Rising 18s National Fraud Initiative 'matching'

Dear Electoral Commission,

Please provide me with any background information or emails etc in
which the NFI's current use of the electoral register to 'address
the risk' that parents/carers of 17 year olds will fail to inform
their council that the 17 year old comes of age in situations where
the young voter does not fall to be disregarded.

Some account of this is given on the NFI web site, but it does not
accurately reflect the law - as is usual with NFI publications.

The false information on this predictive 'matching' is provided in
a 2006/7 report. The NFI web site incorrectly states that this
match shows lack of entitlement as there is more than one adult
resident. This is NOT TRUE.

Here is a link to the legally incorrect information:

http://www.audit-commission.gov.uk/SiteC...

Also within this exercise is a ‘Rising 18s’ match
which identifies young people becoming an
adult at 18 who live with a council tax single
person discount recipient. As this age change
could make many recipients of the single
person discount ineligible as they will not then
be the only adult living in the property. By
identifying such cases, the Rising 18s match
will enable councils to address this risk at an
early stage.

How can this be described as a 'Match' or a possible inconsistency
when the person involved is not even 18 yet? Moreover, the fact
that a recipient is not the only adult living in the property does
not mean that they are ineligible to what is unhelpfully referred
to here as a 'single person discount'.

I believe that all use of this ambiguous and misleading term, which
does not appear any where in the law should be stopped. Put simply,
there is NO SUCH THING as a 'single person discount' as this term
is commonly used.

Yours faithfully,

K Hodgkinson

Dear Electoral Commission,

I wondered whether you had got round to this yet.

Thank you for the information about the NFI's campaign to get its
hands on the full electoral register. It would appear to confirm
that the Audit Commission has circulated much legally incorrect
information about this data comparison.

I do however, regret that the idea that you and the ICO should
jointly take the matter to court was not carried through. It would
have been good if some judge had had the chance to explain council
tax discount law to all involved before matters got so far.

If the Audit Commission did fully understand council tax law, the
way it has circulated such incomplete and prejuducial information
would appear to send out a warning to all those attempting to get
to the facts of the matter via anything said and done by the Audit
Commission. If it did not, then it had arguable failed in its
duties,as auditors do have a responsibility to understand the
financial laws governing councils when they ascertain entitlement
and deduct the appropriate amount.

Either way, no amount of advance notification can make it necessary
in a democracy to suspect thousands of innocent people of fraud,
and subject them to a serious criminal investigation when there is
not and does not appear to be prima facie evidence that they are
claiming a discount to which they appear not to be entitled and
when the trigger for this horrid experience is an electoral
register form completed in all honesty. It makes a mockery of the
whole idea of the vote.

I would suggest though, that you might usefully undertake or
commission a full briefing of your own on council tax discount law.
I am sure an IRRV qualified person would do this fairly cheaply.
Then you would know when the NFI was providing you with information
which, as it now has apparently accepted/realised does not
accurately reflect council tax discount law.

The law is in the public domain, however. You could easily look it
up for yourselves. You will see that I am right.

Yours faithfully,

K Hodgkinson

Dear Electoral Commission,

It seems that by law you should have responded by February 4th.

Please let me have your answer as soon as you can.

Young people and their families are being labelled 'potential
frauds' by the Audit Commission before the young person is even 18.
Nobody can argue that this situation comprises an anomaly or
inconsistency or discrepency which (false)argument had been the
excuse for insisting that councils investigate all of the 'hits' on
NFI 'hit' lists.

Given your prior involvement in discussions on this issue, and
current consultations on the uses of the full and edited electoral
register, surely you have debated this particular current use of
electoral register information.

Yours faithfully,

K Hodgkinson

Dear Electoral Commission,

I understand that by law you ought to have responded by now. By the
way, I must point out that the NFI has admitted that a statement in
its annual report to the effect that an 18th birthday means that
the discount is no longer applicable was incorrect as it made no
reference to disregards. Neither, of course, did it make reference
to the fact that not all 18 years olds on the electoral register
actually live at the house, for example students who have left for
university.

I know you will probably realise this without needing me to point
it out to you, but some people do take it that NFI reports are
'reports' in the sense of being accurate whereas they function more
as marketing information and, indeed, would probably fail
advertising standards if checked against them!

They even discuss in meetings how to times the estimates of fraud
'detected' by their data mangling by such and such a number to make
them look bigger.

Could I ask you to please do a review to see what has gone wrong?

Moreover, not all councils request in advance information about 16
or 17 year olds and at least one has explicitly decided to abandon
all attempts to gather the information requested by the Audit
Commission on the grounds that it is cheaper to wait for the NFI
'hit' lists of 'potential frauds' and investigate these via
'investigation letters' using, according to the statutory code of
data matching practices, their 'usual policies and practices' for
the investigation OF fraud and error than to send out canvass forms
asking for the information.

The NFI knows very well that not all (if any) councils issue
canvass forms each year and, therefore, that even the information
they get is out of date. However, it simply does not care one jot.

I have tried hard to find out how many people have been suspected
of fraud because of data matching,as a result of putting their
eldest disregarded child on the electoral register, but the NFI
seems to deny having such information, participants say they were
not interested in such cases only in cases where it turned out
after investigation that there was lack of entitlement and had
turned out to be some false statement or withholding of MATERIAL
(as opposed to immaterial information not affecting the deduction
of the appropriate amount as per Section 11, Regulation 16 etc).
Therefore you will find it hard to acquire data on this.

The Audit Commission has just published a consultation on its own
future in which it says that it brings transparency into public
affairs. And no, they did not appear to be aware of the irony of
this.

Should you wish to check council tax law for yourself, it appears
that following complaints that this matching did not conform with
the statutory code of practice in that each match did not, barring
co-incidence,indicate that there is an inconsistency, the Audit
Commission finally got round to having a lawyer tell it what
council tax law finally said. You will find it on this site and it
confirms completely what I have said.

It is perfectly legal and proper for a discount of the appropriate
amount to be deducted when an adult who does not appear on council
tax data sets is on the electoral register for the house, and even
when such an adult actually lives in the house. This circumstance
is not prima facie evidence of fraud or of error. Indeed, it may
well reflect the sort of efficiency saving demanded by ..... yes,
you guessed it............. the Audit Commission itself!

Yours sincerely

Yours faithfully,

K Hodgkinson