Despite having denied that the NFI is limited to actual inconsistencies, the NFI has once again reverted to pretending that its matches indicate inconsistencies requiring investigation. This despite having emailed participants to ask them to modify the 'privacy notices' they produce.
I don't think it is a coincidence that it is publishing this 'lie' when the government is debating the future of the NFI. I think the truth is a somewhat inconvenient aspect of this whole thing which it would clearly be useful to the Audit Commission to suppress. Perhaps the truth is too 'comprehensive' for its liking and it prefers to be economical with this commodity?
The document is not signed, so we have to blame the bosses: ie the Chair, the Chief Executive, and the 'team, which comprises a list of names I have encountered before, mostly on legally inaccurat/misleading reports and minutes referring to 'unambiguous' matching when the exercise is nothing of the sort.
Darren Shillingdon
Yvonne Addison
Sally Gubbins
Nathan Boon
Robert Hammond (who we know puts out false information about council tax discounts)
and a new one
Nathan Nash.
He studied Geography at Cardiff. Well qualified for the job, then?
Friday, 27 September 2013
Saturday, 21 September 2013
Hugely amusing: Audit Commission's view on Government position on 'data matching'
The Audit Commission has published a 'Public Briefing' on the Local Audit and Accountability Bill including the data matching provisions.
It mentions the need for transparency and accountability, which, given the misinformation it has provided to the Dept for Communities about its own activities and its tendency to refuse to provide information at the drop of a hat had me laughing out loud. A body which misleads judges about council tax discount law at F of I tribunal directions hearings is on weak ground when calling for accountability, and appears to revel in its own lack of accountability (AKA independence from government perhaps).
The Audit Commission cannot even provide Audit Guides on council taxation law which correctly represent the statute, regulatory and case law on the topic and does not understand the full electoral register which it uses to categorise hundreds of thousands of perfectly innocent people whose situation is fully regular as potential frauds (though it lies about doing this if pressed).
The NFI appears to be proud of 'Protecting the Public Purse' which it has used to disseminate misinformation for years, especially about council tax discounts. It wants something similar to continue and draws people's attention to it in their public briefing. One can see why they want similar stuff to happen in the future, but it will be harder I think for the Cabinet Office to get away with publishing false information about taxpayers that it was for the Commission because it is nearer to accountability, unlike the Audit Commission which appears to be accountable to nobody. Of course, using a public briefing to direct people to a source of misleading and prejudicial information about incorrectly claimed or awarded discounts is a good strategy if you want to mislead the public and electors. I suppose they want to go out in the same way they lived, on a wave of misinformation.
This comments that not all of the Commission's activities arise from data matching powers but some of them arise from the powers of auditors to test systems for fraud and error. These powers were of course those relied upon by the Audit Commission in its incompetent and fallacious arguments for auditors getting access to the full electoral register. It argued (though it now denies this, despite still doing it) that by comparing council tax data sets providing details of discounts being 'claimed' by taxpayers with the full electoral register the auditor could find evidence of error: if the discount was right then the electoral register had to be wrong.
This is the position still maintained by Robert Mauler, who was clearly not able to understand the Audit Commission's own belated legal briefing pointing out that it was nonsense.
Indeed, one reason that the AC went to the trouble of getting the data matching powers put into law was precisely because so many people objected to the uses it was making of the full electoral register, which could lawfully include disregarded adults and also adults whose main residence was not at the discounted address.
When persuading Parliament to give it these powers the Commission persistently and falsely told elected legislators that it used data matching to identify inconsistencies, to the point where Barbara Follett, when Minister, falsely believed that 'by definition' all NFI data matching (barring errors in the data) identified error and maladministration. It is precisely because of the nonsense repeatedly published and spread by the NFI and its regional advisors that so many people came to believe that some people are receiving a 25% discount on the assumption that they literally live alone with no disregarded housemates and that if there is another resident this provides evidence on a case by case basis of fraud (usually alleged falsely to be in the form of an ongoing but legally non existent 'claim').
Subsequently, the NFI began to argue - in effect - that the sort of data mining which Parliament had been so keen to prevent, and which the statutory code of data matching practice was supposed to ensure was the only use by the NFI of personal data was legitimised by the point in the law which said that data matching could be used to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud. So long, the NFI began to argue as the exercise as a whole succeeded in finding some frauds, it did not matter whether or not the computer programmes were designed to identify actual inconsistencies.
I note that the NFI specifically wants additional data mining powers as it mentions fraud risks explicitly. This is the bit that should not be added willy nilly, as being suspected of fraud and investigated for fraud on a 'risk' or statistical basis rather than because there is evidence that you have done something wrong is a horrible experience which far too many people already experience.
The NFI's partners include too many IT experts and people from the murky world of data mining, many of whom have their own financial and profit agendas and limited concern for the privacy of individuals, natural justice or democracy, as evidenced by their continuing publication of misinformation regarding council tax discounts and their relationship to the full electoral register.
They are not an objective, or even, as ample evidence shows, a competent body to comment, not even on matters of local governance and taxation.
It mentions the need for transparency and accountability, which, given the misinformation it has provided to the Dept for Communities about its own activities and its tendency to refuse to provide information at the drop of a hat had me laughing out loud. A body which misleads judges about council tax discount law at F of I tribunal directions hearings is on weak ground when calling for accountability, and appears to revel in its own lack of accountability (AKA independence from government perhaps).
