Sheer cheek of the Audit Commission

You will now find the following astonishing piece on the web site of the Audit Commission:

Please note the following:

• The Commission has made a very minor amendment to one sentence of the full text as it is produced on the Fair processing notice – Full text web page but not as it appears in the Code. The amendment is to the second paragraph and is shown below in tracked changes.

“Where a match is found it may indicates that there is an inconsistency that requires further investigation.”
This amendment was made to more fully align the full text with the relevant text in the Code, which states at paragraph 2.2.2. that “where a match is found, it indicates that there may be an inconsistency that requires further investigation”.

The full facts of the matter are that this change happened because the Independent Complaints reviewer, when dealing with a complaint that it was perfectly legal to be in receipt of a 'single person discount' when more than one adult was legally entitled to vote at an address, concluded, incorrectly in my view, that the Code was ambiguous between asserting that a match indicated that there was an inconsistency and that a match may indicate that there is an inconsistency.  In deciding that the Code was 'ambiguous' she ignored the fact that the Code states that the aim of matching is to identify inconsistencies, and the fact that the arguments for such processing by national audit bodies and auditors were precisely that it was a cheap way of identifying discrepancies which provided reasonable grounds to suspect fraud.

The response of the Commission at that time was a) to modify its FPN and b) to ask participants to alter theirs, thereby avoiding the significant problems caused by the fact that from the outset it had asserted falsely that certain people could be certified by local councils as receiving or claiming a 'single person'  discount on the basis that they lived alone, excluding cases where the discount was being applied on the basis that there was more than one sole or main resident but all except one fell to be disregarded. 

The change was not made to bring the FPN 'into line' with the relevant text in the code, as the relevant text is the code as a whole and not this one section.  As usual we get a biased and misleading account of history from the Audit Commission. 

It is arrogance of the highest sort to make this sort of change, which affects the whole basis of the code fundamentally, without alerting or asking the permission of Parliament, without, apparently consulting counsel or any unbiased expert, or the Information Commissioner, while claiming that it is a 'minor' change.  The definition of data matching as matching to identify actual inconsistencies was so firmly fixed in the minds of those involved that Barbara Follet, when Minister, wrote that 'by definition' all NFI data matching indicated discrepancies or inconsistencies.  She cannot be blamed for this: it is what the NFI always said and what Parliament was told.

Single Person Discount Review

You may receive a 'review letter' from your council saying something like the following:  'Our records show that you are receiving a discount as you live alone.  We are required to verify whether you are still entitled to this discount'.  

The councils records cannot properly show that a situation which cannot arise in law applies to your finances.  You are, or should be, receiving a discount of the appropriate amount on the assumption that the same rate will apply on every day of the coming year.  If there is more than one entitled voter resident or if another person uses your address as a 'care of' address, this is in itself perfectly legal and does not constitute an irregularity. What would constitute an irregularity would be if there were two of you living there as your main home, and neither of you were disregarded.  In which case you would owe the council more tax as the discount would not apply. But the odds are overwhelming that a person in receipt of one of these investigation letters is not guilty of any wrong-doing. 

Beware of promising to inform the council if anybody moves in to your property. You have no such duty in law, but at least one council deliberately misleads people as to their obligations in this respect and several falsely state that not doing this means the council can penalise you.  There are even council web pages which state that it is an offence and that you can be 'fined'.

Your council ought not to be providing you with false or misleading information, and such letters are valid grounds for complaints on the grounds of maladministration.  

You might also ask your MP to write to Brandon Lewis asking him why he is providing incorrect information on official notepaper in this way,  especially given the messages put out by his predecessor Bob Neill.  

A good, if incomplete, research review of council tax discount law, dated early 2009 may be obtained from the Audit Commission and is also available on the Internet.

NB  Dishonestly making false or misleading statements to obtain a financial gain can amount to fraud and should in all circumstances be avoided!  

