Plans to consult on proposed changes to your statutory code of data matching practice

The request was refused by Audit Commission.

Dear Audit Commission,

You have responded previously to my requests for information by aggregating them, treating them as one request and refusing to answer on the grounds that it would cost too much.

As luck would have it, other bodies have been more forthcoming, and some councils do put full information to their elected members, this being a democracy. I have, I believe, been able to piece together the bits of the jigsaw that result in thousands of innocent entitled people being labelled as high risk fraud cases, and investigated as criminal suspects because you have decided they are worthy of investigation, an honour which I am sure they do not appreciate and of which they would prefer to be deemed unworthy.

I am able to class myself among the unworthy subjects of your esteemed labelling and the attentions of your parters in, as it were, to coin a phrase, 'crime'.

It was not a particularly pleasant experience, I regret to say. In fact it caused significant distress and anxiety. It was an honour of which my family and I were most unworthy. The council in question had to issue a general public apology and individual apologies, though these were of the unsatisfactory sort which suggested that actually they were not really very sorry at all.

I believe that I have a right not to be treated like this.

It amounts to harassment, in my opinion, however sensitively your participants investigate. There is, it seems to me, no sensitive way of informing an innocent entitled person that they are suspected of fraud simply because they are a member of a particular social group and not because anybody has any evidence that they have done nothing wrong. No amount of prior notification can make this sort of thing 'fair'.

I am, however, willing to waive outstanding requests, though I reserve the right to complain to the ICO that in my opinion this innovative method of avoiding answering reasonable questions is not appropriate.

Instead I make this new one, which is a different one and should not be in any way avoided by attempting to aggregate it.

The programme of work for 2010 is set out here:

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

It begins - as usual - with a misleading statement about the amount of money 'identified' by your data matching. If this includes the electoral register-council tax match figures, it is, once again, a misleading statement, as this match does not identify fraudulently or incorrectly claimed or received discounts. I should have thought that by now Mr Yetzes would have been sent a copy of the briefing on council tax discount law prepared in January last year and realised exactly what the Audit Commission was doing with this personal data even if, as seems very probable, he did not understand it before. This match does not appear to provide prima facie evidence that people are claiming discounts to which they are not entitled. It is not unambiguous matching. It does not show that there may be an inconsistency. None of this is true.

Clearly no auditor could ever reasonably refuse to accept the accounts of a council because people were on the electoral register but not accounted for on council tax data sets. This comparison does not provide prima facie evidence of revenue foregone by the council. It is to be hoped that Mr Yetzes realises this. This particular data matching exercise should never form part of an audit.

The document continues by paying lip service to people's rights in respect of their data. The problem here is that you appear to be of the opinion that people have no rights in respect of their data. You appear to believe that using this data to compile 'hit' lists of cases that are worth investigating because the investigations might turn up some inconsistency or because the data 'might' reflect some crime is not a breach of any rights.

I note that one thing the NFI intends to do is to consult on changes to the statutory Code of Data Matching Practice.
This Code is intended to protect the rights of the vast majority of innocent people whose data you make (some council staff have used the word 'bully') councils send to you irrespective of whether you are going to use it for data matching as defined in the Code.

It seems obvious that the NFI does not like the Code as it currently stands. In particular, it is apparently denying in writing that there is any requirement that each individual 'hit' reported to councils has to indicate that there is an inconsistency. I have various reasons for saying this, including the strange fact that the NFI's fair processing notice does not conform with the models in the Code of Practice. I am assuming that this is a deliberate departure from the Code and reflects Audit Commission dissatisfaction with the Code as it is written.

Instead of stating that where a match is found this indicates that there is an inconsistency, the NFI's own notice states that where a 'match' is found this indicates that there may be an inconsistency.

This apparently reflects an approach to data processing and use completely different from that which was explained to Parliament prior to the passing of the most recent legislation.

Rather than providing list of cases where there is on the face of it an inconsistency, you appear to want the right to produce lists of cases where there 'might' turn out to be inconsistencies after fishing trips directed by your good selves. Instead of councils having to eliminate co-incidental matches, as stated in the Code, you appear to want them to presume that all cases may be guilty whether or not there is any prima facie evidence in each case, and to make decisions about guilt and innocence, requiring people to eliminate themselves and show they are innocent when there was never any case against them to show that they might have been anything else.