The Audit Commission cannot even provide Audit Guides on council taxation law which correctly represent the statute, regulatory and case law on the topic and does not understand the full electoral register which it uses to categorise hundreds of thousands of perfectly innocent people whose situation is fully regular as potential frauds (though it lies about doing this if pressed).
The NFI appears to be proud of 'Protecting the Public Purse' which it has used to disseminate misinformation for years, especially about council tax discounts. It wants something similar to continue and draws people's attention to it in their public briefing. One can see why they want similar stuff to happen in the future, but it will be harder I think for the Cabinet Office to get away with publishing false information about taxpayers that it was for the Commission because it is nearer to accountability, unlike the Audit Commission which appears to be accountable to nobody. Of course, using a public briefing to direct people to a source of misleading and prejudicial information about incorrectly claimed or awarded discounts is a good strategy if you want to mislead the public and electors. I suppose they want to go out in the same way they lived, on a wave of misinformation.
This comments that not all of the Commission's activities arise from data matching powers but some of them arise from the powers of auditors to test systems for fraud and error. These powers were of course those relied upon by the Audit Commission in its incompetent and fallacious arguments for auditors getting access to the full electoral register. It argued (though it now denies this, despite still doing it) that by comparing council tax data sets providing details of discounts being 'claimed' by taxpayers with the full electoral register the auditor could find evidence of error: if the discount was right then the electoral register had to be wrong.
This is the position still maintained by Robert Mauler, who was clearly not able to understand the Audit Commission's own belated legal briefing pointing out that it was nonsense.
Indeed, one reason that the AC went to the trouble of getting the data matching powers put into law was precisely because so many people objected to the uses it was making of the full electoral register, which could lawfully include disregarded adults and also adults whose main residence was not at the discounted address.
When persuading Parliament to give it these powers the Commission persistently and falsely told elected legislators that it used data matching to identify inconsistencies, to the point where Barbara Follett, when Minister, falsely believed that 'by definition' all NFI data matching (barring errors in the data) identified error and maladministration. It is precisely because of the nonsense repeatedly published and spread by the NFI and its regional advisors that so many people came to believe that some people are receiving a 25% discount on the assumption that they literally live alone with no disregarded housemates and that if there is another resident this provides evidence on a case by case basis of fraud (usually alleged falsely to be in the form of an ongoing but legally non existent 'claim').
Subsequently, the NFI began to argue - in effect - that the sort of data mining which Parliament had been so keen to prevent, and which the statutory code of data matching practice was supposed to ensure was the only use by the NFI of personal data was legitimised by the point in the law which said that data matching could be used to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud. So long, the NFI began to argue as the exercise as a whole succeeded in finding some frauds, it did not matter whether or not the computer programmes were designed to identify actual inconsistencies.
I note that the NFI specifically wants additional data mining powers as it mentions fraud risks explicitly. This is the bit that should not be added willy nilly, as being suspected of fraud and investigated for fraud on a 'risk' or statistical basis rather than because there is evidence that you have done something wrong is a horrible experience which far too many people already experience.
The NFI's partners include too many IT experts and people from the murky world of data mining, many of whom have their own financial and profit agendas and limited concern for the privacy of individuals, natural justice or democracy, as evidenced by their continuing publication of misinformation regarding council tax discounts and their relationship to the full electoral register.
They are not an objective, or even, as ample evidence shows, a competent body to comment, not even on matters of local governance and taxation.
Wednesday, 4 September 2013
Rob Hammond: Writing without thinking
In an astonishingly inaccurate Audit Commission Guide document published on the web site of CIPFA (another organisation with a long history of publishing false information about both council tax discounts and the full electoral register) Robert Hammond states that councils can elect to submit council tax data and electoral register data every year
'to detect council tax discount fraud'.
CIPFA appears to have an active policy of misrepresenting taxation discount law. It has actively misled government agencies about this, even though one of its senior officials knows that what it has published about the law is wrong. He said that behaving like this was 'good governance'. I think there may be a problem in that some accountants know nothing about public law, and it doesn't occur to them that councils must obey the law and have a duty not to misrepresent the law.
Is Mr Hammond a liar, or merely negligent and mistaken producing this utterly misleading presentation? If the Audit Commission were a person, one would have no doubt at all in concluding that s/he is a liar, for no honest person could possibly make so many inaccurate, prejudicial and self-contradictory allegations about their fellow taxpayers, misleading ministers, delegates and the general public while being paid for this out of the 'public purse' which they are supposedly trying to protect. This is not a valid use of public money.
Can councils do as Mr Hammond says?
No they cannot. One reason that it is unlawful to use the electoral register to decide where the sole or main residence of a person is. The NFI (which as we know contradicts itself, with this being just another example) denies that people on its council tax hit lists are even suspected of fraud. It denies ever having thought that one could tell via the electoral register whether there was entitlement to a 25% discount. It tells the Government that all its communications make it clear that the CT - ER output does not indicate failure to provide information required by law, lack of entitlement or even maladministration by the local council. Clearly what it tells the government isn't true (but we knew that anyway). This output provides no evidence of fraud at all, and especially not of dishonest intention on anybody's part. As the NFI knows very well the overwhelming majority of investigations are utterly abortive in terms of finding fraud or error.