Andy Sawford and the Audit Commission

Andy Sawford seems to be a nice chap but he is naive.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmpublic/localaudit/131119/am/131119s01.htm

In the debate on the Local Audit Bill, he says that he is putting forward amendments which the Audit Commission wants.   These are amendments which even the government has rejected.  I suppose that for a politician taking a position suggested by an Audit Commission looks like a safe bet.  The problem is that the Audit Commission is a strategic and political organisation with an agenda that goes far beyond mere audit functions.   It is of course, also a business, which has 'commercial' interests in getting the powers to require councils to buy its products.  Not many businesses have such instant access to public funds.  One has to look for the sub text.

One cannot of course assume that word for word Mr Sawford is merely parroting Audit Commission briefings or policies but it is depressing to see how his words show lack of understanding of how the NFI actually works.

the Audit Commission has a wide range of powers, some of which it has used to good effect; its appointed power to ensure that bodies subject to data matching follow up on data-matching exercises could be lost

The Audit Commission has no powers at all to make councils 'follow up' matches which are risk-based or which indicate no fraud, error or maladministration.  There is nothing to follow up.  Moreover, some councils have pointed out that the costs of following up on hit lists with high false positive rates outweighs the income.  Indeed, at one point the Commission stated that councils had  a 'moral duty' to investigate anybody it decided might not be entitled to a council tax discount.  Really? Maybe they have a 'moral duty' not to pester, intimidate and misinform taxpayers in line with the 'good practice' guidelines produced by the Audit Commission.

Mr Sawford may not be aware that on the CT discount 'high risk' matches the Audit Commission has stated a view that a council has a 'moral duty' to investigate people it thinks 'might not' be entitled to their discount, even though there is no evidence of fraud, error or maladministration.  This is political, not purely financial.   Do politicians never learn that they are not the only ones scoring political points?

Game set and match to the Audit Commission.


One can only hope that Mr Sawford gets subjected to a fraud investigation on such a basis, and that all his future potential employers and bankers are told that he was found to be a fraud risk.  Because this is how, quite blithely, he is encouraging the NFI to behave.  And of course they won't have bothered to say this in their briefings.  Indeed, their local representatives are blithely making false allegations about people all over the country and putting these on line.

When Mr Sawford says that there will be no power to ensure that councils follow up on matches and that such powers currently exist, he is talking through his hat, and basing his arguments on false beliefs, which are positively and actively encouraged by the Audit Commission, about how the whole thing works.

What does the Minister say

Discussion on the arrangements for the governance of the national fraud initiative will continue with representation from interested parties.

These won't include any of the hundreds of thousands of innocent people who have been subjected to unlawful 'investigations' by councils following the false legal guidance put out by Experian and since then other bodies.  But it will include the credit reference agencies which make money out of the whole  thing!  

You have to fall about laughing when Mr Sawford goes on to mention maladministration and auditor powers to deal with this.  The Audit Commission actively encourages maladministration as Mr Brandon Lewis's own comments have made clear.  It is the tail which wags the dog.  The chances of it accepting publicly its own massive and long-standing administrative errors are null.  When told by its own legal department that something could more accurately reflect the law and is less than ideal, it in effect ignores it and carries on telling the same old lies about people as it did before, with the effect that credulous people relying on its advice then go on to administer people's financial affairs in ways which flout the law.   Heads of Revenue Services stating that the council tax regulations are 'wrong' are merely stating explicitly the way things have been working since Experian and the other data merchants got the Audit Commission on in its Act.  The NFI cannot put its own house in order and the government intends to let these people loose on even more data.

THe Government says that discussions on the governance of the NFI are underway.  My view is that if the NFI gets its way there won't be any governance of it.  It will produce a code giving it free rein to use data mining to finger people as fraud investigation targets on an evidence-free basis.  The abortive investigations and false positives will continue. It may even continue to modify its own code while not even bothering to give the Minister a copy of the amendment to lay before Parliament.  Would or would not this amount to a deception of Parliament?  I think it would.

