Dear Her Majesty's Treasury,

I note that in the Budget, the chancellor announced that the fourth and fifth grants from the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme would be open to those who had submitted their self-assessments for the 2019/20 tax year.

Those self-assessments prove pre-pandemic income; they cover a twelve-month period that ends as the first lockdown begins. However, retrospective access to the first, second and third SEISS grants is being denied, despite the self-assessments proving that these taxpayers were in need of that support, were affected by lockdown, and did not have other employment that would give them access to the CJRS.

I would like to see any and all modelling and correspondence within the Treasury that helped formulate this policy, such as:

- Estimates of cost of backdating SEISS
- Estimates of fraud risk of backdating SEISS
- Estimates of economic impact of failing to backdate SEISS
- Operational difficulties in backdating SEISS
- Rationale as to why 2019/20 data can be used for future grants, yet the same data and the same formula cannot be used for past grants.

Thank you,

Andrew

Yours faithfully,

Andrew Keenan

Dear Her Majesty's Treasury,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Her Majesty's Treasury's handling of my FOI request 'Rationale for refusal to backdate SEISS 1-3 for those whose 2019/20 self-assessment was their first'.

In this FOI request, I asked for:

- Estimates of cost of backdating SEISS
- Estimates of fraud risk of backdating SEISS
- Estimates of economic impact of failing to backdate SEISS
- Operational difficulties in backdating SEISS
- Rationale as to why 2019/20 data can be used for future grants, yet the same data and the same formula cannot be used for past grants.

However the reply does not engage directly with any of these specific questions. Instead, it dismisses all five with one umbrella explanation, about balancing the public interest, without any detail.

I am not convinced by this blanket assertion, which is made without detailed justification and with little evidence of actual investigation.

There has been no explanation provided by ministers or officials about why those *newly* eligible for SEISS are not entitled to support from when the pandemic began.

When asked about this by the Treasury committee, the Chancellor instead spoke about the difficulty of recalculating grants for those who have already received SEISSs 1-3. That was not the question.

The Chancellor himself has stated on several occasions that SEISSs 4 and 5 will be available to 600,000 more people than SEISS 1-3. Yet he has not given any rationale, justification or modelling that explains why these 600,000 people have been expected to survive 13 months of lockdown without support - as by definition, that group have not been able to access furlough, or the majority of other schemes.

I cannot see how an explanation of this decision is not in the public's interest. We are talking about billions of pounds of potential support and financial stimulus, going to everyone *but* those who have had the least support so far, and who will be economically scarred for years to come. The Chancellor and PM say that the best long-term solution is to end lockdown and restore the economy, but that is wishful thinking when they have left so many small businesses and self-employed traders deep in personal debt, and at a desperate commercial disadvantage to their well-supported competitors.

The very least we deserve is an explanation.

Additionally, your reply describes the SEISS as 'one of the most generous schemes for the self-employed in the world'. I guess you are obliged to include that soundbite, but it is a misleading tautology.

The scheme is generous to those who qualify, and brutal to those who don't. Compared to similar schemes around the EU and the western world, SEISS has cost more per taxpayer, but reached a smaller percentage of the self-employed sector, than its peer schemes.

More money spent, fewer people helped.

That's not generosity. That's inefficiency.

I look forward to your reply,

Best wishes,

Andrew

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/r...

Yours faithfully,

Andrew Keenan