And once again this misinformation appears on the web site of CIPFA, a body which gives an increasingly poor impression of itself with every piece of legally false information on this topic it produces.
Public accountants should have a sufficient grasp of public law to avoid publishing statements by public bodies which flout their duties to provide reliable information and their promises to publish more 'comprehensive' guidance on the output from this data analytics exercise in future.
The comparison between the council tax data sets and the full electoral register provides no evidence of fraud whatsoever. I say this with reference to the definition of that crime as laid down in law.
As a public employee (albeit via the Audit Commission) Mr Hammond has a duty to provide reliable information. The councils and others to whom he addresses this abysmal PR presentation have a duty to abide by the regulations governing local government finance.
So much for the promises of the NFI to publish 'more comprehensive' accounts of the output of this exercise. So much also for the assurances given by the NFI to Bob Neill and Brandon Lewis that all their communications about this output make it clear that it does not show lack of entitlement, failure to declare changes required by law or even any maladministration. Clearly these assurances were unreliable. And I should be surprised because .... ?
I do not know whether Robert Hammond has more qualifications for his job than other Roberts employed by the Audit Commission to issue false statements in public, but whatever his qualifications, council tax and electoral law and the requirements of public law as these affect public bodies like his own Commission would appear not to be among them.
Mr Hammond is an NFI 'coordinator'. His job is to advise participants. One would be well advised not to pay any attention to his advice if all of it is of this appalling quality.
'to detect council tax discount fraud'.
CIPFA appears to have an active policy of misrepresenting taxation discount law. It has actively misled government agencies about this, even though one of its senior officials knows that what it has published about the law is wrong. He said that behaving like this was 'good governance'. I think there may be a problem in that some accountants know nothing about public law, and it doesn't occur to them that councils must obey the law and have a duty not to misrepresent the law.
Is Mr Hammond a liar, or merely negligent and mistaken producing this utterly misleading presentation? If the Audit Commission were a person, one would have no doubt at all in concluding that s/he is a liar, for no honest person could possibly make so many inaccurate, prejudicial and self-contradictory allegations about their fellow taxpayers, misleading ministers, delegates and the general public while being paid for this out of the 'public purse' which they are supposedly trying to protect. This is not a valid use of public money.
Can councils do as Mr Hammond says?
No they cannot. One reason that it is unlawful to use the electoral register to decide where the sole or main residence of a person is. The NFI (which as we know contradicts itself, with this being just another example) denies that people on its council tax hit lists are even suspected of fraud. It denies ever having thought that one could tell via the electoral register whether there was entitlement to a 25% discount. It tells the Government that all its communications make it clear that the CT - ER output does not indicate failure to provide information required by law, lack of entitlement or even maladministration by the local council. Clearly what it tells the government isn't true (but we knew that anyway). This output provides no evidence of fraud at all, and especially not of dishonest intention on anybody's part. As the NFI knows very well the overwhelming majority of investigations are utterly abortive in terms of finding fraud or error.
And once again this misinformation appears on the web site of CIPFA, a body which gives an increasingly poor impression of itself with every piece of legally false information on this topic it produces.
Public accountants should have a sufficient grasp of public law to avoid publishing statements by public bodies which flout their duties to provide reliable information and their promises to publish more 'comprehensive' guidance on the output from this data analytics exercise in future.
The comparison between the council tax data sets and the full electoral register provides no evidence of fraud whatsoever. I say this with reference to the definition of that crime as laid down in law.
As a public employee (albeit via the Audit Commission) Mr Hammond has a duty to provide reliable information. The councils and others to whom he addresses this abysmal PR presentation have a duty to abide by the regulations governing local government finance.
So much for the promises of the NFI to publish 'more comprehensive' accounts of the output of this exercise. So much also for the assurances given by the NFI to Bob Neill and Brandon Lewis that all their communications about this output make it clear that it does not show lack of entitlement, failure to declare changes required by law or even any maladministration. Clearly these assurances were unreliable. And I should be surprised because .... ?
I do not know whether Robert Hammond has more qualifications for his job than other Roberts employed by the Audit Commission to issue false statements in public, but whatever his qualifications, council tax and electoral law and the requirements of public law as these affect public bodies like his own Commission would appear not to be among them.
Mr Hammond is an NFI 'coordinator'. His job is to advise participants. One would be well advised not to pay any attention to his advice if all of it is of this appalling quality.
Past and Present Continuous,; and and but, pedantry and false allegations
Does the NFI know the difference between 'claimed' and 'is claiming' and 'was awarded' and 'is receiving'?
No, I don't think it does. No more than it understands council tax discount law.
This specifies that all 25% discounted demand notices must be issued on the assumption that the same rate or amount of discount will apply on every day of the coming year. No discount is ever 'awarded' (ie deducted) on the assumption that there is only one adult at the property, with not even a disregarded person for company. But the NFI keeps making assertions to the contrary:
I should also emphasise that the primary council tax data set matched to the electoral
register only includes those whose entitlement to the 25% discount was determined on
the basis that there were no other adults living at the property.
The point here is that the electoral register used is the one produced midway through the tax year. At this point the discount is being awarded and received and claimed on the assumption that there will be entitlement to a 25% discount on every day of the year.