The rejection of this amendment is a good sign, as otherwise the NFI could broaden the data it gets its hands on and also pretend even more appallingly than ever that fraud suspects are not fraud suspects.

A small ray of hope, perhaps.

NFI for maladministration and error

Given that the NFI actively spreads misunderstanding of council tax discount law, it is ironic that somebody thought fit to give it the power to use data matching to identify maladministration and error.  It is already asserting that maladministration and error exists where there is no such thing: this is precisely how its figures for council tax discounts fraudulently or erroneously awarded are compiled, by including large numbers of cases where there was no maladministration or error and, therefore, no additional income.

A body which has since at least 2006 misinterpreted codes on council tax computer systems is not trustworthy to decide whether there has been maladministration.

Who decided that the Audit Commission had 'wider powers' to use data matching for this purpose?  It appears to be the case that the Audit Commission believes that it already has these powers.  But they cannot be an audit function unless the maladministration involves some breaching of financial regulations.  So where do they come from?  Those proposing this amendment to the Local Audit Bill must h

The government response was that this function would overlap with the functions of the Local Government Ombudsman and there would be no powers to act upon it.  So it would cause duplication and be unnecessary.  It was concerned about how the powers might be used.  Well for once, good for the government.

It is controversial to say that data matching powers used in the capacity under audit powers would not be available to new bodies: they would be available to auditors who have the right to inspect documents and information relating to the accounts of audited bodies.  This must come from the data matching businesses who fear losing a stream of income which they had via the Audit Commission.  

Members seem utterly naive about the capacities of 'data matching'.  These have been displayed in the Cabinet Office's own attempts to use data matching and data mining to get the electoral register up to date. The research report highlighted lack of understanding of the data by those using it as a major issue.

One billion pounds worth of fraud, error and maladministration.  This is a lot of money they say.  But they are thinking that this is money lost to the public purse.  A great deal of this will not be money lost as it includes cases where a single person discount which does not exist is cancelled and replaced by a 'disregard discount allowance' which does not exist either.

Prediction as to the future

The government will make regulations insisting that councils subject people to fraud investigations even though there is nothing inconsistent in their situation.  It will make councils suspect innocent people of fraud using the full electoral register via its new powers to make regulations.  The NFI tail will wag the dog.

This is the conclusion to be drawn after listening to the debate on the local audit and accountability bill, especially the clause giving the power to the minister to make regulations

The NFI rules the world.   Pity it is incompetent and corrupt.

Alan Bryce

Mr Bryce is the 'author' of the 2012 edition of Protecting the Public Purse.

In this he refers to the NFA publication 'Fighting Fraud Locally'.  We have met the NFA before.  Their person in charge of local government said she hadn't read any council tax law, which may explain why she believes that the electoral  register if 'up to date' is a reliable guide to entitlement to a 'single person discount'.

However you define this, this belief is wrong and unjustifiable.  So thanks Mr Bryce for referring us to a bad source.   The NFA's ideas on good practice are limited and in places positively harmful.

On your Masters they will have taught you to take 'grey literature' with a pinch of salt.  In a position of power and authority working for a government agency, similar principles should apply.

In respect of council tax, this publication includes a 'case study' which repeats the false assertions about 'single person discounts' which the Audit Commission Legal Department scotched some years ago: namely that certain people are receiving a discount on the basis that they live alone.  This is probably an Experian based exercise or a clone, such as those run by Capita, Northgate and so on.

According to Mr Bryce's own figures, data from over 25, 000 people was sent to the agency with this legally inaccurate information.

Well done Mr Bryce: not many people can make false statements about as many people as you did all in one fell swoop.  The case study goes on to state that cases where there was an indication that there was dual or multiple occupancy were contacted.  Why?  It is perfectly proper to receive a discount if more than one adult is resident.  Some people are said to have admitted to no longer being liable, and , on the usual but legally false allegations used by the NFI these people will be counted as 'additional income' though most of them will have been entitled to their discount.  It's just that when the NFI sticks a different label on them it counts them as 'not entitled' or as a case of fraud or error.