I note that the Code itself was made statutory in response to worries expressed by Parliament's human rights committee. It is explcitly intended to protect the privacy of the vast majority of innocent entitled people whose data is being passed on for inclusion in what the NFI has referred to in the past as a 'national data base'. But as we have seen, you do not appear to regard any of us as having any rights in this matter.

Therefore, any proposed changes to this code must sound alarm bells on human rights grounds.

My freedom of information request is, therefore,

1) for an account of the particular changes to the Code which the Audit Commission proposes to introduce, and of the rationale for these changes.

2) for copies of the human rights reports on those proposed changes which the Audit Commission has had from its human rights department in respect of privacy and the right to unrestricted franchise and any other issues including natural justice

3) for copies of any relevant briefings procured by the Audit Commission from internal or external sources in respect of the proposed changes

4) for information on how the data subjects themselves may have an input into the consultation

5) for a list of bodies to be consulted on the proposed changes

6) for a list of government departments and agencies who have already been involved in discussions on the proposed changes

Clearly there is a very strong public interest in fairness and transparency in respect of such matters.

Yours faithfully,

K Hodgkinson

Freedom of Information,

1 Attachment

Dear K Hodgkinson, please find my response to your request attached.

Yours sincerely

Rob Mauler

Robert Mauler
Public Enquiries Manager
part of the Chief Executive's Office

* Audit Commission
Westward House
Lime Kiln Close
Stoke Gifford
Bristol
BS34 8SR

* [email address]

* www.audit-commission.gov.uk/complaints
i For Freedom of Information (FOI) requests please email
[Audit Commission request email]

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K Hodgkinson left an annotation ()

The Audit Commission accepts that a published programme of work did state that it would be consulting of proposed changes to the statutory code of data matching practice in the next few months. However, in effect it says that this was misleading. It now says it is not sure that it wants to change the code. In fact, it says, its work programme includes a review of the code to decide whether and what changes 'are needed' (in the opinion of the Commission, one supposes) and that until it has been done no changes will be proposed so it has not information about any changes that it wants to introduce.

One could suggest that in the meantime, the Commission might usefully ensure that its own third layer fair processing notification complies with the models in the code and that the Commission should refrain from any attempts to persuade participants from altering their fair processing notices.

A number of participants do have fair processing notices which, like that of the Audit Commission, are significantly different from the models in the code.

However, the original would appear to be in line with the Home Office's understanding of the purposes for which the Commission would use its new powers, as illustrated both in the explanatory notes published with the legislation and in Home Office circulars explaining data matching output.

Here, by the way, is a link to the Code, and, for the benefit of readers who did not follow the debates, some links to information put to Parliament on data matching.

It should be noted that examples given of the sort of data matching undertaken by the Audit Commission are not usually fairly representative. The examples are usually examples where most people would agree that there is an inconsistency requiring investigation, such as the continued drawing out of a pension when the pensioner has died.

In the case of the electoral register match, as various people including staff at the Electoral Commission and the Audit Commission itself have pointed out, the 'hits' sent out for investigation by the Audit Commission are not always cases where a prima facie inconsistency exists. Sometimes, the lists are simply lists of situations where the Audit Commission thinks it is probably that subsequent investigations will turn up something suspicious. In other words, innocent people are being suspected of fraud and investigated on that basis simply because in all honesty they put a person who does not affect their entitlement to the council tax discount they are receiving on the electoral register. It would appear that few people realised that this was in fact what the Audit Commission was doing, a situation made worse by various publications of the Audit Commission on the subject, which, as the Audit Commission itself has admitted could more accurately reflect council tax law.

In fact the people at the Ministry of Justice who set out policy on this area state that government policy is still developing and is not fixed.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa...

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-off...

http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/p...

http://sandbox.opsi.gov.uk/paper/cm/6875...

In the meantime, if your grown up children are still on your electoral register despite living away at university, it may not be too late to avoid being suspected of fraud, and flagged up as such electronically, a result which may be shared widely between public sector and private sector organisations.

Get them off the register.

If you get a strange letter from your council tax department over the next few months, it is likely that this is one of the 'investigation' letters sent out by NFI participants. Threats to issue backdated bills for money you do not owe, or to 'cancel' the discount unless you eliminate yourself are fairly reliable signs that they suspect you of pretending to be entitled to a discount. If you are really unlucky, you will be investigated by some person who believes that something called a 'sole occupant' discount exists and that only people who live literally alone are entitled to it. This, of course, is nonsense.