But the Audit Commission states:
The primary match does not include those cases where a discount has been given on the basis that other adults live at the premises, but fall to be disregarded for council tax purposes. In these circumstances, therefore, where the electoral register shows that more than one adult is
registered at the property it does on its face indicate an apparent inconsistency worthy of
investigation.
This is at best false and at best equivocal, relying deliberately on the polysemic and ambiguous word 'apparent'. The 'inconsistency' here is more apparent than real. It certainly isn't real.
The Home Office, lobbied actively by the NFI desperate to get its hands on the Electoral Register, claimed in several letters that the NFI used that document to identify 'anomalies'. Who told it that? It would appear that it was the Audit Commission, which kept putting out the same false information. It even put it into 'Fair Processing' notices copied onto hundreds of council web sites and its own code of data matching practice. It put it into its own code of data matching practice. The only reasonably conclusion is that the NFI falsely believed that it was true. But it denies ever having believed any such thing (when it suits it).
Given that the author of this was sent a full legal briefing on council tax discount law, one can only assume that she either did not read it, did not understand it, or deliberately seeks to avoid admitting that for some years she and her colleagues have been providing false information about it. I wondered whether she was a learner of English as a second language, which might explain the mistakes in terms of a lack of grasp of grammar, but I think she knows what she is about. She is, I reasonably believe, deliberately trying to imply that there is a clear and obvious discrepancy between the data in the two data sets, even though she has been sent a legal briefing pointing out that this is false.
That same person informed a judge that it was true to say that at the time of matching two inconsistent 'claims' were being made, one in respect of the electoral register and one in respect of entitlement to a discount. Were this true, then one data set or the other would have to be incorrect. But it seems clear that she knows that this is false.
Moreover, when it was pointed out to her that it was false to allege that certain people were claiming to live alone, her tone became almost shrill with indignation. For some reason she failed (or, more probably, pretended not to see that it was important to be clear in law about what 'claims' people were and were not making. She also appears not to grasp the meaning of the word 'but', and to think that it means the same as 'and'. She hotly denies, in writing, precisely the same allegation which she insisted in speaking to the judge was true. She insults me as 'merely pedantic' for pointing out the mistake.
54. Example Two (paragraph 7)
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.
Mistake: The records in question do not include copies of any claims made by the taxpayer: there
is no such thing as a single occupant discount and therefore the electoral register cannot decide
entitlement
The Commission’s response
55. The paragraph does not state that the electoral register can determine entitlement to
single person discount. It simply states that the electoral register may show more than one person living at a particular property and the council tax records may show that an occupant of that property is receiving the single person discount as a result of a claim to be entitled. Neither statement is incorrect. The Commission agrees that the electoral register cannot determine entitlement, and has never argued that it could.
59. As already explained, the 25% reduction due under section 11 is commonly known as the
single person discount, and I consider your repeated assertions on this point to be merely
pedantic. I also note here that you sometimes use the words ‘claim’ and ‘claiming’ without
apparent difficulty, despite your repeated complaints about the Commission in this
regard. The words used to describe the discount do not affect an individual’s eligibility or
ineligibility to receive it, or the legitimacy of the Commission’s data matching exercise
It isn't mere pedantry to point out that a National Audit Body is falsely asserting that either taxation data or electoral registration data must be wrong or 'incorrectly claimed': it is a public duty and one can only wish that the National Audit Body itself has sorted the problem out when it was first pointed out with it.
People from the Audit Commission have happily sat on committees where it has been reported that an up to date ER can be used to determine entitlement to a single person discount. Derek Elliot is just one example. Of course, the resultant publication isn't produced by the Audit Commission so the Commission can and does deny any responsibility. It is plain that its representatives are allowed freely to have their names associated with legally misleading and prejudicial documents.
The 'words used' by the Audit Commission, especially in its Audit Guides are important. They regarded as accurate and authoritative. As a matter of good practice they should not state or deliberately imply circumstances which, if true, would provide good reason to suspect fraud. Evidence of fraud should exist, and not be fabricated by government agencies or accountants. The words used by the Audit Commission are copied into officer reports all over the country. They are repeated, as if accurate accounts, by other agencies including the Information Commissioner and the Home Office. People believe the words used by the Audit Commission. Therefore they do matter. If the words used are not accurate, they lack legitimacy.
The Department for Communities cries out the truth like a voice in the wilderness but nobody pays any attention to it.
No, I don't think it does. No more than it understands council tax discount law.
This specifies that all 25% discounted demand notices must be issued on the assumption that the same rate or amount of discount will apply on every day of the coming year. No discount is ever 'awarded' (ie deducted) on the assumption that there is only one adult at the property, with not even a disregarded person for company. But the NFI keeps making assertions to the contrary:
I should also emphasise that the primary council tax data set matched to the electoral
register only includes those whose entitlement to the 25% discount was determined on
the basis that there were no other adults living at the property.
The point here is that the electoral register used is the one produced midway through the tax year. At this point the discount is being awarded and received and claimed on the assumption that there will be entitlement to a 25% discount on every day of the year.
But the Audit Commission states:
The primary match does not include those cases where a discount has been given on the basis that other adults live at the premises, but fall to be disregarded for council tax purposes. In these circumstances, therefore, where the electoral register shows that more than one adult is
registered at the property it does on its face indicate an apparent inconsistency worthy of
investigation.