Mr Bryce praises Gravesham Council.  If he bothered to read the documentation provided to taxpayers within that council, he would note that it conflicts with the legal briefing on council tax law which he uses as a reference: you know, the one that was produced in response to complaints and which was circulated for future reference.   Or perhaps nobody bothered to give young Mr Bryce a copy of that legal briefing? Has it been hidden where nobody can see it and put two and two together, perhaps?  

Whereas that briefing points out that there is no duty to report changes in circumstances per se, Gravesham tells people that there is and that they may be liable to pay a penalty of £70 if they don't.  Well done Mr Bryce for once again encouraging malpractice in local government.

Well done Mr Bryce.  This sort of praise proves the point made over and over that the NFI actively encourages bad practice.   Well done.  Who want the rule of law anyway?  Who wants due process and privacy and all that tosh!  Spread misinformation and suspicion about innocent entitled people.  Climate of mistrust.  You can't trust anybody, especially government agencies: they're the worst for not getting their facts right.

This sort of thing isn't good practice, Mr Bryce.  Far from it.  Please obtain the legal briefing on council tax discount law provided for the information and future reference of your own department and read it.

Failure to do this would be unacceptable, as, it seems to me, you ought to be familiar with the laws governing the legal frameworks around local government finance, whereas this report strongly suggests that you are not.


Thank you.

Transparency International UK

This organisation needs to be shot (joke!!)

Their report is hugely amusing.

It refers to various Audit Commission activities and data mining uncritically, and one may suspect that the people actually believe that the AC spreads knowledge about 'good practice'.  This is questionable. Given that councils actively refuse to apply council tax regulations on the basis that the Audit Commission won't let them, somebody is having the wool pulled over their eyes.

I think they ought to call for an investigation of 'corruption' within the Audit Commission. Why for example, are Audit Commission staff  apparently ignoring the legal briefing prepared some years ago spelling out the facts of council tax discount law?  Whether this results from fraud or error or has another explanation, it is difficult to say.  But it is an apparent inconsistency requiring investigation!

3. Understanding and awareness of fraud and corruptionThe Audit Commission previously collected and published data, allowing it to trace patterns and trends in corruption and fraud. If the Commission is abolished, it will be difficult to know whether councils are detecting more or less corruption and fraud, or engaging in better or weaker monitoring and prevention activities.Recommendation: Notwithstanding the localism agenda, it is critical that some element of central oversight is restored. At a minimum, this should involve data collection and consistent standards.

Well since the NFI's statistics have been unprofessional, worthless, prejudicial and based on incompetence I for one wouldn't mind seeing the back of them.

At a select committee discussion on contracting out and the problems of monitoring contracts, this organisation was present.  All the time I felt the irony that firms like Capita. Experian and so on are taking money for carrying out council duties arising under Regulation 14 of the Council Tax Administration and Enforcement Regulations and doing this in flagrant breach of the regulations themselves.  They misrepresent Regulation 14 as a duty to check a 'claim' which has no legal existence against credit reference agency information.  They claim to be 'checking your validity to claim' a single person discount which nobody can in law be receiving, selecting households for this purpose where the code 'single' represents facts stated or thought to be correct on a certain day in the past, and not the basis on which the person is claiming or receiving their bill.  Time after time, the relative cheapness of this procedure is cited, as opposed to the old way of sending out canvass forms before the start of each tax year.  This is supposed to be 'joined up' government, data sharing, transformational and so on.  What it is is in fact corrupt, incompetent and improper.

