Scattered thoughts

A few things on today's news that the DPP is planning on using fraud law against "benefit cheats".

1. Interesting timing given that legal aid is being dramatically scaled back. Does this mean that people falsely charged will find it harder to gain adequate representation?
   
   • This is especially concerning given that "Current rules which say that benefit fraud cases of less than £20,000 are automatically dealt with in the magistrates court, where the maximum sentence is 12 months, will also be abolished, the CPS said."


2. Anyone who is convicted will find it harder to get a job in future, thus potentially keeping them on benefits for much longer.


3. According to the DWP themselves, in 2011/2012 overpayments due to fraud accounted for 0.7% of all claims. In the same financial year, DWP error accounted for 0.5% of of claims, and claimant error for 0.8%. This means that it's much more likely that any overpayment is due to error than genuine fraud. Has the DPP explained what safeguards will be in place to ensure that people who are being overpaid due to error (their own or that of DWP) are not facing 10 year sentences for "fraud"?


4. What safeguards will be in place to ensure that disabled people, who face significant barriers in communication with the DWP/HMRC, will not be unfairly penalised by this change in policy from the DPP? This is a serious problem already for those who are most likely to need to claim benefits, and being prosecuted with a potential 10 year sentence is likely to cause those who can least cope significant distress.


5. The cost of keeping someone in prison is £65,000 for the first year, and £40,000 for every year after that. It's possible that it could cost the taxpayer more to keep someone in prison after this change than finding another way to punish genuine cheats.
   
   • Prison isn't supposed to be about punishment anyway. The Ministry of Justice state that "Her Majesty's Prison Service serves the public by keeping in custody those committed by the courts. Our duty is to look after them with humanity and help them lead law-abiding and useful lives in custody and after release." (Emphasis mine)


6. I've been reminded by @bencc about the UK Parliament expenses scandal where expenses were abused (and many would say were claimed fraudulently in many cases). Only a few were ever prosecuted and those that were, were charged with "False Accounting", not fraud. Similarly, charges resulting from the financial collapse of 2007/8 have been nearly non-existant. The decision by the DPP today shows that there is one rule for those in power and with money, and another for those who are below the breadline.

I suspect that very few (if any) of these points have been considered by either the government, or the DPP. What seems clear from both the policy and its timing is that this is a purely political decision, made to continue the demonisation of those who are in receipt of benefits.

ETA: This tweet shows another side of this decision (Universal Credit), which I had not considered.

Under uni credit, due to constant reporting of circumstances, the moments where one could be blamed for fraud will increase substantially

— Shiv Malik (@shivmalik1) September 16, 2013

In trying to wind up mum's estate we have been stymied at many turns by a complete lack of paperwork. Apparently mum didn't like to keep paperwork of any type. I won't go in to too much detail here, because it makes me grumpy and you don't need to know about it.

For one of the things I need to prove I am mum's daughter, which apparently involves sending in my birth certificate, and this is where a huge problem I've been meaning to correct for a while comes in. At some point in my growing up my long form birth certificate vanished. No idea where it went. I don't remember ever having it. When I applied for student finance in 2002 I had to physically take my short form certificate in to the council so they could photocopy it.

The reason I had to take my short form birth certificate in person? Ah yes, that would be because my parents in their infinite wisdom, stuck my short form certificate in to my baby book. With glue.

Generally I've managed to avoid it being a problem for some years. I have other forms of ID. However, this set of paperwork that needs it has forced me to order one on a rush from the General Register Office, who I have to say are fantastic. I paid a premium for a next day service and they delivered. You can order certificates online, and if you can wait 16 days the price is a fairly reasonable £9.25 (to put in context, to get a death certificate copy from the registry office after registration is completed is £7 - if you get copies at the time of registration it's quite a lot less).

The GRO helpfully search one year either side of the year you name, just in case you're wrong about the exact year - which is what they had to do when I asked for a copy of daddy's death certificate (mum didn't keep that) because I had no idea when the death was actually registered (he died on Christmas day, so the registry office wouldn't have been open much between christmas day 1991 and january 1992).

I paid more than the £9.25 for my birth certificate because I needed it as a rush job, and they've delivered. Really the price serves me right for not just ordering one when I've thought about it countless other times over the years. But it's now here and I can finish that lot of paperwork and yay! And hopefully I'll never have to go through the embarrassment of sending my baby book anywhere to prove who I am in the future.

Typical, that on the day the Government withdraws the plan to keep MPs expenses secret my MP should write back to me about voting against the proposed measure.

For good measure, I'm putting a copy of his reply here. Bits in italics were handwritten and not always very clear ;)

( Letter from Julian Brazier )

In other news, should you have any spare cash lying around (I know that this is unlikely given the current economic climate) and fancy putting it towards a cool cause, the National Railway Museum in York are trying to gather funds so they can finish their restoration of The Flying Scotsman. "Steam our Scotsman" - the campaign to raise money to finish the restoration.

I got this from jmkg, and she explains it best, so I'll let her:

"Please sign the petition at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/flexibleleave/ which was set up this week. The current system of new parent's leave in the UK is very unbalanced, where the mother can take 52 weeks off (13 unpaid) but her partner can only have 2 weeks off at a low rate of pay. We believe that this needs to be changed.