This is at best false and at best equivocal, relying deliberately on the polysemic and ambiguous word 'apparent'. The 'inconsistency' here is more apparent than real. It certainly isn't real.
The Home Office, lobbied actively by the NFI desperate to get its hands on the Electoral Register, claimed in several letters that the NFI used that document to identify 'anomalies'. Who told it that? It would appear that it was the Audit Commission, which kept putting out the same false information. It even put it into 'Fair Processing' notices copied onto hundreds of council web sites and its own code of data matching practice. It put it into its own code of data matching practice. The only reasonably conclusion is that the NFI falsely believed that it was true. But it denies ever having believed any such thing (when it suits it).
Given that the author of this was sent a full legal briefing on council tax discount law, one can only assume that she either did not read it, did not understand it, or deliberately seeks to avoid admitting that for some years she and her colleagues have been providing false information about it. I wondered whether she was a learner of English as a second language, which might explain the mistakes in terms of a lack of grasp of grammar, but I think she knows what she is about. She is, I reasonably believe, deliberately trying to imply that there is a clear and obvious discrepancy between the data in the two data sets, even though she has been sent a legal briefing pointing out that this is false.
That same person informed a judge that it was true to say that at the time of matching two inconsistent 'claims' were being made, one in respect of the electoral register and one in respect of entitlement to a discount. Were this true, then one data set or the other would have to be incorrect. But it seems clear that she knows that this is false.
Moreover, when it was pointed out to her that it was false to allege that certain people were claiming to live alone, her tone became almost shrill with indignation. For some reason she failed (or, more probably, pretended not to see that it was important to be clear in law about what 'claims' people were and were not making. She also appears not to grasp the meaning of the word 'but', and to think that it means the same as 'and'. She hotly denies, in writing, precisely the same allegation which she insisted in speaking to the judge was true. She insults me as 'merely pedantic' for pointing out the mistake.
54. Example Two (paragraph 7)
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.
Mistake: The records in question do not include copies of any claims made by the taxpayer: there
is no such thing as a single occupant discount and therefore the electoral register cannot decide
entitlement
The Commission’s response
55. The paragraph does not state that the electoral register can determine entitlement to
single person discount. It simply states that the electoral register may show more than one person living at a particular property and the council tax records may show that an occupant of that property is receiving the single person discount as a result of a claim to be entitled. Neither statement is incorrect. The Commission agrees that the electoral register cannot determine entitlement, and has never argued that it could.
59. As already explained, the 25% reduction due under section 11 is commonly known as the
single person discount, and I consider your repeated assertions on this point to be merely
pedantic. I also note here that you sometimes use the words ‘claim’ and ‘claiming’ without
apparent difficulty, despite your repeated complaints about the Commission in this
regard. The words used to describe the discount do not affect an individual’s eligibility or
ineligibility to receive it, or the legitimacy of the Commission’s data matching exercise
It isn't mere pedantry to point out that a National Audit Body is falsely asserting that either taxation data or electoral registration data must be wrong or 'incorrectly claimed': it is a public duty and one can only wish that the National Audit Body itself has sorted the problem out when it was first pointed out with it.
People from the Audit Commission have happily sat on committees where it has been reported that an up to date ER can be used to determine entitlement to a single person discount. Derek Elliot is just one example. Of course, the resultant publication isn't produced by the Audit Commission so the Commission can and does deny any responsibility. It is plain that its representatives are allowed freely to have their names associated with legally misleading and prejudicial documents.
The 'words used' by the Audit Commission, especially in its Audit Guides are important. They regarded as accurate and authoritative. As a matter of good practice they should not state or deliberately imply circumstances which, if true, would provide good reason to suspect fraud. Evidence of fraud should exist, and not be fabricated by government agencies or accountants. The words used by the Audit Commission are copied into officer reports all over the country. They are repeated, as if accurate accounts, by other agencies including the Information Commissioner and the Home Office. People believe the words used by the Audit Commission. Therefore they do matter. If the words used are not accurate, they lack legitimacy.
The Department for Communities cries out the truth like a voice in the wilderness but nobody pays any attention to it.
Tuesday, 3 September 2013
Big Brother Watch
Big Brother Watch has published a report on the sale by councils of the edited electoral register for marketing purposes. They oppose this arguing among other things that it has an impact on electoral registration. This leads back to the court case in which it was successfully argued that the sale of information from the register amounted to interference with the right to vote. It is on that basis that the edited register was created, to allow people to opt out of having their details sold for marketing purposes.
The judge decided that credit reference agencies could use the full electoral register to 'check' the addresses of people applying for credit and to help locate money laundering. He said that the interference with the right to vote was minimal, and that the decision would cut down fraud by preventing people from giving false addresses when applying for credit. But for marketing he decided that it was an intrusion into privacy.
Credit reference agencies were outraged at the court decision. They object to the use of the term 'junk mail' claiming that some very advantageous offers have been made solely to people on the edited register, a claim which has to be contrived as no sensible financial institution would offer advantageous terms to somebody purely on that basis, not even a payday loan company. But their main motivation has to be their ability to make money by selling the information on or by processing it in accordance with instructions from other firms.
One such agency, Experian, came up with a brilliant scheme to make use of the full electoral register.