Moreover, the Audit Commission, whose contribution to probity was much lauded by this same firm, has been at the forefront of this, guided by four London Boroughs which got it wrong.  Subsequently, the Audit Commission Legal Department sent to the NFI a legal briefing pointing out the basic flaw in the logic, but that report has most certainly not been acted upon, and promises issued about providing better information about this data mining activity have been honoured only in the breach.

Sorry Transparency International, your intentions might be good, but the problem I have located goes to the bodies managing the audit: the Audit Commission itself.  Proudly independent, and highly political and strategic, and staffed by persons who get things wrong so often that it is frightening, this unaccountable body has got away with far too much, and is now actively seeking to ensure that some of the worst of its mistakes live on after it.

Hmmm. The present position of the present Minister and his advisors, including the Audit Commission?

James Hacker: You said yourself how important these select committees are. I cannot be seen to mislead them. 
Sir Humphrey Appleby: You will not be SEEN to mislead them. 

CIPFA HYPOCRITES

Financial information for decision makers

This is rich from an organisation which routinely misrepresents council tax law.  

At all levels in the authority those taking decisions 
must be presented with relevant, objective and 
reliable financial analysis and advice, clearly 
setting out the financial implications and risks.
The CFO has an important role in ensuring 
necessary financial information and advice is 
provided to the Leadership Team and decision 
makers at all levels across the authority. 
Meaningful financial analysis and robust and 
impartial interpretation is a key component in 
performance management, asset management, 
investment appraisal, risk management and 
control.

Data Mining by the Audit Commission

We were warned.  Here is a paper by No to ID

http://www.no2id.net/IDSchemes/NO2IDSeriousCrimeBillBriefingFEB2007.pdf

capacityGRID

A new name has to be added to the list of entrepreneurs making a living out of 'checking' whether people are still entitled to a 'single person discount' which does not exist and which therefore the council has no business to be checking.  This is called a 'single person discount review' and a 'single occupant discount'.  The firm involved this time is called 'capacityGRID' and unless is it stupider than Experian it will have written conditions in the contract making the council fully responsible in case of various mess ups.

The good people of Dumfries and Galloway have not taken this crap lying down.  Indeed, the whole business made the BBC News.  The news editor might be worth contacting if you have suffered with these pernicious reviews in your part of the country.

This reminds me that Audit Scotland, fooled by legally inaccurate guidance provided to it by the Audit Commission years ago, insists that some people are receiving a discount 'on the basis' that they literally live alone, which is just as false in Scotland as it is in England.

They pulled the same trick in Scotland as they have considered pulling here if need be, and are doing at the very moment: they told Parliament that they used 'data matching' to identify inconsistencies, got the Scottish Parliament to give them the power to write their own code of data matching practice, and then produced one from which all references to inconsistencies had been surgically removed.  This sort of thing cannot be accident or coincidence.  It has to be part of a deliberate strategy.

This is a Scottish council, but the law is more or less word for word the same as the English Law.

As happens with come councils, the council claims to be ascertaining whether any discount should apply, and if you don't reply to their letter, they take it as

'confirmation that your circumstances have changed and your single occupant discount will be removed.'

The point here is that a 'single occupant discount' can still apply if your circumstances have changed.   Only if a new resident isn't in one of the disregard categories will entitlement to your dsicount change.

Watch the statistics carefully.  We know that councils claim 'additional' income in cases where an ICT code which misrepresents the legal position of taxpayers has been changed and no additional income of any sort identified.    

The BBC web site quotes somebody from the council as referring to this discount as a 'benefit' which is irksome.   They also claim that the council has a 'statutory duty' to review discounts, a piece of equivocal nonsense, as the duty to which it refers is not a duty to 'review' anything, but a duty to ascertain whether ANY discount applies and if so the amount of that discount.  There is and can be no statutory duty to 'review' a discount which is a figment of the mind of some moron looking at an ICT screen and misunderstanding what he sees there.  Nothing about this is legal in terms of data protection.  The problem is that you have to be able to sue the council which involves being rich to get anything done about it.

