yet corrected by witnesses and therefore may not stand in its presently published form.

The National Audit Office will not consider complaints that the Audit Commission is misusing public money to purchase data processing which it then puts false and prejudicial interpretations upon.  Yes, I did try.

I leave the most interesting point until last, since that is the order it came in in the original evidence. 

Questions are raised of good governance.  Given the maladministration arising from the fact that local council audit teams and many elected representatives rely on the legally false allegations made about identifiable persons via the Audit Commission's hitherto secret 'Audit Guide' relating to the SPD matches, the whole concept is in my eyes something of a sick joke.

They then go on to whistle blowing, another somewhat sick joke, since nobody asks who will blow the whistle on the Auditors if, as the Audit Commission demonstrably has done in respect of what it alleges is 'financial information' relating to hundreds of thousands of taxpayers, false and financially and administratively incorrect allegations are made about taxpayers.  

So far from addressing this issue, we have another 'audit' person vaunting his independence.  

There are all sorts of problems when you made 'auditors' beyond democratic control.  They grab the electoral register and use it as the basis for false allegations about registered voters, for example, a blow at the heart of democracy.

I realise that this is not the precise context in which these points are being made, but the point remains wholly valid.  For when they go on to discuss fees being 'beefed up' the precise point applies because the NFI has alleged that the non existent 'inconsistencies' which it falsely alleges exist between CT data and the electoral register are found AT THE COST OF THE LOCAL COUNCIL.  And it is not just Audit Commission fees which get beefed up, the credit reference agencies are making a lot of money out of this SCAM.  In fact, they appear to be more or less the only people who DO actually gain anything out of it, though they also gain politically through having driven a coach and horses through a number of basic principles of our legal and social system and the increasing normalisation of evidence free statistically based fraud investigations based on 'intelligence' that a person might be a thief which they earn money out of providing.

And now for the BIG BIT

I see the control of fraud as an executive function and not the function of an independent auditor. Although I am supportive and I wish it well and want to see it in a good place, I don’t think the place is with us, for that reason.

But the arguments that the Audit Commission (before the law was altered via the Serious Crimes Bill) could have the full electoral register was precisely that it was an audit function.  So put briefly Mr Morse would have to agree that the Audit Commission was never entitled to this data in the first place and that nor are appointed auditors.  

Perhaps it is for this reason that the Chair of the Sub Committee looked somewhat gob smacked at this point? I hope that the implications of what she had just been told were clear to her, but maybe she is not sufficiently up to speed with the issues to realise this. 

Given that we are now clear that the AC thought the electoral register was a document relating to the accounts of the council because it got both electoral and council tax law wrong (see for example the accounts of barristers Timothy Pitt Payne and Clive Lewis) this is even clearer indication that something was very rotten in the state of Denmark (or wherever the Audit Commission was at the time).

I think Peter Yetzes has a lot to answer for.  But I don't think that anybody will ever get round to making him justify what he has done. 


Mr Pickles talks about data sharing between local and central government.  I wonder how well any council tax data shared in this way is described.  Does central government make the same sort of mistake that Audit Commission staff have made over the years?  One has to hope not, but one cannot have much faith.  

Mr Morse's comment is fed to Mr Pickes:

Q667 Mr Bacon: You will agree with the CAG’s comment, which you may not have heard, that he regarded the NFI, which he strongly supports, as an executive function, and that therefore the NAO would be an inappropriate home for it.

Eric Pickles: I have never in my wildest dreams thought it should come to the NAO, so he can rest safer in his bed tonight.

Q668 Chair: Okay. So we will make a recommendation to you, but you are aware of it and you will take it up.

Eric Pickles: Yes, absolutely.

One can only wonder precisely what Mr Pickes will be taking up here: probably not the point that if it is not an audit function what the hell was the Audit Commission playing at for all those years grabbing people's personal data?