Imagine that there was something called a 'single person discount'. People in receipt of this discount would be claiming to live alone. You could then use the electoral register to find out whether this claim was true or false. This would be a statutory purpose relating to security, law enforcement and crime prevention.
The problem with this is that in terms of council tax discount law nobody getting a 25% discount is 'claiming' to live alone. Experian in effect invented a 'single person discount' when in law there is no such thing.
Experian also knew that councils had a 'duty' to take reasonable steps before preparing council tax bills for the coming tax year to find out whether any discount should apply and if so the amount of that discount. They hit on the money saving idea of automating this process and of offering to do it cheaply using the personal data they hold. They got councils to send them lists of households 'claiming' this non existent discount and then used the full electoral register - and credit reference information if any - to count how many people it thought were probably living at the address. If the answer was one, then the council decided it had reason to believe there is a 25% discount. The problem with this is that ascertaining that there is entitlement to a discount is plainly not a statutory purpose relating to law enforcement or crime prevention.
Nevertheless, on this basis, Experian devised a couple of products and sold them to a few councils in Lancashire who participated in what were called 'pilots'. The pilots were announced by a newspaper campaign, from which the name of Experian was missing, no doubt in case things really went belly up. Experian would not want any adverse publicity, which fell firmly on the heads of the pilot councillors and their elected representatives, who were usually fed legally prejudicial information about the victims of this scam and regarded them as more or less firmly proven thieves in any case.
An advance newspaper campaign warned people claiming to live alone when they were not, who were told that if they came forward in advance there was an amnesty. The problem with this approach is that in terms of council tax discount law, you are not 'claiming to live alone' even if you are receiving a 25% discount. The argument that the credit reference information provided strong evidence of a false claim, in the form of a 'claim' to be literally the only occupant was based on either negligent or dishonest representation of council tax discount law. The credit reference agency may have had some excuse (though the contracts were full of disclaimers leaving the whole onus for any trouble on the council), but the council officers who fell in with this had no excuse: it is their business to have the facts of council taxation law at their finger tips.
The council sent to Experian a file of people alleged to be claiming this single person discount and Experian then highlighted the number of people it thought were living at the address, using both information from credit applications (if any had been made) and the full electoral register, acting here as a agent for the council. On this basis, investigations were launched, and the targeted residents were required to 'explain' themselves or 'eliminate' themselves from further investigation.
Threatening letters misrepresenting the legal position of the taxpayer in line with Experian's errors were sent out, and penalties threatened for non reply including the 'cancellation' of a discount.
The problem with this is that in terms of council tax discount law nobody is 'claiming' to live alone. Experian in effect invented a 'single person discount' when in law there is no such thing, not as they define it anyway.
Experian and its partner councils spread what for the sake of brevity I shall call 'lies' about large numbers of individuals and also provided large numbers of individuals with legally false information, directly by letter, indirectly by telephone and the internet. This causes large numbers of complaints.
The legal position of taxpayers in receipt of a 25% discount is that they are receiving a discount on the assumption that the same rate of discount will apply on every day of the coming year. A few of these people might be pretending to live alone in order to get a discount (and possibly benefits too) but in terms of council tax information and electoral register law their position is clear. The 'single person discount' applies on any day when only one adult who does not fall to be disregarded has his or her sole or main residence at the address. It is perfectly legal to receive this discount when more than one adult is resident and unlawful to use the electoral register to decide sole or main residence or disregard status.
The Audit Commission was approached by some London Boroughs who had also hit on the idea of using the full electoral register to draw up hit lists of fraud suspects on the basis that some people received a single person discount on the basis that they lived alone. They found that a lot of people were not living alone, and recorded these as cases of 'error' even when entitlement to the discount persisted. The claimed to have discovered a discrepancy between the electoral register and council tax data that needed 'explanation'. This is utter nonsense, but it looked good, and was reported as a major success for the Audit Commission, which enthiastically peddled inflated figures, claiming that these cases of (contrived and non existent) error were cases of cancelled discounts and additional income for the public purse.
Many councils refused to provide their electoral register to the Audit Commission. Many of the legal debates concentrated on the law relating the the electoral register and who was entitled to a copy. Only a few small voices, ignored by the NFI and its partners in the credit reference business, attempted to draw attention to council taxation law, and the data fed into the process, which the NFI actively misrepresented in all its internal minutes and continues to misrepresent to this day.
The Audit Commission briefed a barrister, telling him that and Audit could compare the data from the council tax data sets and the full electoral register. The council tax data might show that a person was 'claiming' a sole occupant discount BUT, he says, the electoral register might show that they appeared not to be entitled to it. The barrister was not briefed correctly. The electoral register can never show that a person appears not to be entitled to a discount. It is not lawful to use the register to decide sole or main residence, and plainly unreasonable to use it to decide disregard status. Though he was never consulted on what council tax discount law said, he could have advised his clients as he saw fit on relevant issues. One supposes that he assumed that the Audit Commission would have got council tax law right, though document after document shows that it took the word of the London Boroughs on this matter and repeated false assertions about council tax data in report after report internally.
To confuse matters even more, the AC circulated this briefing widely and it has been read by many as giving the opinion of a barrister that you can tell by looking at the electoral register and council tax data that a person is claiming a discount to which he appears not to be entitled.