"Merely pedantic' a gem from Nagina Akram

Looking across the documents collected together over the years, a gem from the NFI leaps out at me.

Reader, you will know that making a false or misleading statement to gain a financial advantage would be evidence of fraud (but would need mens rea proving of course).  Common sense and the training of even a very junior solicitor at the Audit Commission should tell us that what a person is and is not 'claiming' is an important matter.

The point was several times to the NFI that it was false to state that certain 25% discount recipients were 'claiming' to live alone, or 'claiming to be entitled on the basis that they lived alone' and other 'claiming to be the only adult who counted, with all other residents disregarded'.

In a true gem of NFI nonsense, Mrs Akram replied that this point was 'merely pedantic'.  You use the word 'claim' she said.  Why shouldn't we?

council tax discount records are tosh.

Anybody annoyed by being the subject of an SPD or sole occupant or single person discount review might usefully ask the council for a print off of their ICT-based records.

These really complete the picture of the nonsense stated originally by Experian, together with the London Borough of Hillingdon.

Depending upon the ICT system in use, there is a column headed 'allowances'.  This heading explains why so many clowns insist on saying that the SPD is 'in payment'.  Some clot sees the word 'allowances' on a computer screen and assumes that people are being paid an 'allowance'.

Under this heading the words 'disregard discount' may appear.  This explains why so many people think that there is such a thing as a 'disregard discount'.  You won't get the code 'disregard discount' and the code 'single' on the same account at the same time.

This explains why the ICT geeks responsible for the original NFI cock up must have been full of glee when somebody put the idea to them that you could 'check' whether a person was entitled to a 'single person discount' by looking at the electoral register.

If the Information Officer at your council is a complete idiot she will tell you that your records do not contain any codes, that they provide details of discounts that you are claiming and that these records are self explanatory.

And I could name at least one council where the Information Officer appears to be a complete idiot.

But that is for another day.

Eastbourne false information on web site

Eastbourne Council really take the biscuit.

They quote this law on a page about 'single person discounts':


The Council Tax Reduction Schemes (Detection of Fraud and Enforcement) (England) Regulations 2013 provide for a collecting authority to impose a penalty of £70 on a person if they fail to give prompt notification of a change of circumstances.

What takes the biscuit about this is that not only has this got nothing to do with the Section 11 25% discount but also it isn't even what the regulations themselves say in the case of council tax reduction schemes.

If you don't believe me, Google them.  

The Council Tax Reduction Schemes Regs refer to Council Tax Reduction Schemes and not to discounts of 15% received in accordance with the law.

There is no obligation under any regulation to tell the council if you are not liable to a 'single person discount' which does not exist in law.

If you live in Eastbourne and you are still entitled to your 25% discount, tell them to get lost. Tell them to get their web site right. 

Eastbourne have contracted out council tax discount functions to Northgate.  One has to wonder to whom they have contracted out editing their web site.  They have a duty to ensure that council taxation law is not misrepresented, but they probably sacked all the people who knew anything about it a long time ago and are absolutely powerless to do anything about the appalling illegality of what their contractors are doing. 

Northgate claim that they are ascertaining entitlement to discounts.  They appear to be making decisions about sole or main residence in ways that are odds with the requirements of the law, and on basis which valuation tribunals regularly throw out.   So this is of dubious legality.  To make it more annoying, they claim they are 'checking' whether people are entitled to receive a discount which does not exist but which they allege these people are claiming... same old same old  

Nathan Nash from Wales: potentially worthy of further investigation!

Audit Wales has for a long time being falsely asserting that the legal position of people on the NFI hit lists is that they are claiming to live literally alone.

So young Nathan Nathan is likely to have a long history of being involved with false and misleading information.  Just the sort the NFI would love to take on.  Really good at implying there is evidence against people when there isn't any.    He is, to quote a lovely phrase from the Audit Commission, 'potentially worthy of further investigation'.