In an attempt to force councils to deliver up the electoral register, the NFI lobbied government, including the Electoral Commission, the Home Office and so on. It lobbied SOLACE and other more voluntary organisations, convincing gullible people who trusted it that the electoral register - CT comparison provided strong evidence of fraud, justifying a criminal investigation. Eventually it got the law modified, asserting repeatedly that it only ever used data matching defined as comparison of data sets to identify discrepancies an anomalies and that this was an audit function. But of course, that isn't what the law said. The law makers left it up to the NFI to write its own code of practice, and it did. Once again it defined data matching as the identification of inconsistencies.
Some time later, it was challenged, and for the first time it produced something approaching a full briefing on council tax discount law. The challenge was in respect of a public report alleging that you could not be entitled to a 'single person discount' if more than one adult is resident. Having reviewed the law, the Audit Commission legal department said that the publication could be more accurate and was less than ideal. For some reason, it took nearly six months to get back to the complainant. At this point it took the position that what it said had not been 'inaccurate', but that it could have been more comprehensive. This was a fudge. It is plainly inaccurate to allege lack of entitlement when entitlement persists. It promised to provide more 'comprehensive' information in the future, and also wrote to all participants asking them to stop telling people that its exercises show that there 'is an inconsistency'. It moved to a new definition, one in effect permitting it to put people on hit lists on the statistical basis that there 'might' be an inconsistency.
This of course takes it way beyond the Audit Function. Auditors are not supposed to and have no duty to carry out or mastermind proactive investigations into the private lives of people in whose situation nothing improper or irregular has been found. It contravenes the aim of data matching as set out in the code of practice and the definition of data matching provided to Parliament at the time, and, indeed, since.
It also goes way beyond anything in the court decision on uses of the electoral register. Being declined credit if you are not registered is a fairly simple matter. Being subjected to a proactive fraud investigation on the basis of statistical inferences and blatantly false allegations about council taxation law is quite another thing.
But hey, if it helps to prevent and detect fraud nobody appears to care.
I thought we spent a lot of time fighting against tyrants who wanted to be able to punish, torture and investigate innocent people in whose conduct nothing gives rise to suspicion. But now the clocks are going back. There is no such thing as progress.
I am sure that hanging helps to prevent theft. Bring it back. This is the line of development, the logic, of the accountants.
The judge decided that credit reference agencies could use the full electoral register to 'check' the addresses of people applying for credit and to help locate money laundering. He said that the interference with the right to vote was minimal, and that the decision would cut down fraud by preventing people from giving false addresses when applying for credit. But for marketing he decided that it was an intrusion into privacy.
Credit reference agencies were outraged at the court decision. They object to the use of the term 'junk mail' claiming that some very advantageous offers have been made solely to people on the edited register, a claim which has to be contrived as no sensible financial institution would offer advantageous terms to somebody purely on that basis, not even a payday loan company. But their main motivation has to be their ability to make money by selling the information on or by processing it in accordance with instructions from other firms.
One such agency, Experian, came up with a brilliant scheme to make use of the full electoral register.
Imagine that there was something called a 'single person discount'. People in receipt of this discount would be claiming to live alone. You could then use the electoral register to find out whether this claim was true or false. This would be a statutory purpose relating to security, law enforcement and crime prevention.
The problem with this is that in terms of council tax discount law nobody getting a 25% discount is 'claiming' to live alone. Experian in effect invented a 'single person discount' when in law there is no such thing.
Experian also knew that councils had a 'duty' to take reasonable steps before preparing council tax bills for the coming tax year to find out whether any discount should apply and if so the amount of that discount. They hit on the money saving idea of automating this process and of offering to do it cheaply using the personal data they hold. They got councils to send them lists of households 'claiming' this non existent discount and then used the full electoral register - and credit reference information if any - to count how many people it thought were probably living at the address. If the answer was one, then the council decided it had reason to believe there is a 25% discount. The problem with this is that ascertaining that there is entitlement to a discount is plainly not a statutory purpose relating to law enforcement or crime prevention.
Nevertheless, on this basis, Experian devised a couple of products and sold them to a few councils in Lancashire who participated in what were called 'pilots'. The pilots were announced by a newspaper campaign, from which the name of Experian was missing, no doubt in case things really went belly up. Experian would not want any adverse publicity, which fell firmly on the heads of the pilot councillors and their elected representatives, who were usually fed legally prejudicial information about the victims of this scam and regarded them as more or less firmly proven thieves in any case.
An advance newspaper campaign warned people claiming to live alone when they were not, who were told that if they came forward in advance there was an amnesty. The problem with this approach is that in terms of council tax discount law, you are not 'claiming to live alone' even if you are receiving a 25% discount. The argument that the credit reference information provided strong evidence of a false claim, in the form of a 'claim' to be literally the only occupant was based on either negligent or dishonest representation of council tax discount law. The credit reference agency may have had some excuse (though the contracts were full of disclaimers leaving the whole onus for any trouble on the council), but the council officers who fell in with this had no excuse: it is their business to have the facts of council taxation law at their finger tips.
The council sent to Experian a file of people alleged to be claiming this single person discount and Experian then highlighted the number of people it thought were living at the address, using both information from credit applications (if any had been made) and the full electoral register, acting here as a agent for the council. On this basis, investigations were launched, and the targeted residents were required to 'explain' themselves or 'eliminate' themselves from further investigation.
Threatening letters misrepresenting the legal position of the taxpayer in line with Experian's errors were sent out, and penalties threatened for non reply including the 'cancellation' of a discount.
The problem with this is that in terms of council tax discount law nobody is 'claiming' to live alone. Experian in effect invented a 'single person discount' when in law there is no such thing, not as they define it anyway.
Experian and its partner councils spread what for the sake of brevity I shall call 'lies' about large numbers of individuals and also provided large numbers of individuals with legally false information, directly by letter, indirectly by telephone and the internet. This causes large numbers of complaints.
The legal position of taxpayers in receipt of a 25% discount is that they are receiving a discount on the assumption that the same rate of discount will apply on every day of the coming year. A few of these people might be pretending to live alone in order to get a discount (and possibly benefits too) but in terms of council tax information and electoral register law their position is clear. The 'single person discount' applies on any day when only one adult who does not fall to be disregarded has his or her sole or main residence at the address. It is perfectly legal to receive this discount when more than one adult is resident and unlawful to use the electoral register to decide sole or main residence or disregard status.
The Audit Commission was approached by some London Boroughs who had also hit on the idea of using the full electoral register to draw up hit lists of fraud suspects on the basis that some people received a single person discount on the basis that they lived alone. They found that a lot of people were not living alone, and recorded these as cases of 'error' even when entitlement to the discount persisted. The claimed to have discovered a discrepancy between the electoral register and council tax data that needed 'explanation'. This is utter nonsense, but it looked good, and was reported as a major success for the Audit Commission, which enthiastically peddled inflated figures, claiming that these cases of (contrived and non existent) error were cases of cancelled discounts and additional income for the public purse.
Many councils refused to provide their electoral register to the Audit Commission. Many of the legal debates concentrated on the law relating the the electoral register and who was entitled to a copy. Only a few small voices, ignored by the NFI and its partners in the credit reference business, attempted to draw attention to council taxation law, and the data fed into the process, which the NFI actively misrepresented in all its internal minutes and continues to misrepresent to this day.
The Audit Commission briefed a barrister, telling him that and Audit could compare the data from the council tax data sets and the full electoral register. The council tax data might show that a person was 'claiming' a sole occupant discount BUT, he says, the electoral register might show that they appeared not to be entitled to it. The barrister was not briefed correctly. The electoral register can never show that a person appears not to be entitled to a discount. It is not lawful to use the register to decide sole or main residence, and plainly unreasonable to use it to decide disregard status. Though he was never consulted on what council tax discount law said, he could have advised his clients as he saw fit on relevant issues. One supposes that he assumed that the Audit Commission would have got council tax law right, though document after document shows that it took the word of the London Boroughs on this matter and repeated false assertions about council tax data in report after report internally.
To confuse matters even more, the AC circulated this briefing widely and it has been read by many as giving the opinion of a barrister that you can tell by looking at the electoral register and council tax data that a person is claiming a discount to which he appears not to be entitled.
In an attempt to force councils to deliver up the electoral register, the NFI lobbied government, including the Electoral Commission, the Home Office and so on. It lobbied SOLACE and other more voluntary organisations, convincing gullible people who trusted it that the electoral register - CT comparison provided strong evidence of fraud, justifying a criminal investigation. Eventually it got the law modified, asserting repeatedly that it only ever used data matching defined as comparison of data sets to identify discrepancies an anomalies and that this was an audit function. But of course, that isn't what the law said. The law makers left it up to the NFI to write its own code of practice, and it did. Once again it defined data matching as the identification of inconsistencies.
Some time later, it was challenged, and for the first time it produced something approaching a full briefing on council tax discount law. The challenge was in respect of a public report alleging that you could not be entitled to a 'single person discount' if more than one adult is resident. Having reviewed the law, the Audit Commission legal department said that the publication could be more accurate and was less than ideal. For some reason, it took nearly six months to get back to the complainant. At this point it took the position that what it said had not been 'inaccurate', but that it could have been more comprehensive. This was a fudge. It is plainly inaccurate to allege lack of entitlement when entitlement persists. It promised to provide more 'comprehensive' information in the future, and also wrote to all participants asking them to stop telling people that its exercises show that there 'is an inconsistency'. It moved to a new definition, one in effect permitting it to put people on hit lists on the statistical basis that there 'might' be an inconsistency.
This of course takes it way beyond the Audit Function. Auditors are not supposed to and have no duty to carry out or mastermind proactive investigations into the private lives of people in whose situation nothing improper or irregular has been found. It contravenes the aim of data matching as set out in the code of practice and the definition of data matching provided to Parliament at the time, and, indeed, since.
It also goes way beyond anything in the court decision on uses of the electoral register. Being declined credit if you are not registered is a fairly simple matter. Being subjected to a proactive fraud investigation on the basis of statistical inferences and blatantly false allegations about council taxation law is quite another thing.
But hey, if it helps to prevent and detect fraud nobody appears to care.
I thought we spent a lot of time fighting against tyrants who wanted to be able to punish, torture and investigate innocent people in whose conduct nothing gives rise to suspicion. But now the clocks are going back. There is no such thing as progress.
I am sure that hanging helps to prevent theft. Bring it back. This is the line of development, the logic, of the accountants.
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