You can find more misleading and prejudicial information on Audit Wales' web site and on the web sites of the councils whose practices it praises in the blink of an eye than, well, than a person who expects councils to obey the law and distribute correct information about it would expect.

Conwy is a good example.

Web site, application forms, annual council tax leaflets, all full of junk misinterpreting the legal position.

If you claim any exemptions, discounts or disability

relief and your circumstances change, you must tell

us within 21 days. If you do not provide this

information, you could be required to pay a penalty

In two languages.  Bless.

More Audit Commission incompetence Rob Hammond again

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Cabinet Office to take on National Fraud Initiative

The ad hoc committee has produced its report on the draft Local Audit Bill.  It has suggested that the Cabinet Office should provide a new home for the National Fraud Initiative.

The Cabinet Office appears to be ideologically wedded to data analytics and has persevered with pilots involving data matching to check the electoral register despite mountains of empirical evidence to show that this simply does not work.  It keeps on commissioning more pilots.  Somebody is making a lot of money about this, yet the consensus appears to be that at the end of the day fewer people will be registered to vote as a result of their 'constititutional changes'.  But, hey, this is good for business, or at least for the businesses doing the processing.

This may be bad news for those who believe that people who have done nothing wrong should be able to go about their business without being suspected of fraud on statistical grounds, for the policy of the Cabinet Office is that both data matching and data analytics should be used to 'prevent fraud'.  Data matching is usually defined as the cross matching of data sets to identify anomalies which might indicate fraud.  Data analytics refers to statistical, computer based processing which indicates possible fraud on an evidence-free basis.

Possibly because the Information Commissioner responded to the consultation on the draft bill and not to the the sub committee's request for evidence, the sub committee has ignored the warnings of the Commissioner on the Code of Practice and the need for clarity about this.  This is an opportunity missed.

Another opportunity missed is in the use of misleading Audit Commission statistics, which is best explained by the fact that both of the committee's advisers used to work for or be linked with the Audit Commission.

The committee has asked the government to clarify what it means by certain parts of the draft Bill, including one part which has been criticized by Liberty and others.  This is not good enough. The committee should have taken a view on it and should have referred to the human rights aspects of these proposals.

29.  The Secretary of State should provide the House with clarification on the wording of clause 84(2), 91(1) and 91(3) and should provide evidence to assure the House that the clause would not allow data to be used beyond the remit of identifying fraud. We recommend that all possible uses of the NFI should be set out on the face of the Bill and that any amendments should be made by primary legislation.

This makes no sense as it is absurd to state that data can ever be used to identify fraud.  At best it can identify potential fraud.

It is not clear what use it would be for the Secretary of State to provide clarification on the wording of clause 84(2).   This passage is badly written.  Does the committee want the wording to be altered, or does the committee merely want the Sec of State to explain to the House what it means?  What counts is what goes into the Act. As we have seen, the Act as drafted does not succeed in doing what we were told it would do before.

Here is what the clause in question says:


84 Power to conduct data matching exercises
(1) The Secretary of State may conduct data matching exercises or arrange for
them to be conducted on the Secretary of State's behalf.
(2) A data matching exercise is an exercise involving the comparison of sets of data
to determine how far they match (including the identification of any patterns
and trends).


It is a shame that my evidence was not printed with the committee's report as it is about the only honest account of the NFI it had.  Meanwhile the Audit Commission continues to ignore advice from Bob Neill and Brandon Lewis and to malign taxpayers whose situation is perfectly legal.

Ironically, the report bewails the lack of 'like for like' comparisons in terms of comparing authority performance.  It ignores the complete lack of 'like for like' data matching to identify people for fraud investigations.

Margaret Hodge can complain about lack of protection for whistle blowers all she likes: I have blown the whistle on the Audit Commission's gross incompetence and she has done nothing at all about it as far as I can see except to exclude my evidence from the published report and produce it with a set of lower status 'additional evidence'.