We believe that families should be able to choose what works for them, rather than assuming that the mother will always be the parent who will be taking the childcare leave. In a lot of situations the mother may wish not to have a full year off work, or the family may not be able to afford for her to. Yet there is no provision to transfer any leave to the mother's partner, who equally may well prefer to have more than the two weeks allocated to spend with their new baby. Naturally a lot of families would still choose the traditional route of the mother taking the full leave, but *there should be the choice*. Please sign the petition even if you don't think it affects you personally, but you think that other families should be able to choose what's right for their situation.

A flexible system of leave could also have the advantage of reducing sexist employment behaviours. MEP Godfrey Bloom (UKIP) said "No self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age", but if parental leave wasn't automatically assigned to the mother then a major incentive for unscrupulous businesses *not* to hire women of child-bearing age would disappear.

The petition doesn't propose any increase in the overall amount of leave allowed to new parents, though that could be a focus for future campaigns. It is just intended as a first step - a large first step, which could make the world a fairer place without costing money for businesses (a major reason why other proposals to make the leave allowances fairer have failed).

What you can do: please sign the petition, and visit our website at equalrights.org.uk for more information. Please pass this message onto other people: tell your friends, tell your online communities, get people interested, help spread the word!"

I have to admit I'm impressed. Or possibly more shocked. After I emailed edexcel two days ago (after the yelling ranty call to the tax office following major incompetence and stuff) I expected very little in the way of either cooperation, speed or competence and this morning my statement of earnings turned up. It's even been signed by a real person! I'll be taking a photocopy of that then before I send it off to be eaten up by HM Revenue and Customs. Still, as I said, I'm impressed. It seems the key to dealing with edexcel is to set your sights and expectations very low and then they may actually impress you!

In other news, I went to curry to celebrate Adam's birthday (on Tuesday evening), which was lovely. I also met up with Oziris for coffee (on Wednesday), which we must do more often and today I looked after Sue's baby, John, who is delightful and lovely and not terribly hard work (or at least wasn't today) - the best part is having a nice time and handing him back afterwards! Finally tonight foo and rah came round and we had uber lasagne of doom. Yum.

Now I'm off to bed - I have a counsellor's thing tomorrow, preceeded by a gulbenkian breakfast :D Atfer that the day is mine. Any ideas? ;)

Honestly, it's days like this that make me wonder if I'll ever be a useful member of society again! (I should write a CBT sheet for that thought I suppose)

Anyway, I woke up in a pretty good mood and went to collect the post. The first one I opened was from HM Revenue and Customs. I should mention at this point that I am waiting on money (over £500) to come back from them that I overpaid in tax last year. This has been going on for four months. I sent them a letter when I got my P60 from Kent (which was when I realised just how many squillions of pounds I had overpaid) enclosing my P60 and my forms from edexcel (essentially a payslip, but it's all they give me - edexcel don't issue P60s). When I first called in April to find out what I needed to do to claim back my tax I was told these forms would be sufficient. I got a letter in August (two months exactly since they recieved my original letter) asking me to fill out my employment history for 2006. I did that and sent it back. Cue the clock starting again on my claim (they say it'll be up to two months from the date of my last communication arriving with them). More or less two months since I sent back that form I get another letter today, saying that they've sent back my P60 (which wasn't enclosed) and that my stuff from edexcel was not sufficient, despite what I had been told four months ago.

At the moment I seem to be able to go between extremes of emotions. I ended up getting very angry very quickly and I called them and first yelled at the person who answered the phone and then requested a supervisor and yelled at her. When I'd yelled at them for about 20 minutes about how the legnth of time wasn't acceptable, nor was the fact my P60 was MIA, nor was the conflicting advice I had got from their office I got off the phone to them and burst in to tears. I went from angry to very sad and virtually helpless in a matter of seconds. Now I feel bad for yelling at them. I've done jobs like that and I know it's not their fault, but I was very angry and had to take it out on someone. I called edexcel who don't do P60s and are instead sending me a statement of earnings. I'm now more than a little terrified. I am waiting for them to send me the right document as soon as possible. I'm basically combining the incompetence of Edexcel with the incompetence of the tax office. I'm starting to wonder if I'll see my money this side of Christmas.

As I said above, it's days like this that make me wonder if I can ever be a useful member of society again. It probably doesn't help that my hormones are all over the place at the moment, as I have come off the pill to see if it helps with my depression. At the moment though I just feel even more out of whack than before. Argh. I'm also annoyed at myself. It's moments like this that I feel a real burden on those who are close to me, especially my husband. Don't worry, I'm not going to do anything silly, I've never been that depressed. I just needed to get it all out. There.

By the way, I still haven't filled in the forms for Incapacity Benefit. I'm so scared of getting them wrong. Wow. Talk about lame excuses.

Honestly, it's days like this that make me wonder if I'll ever be a useful member of society again! (I should write a CBT sheet for that thought I suppose)

Anyway, I woke up in a pretty good mood and went to collect the post. The first one I opened was from HM Revenue and Customs. I should mention at this point that I am waiting on money (over £500) to come back from them that I overpaid in tax last year. This has been going on for four months. I sent them a letter when I got my P60 from Kent (which was when I realised just how many squillions of pounds I had overpaid) enclosing my P60 and my forms from edexcel (essentially a payslip, but it's all they give me - edexcel don't issue P60s). When I first called in April to find out what I needed to do to claim back my tax I was told these forms would be sufficient. I got a letter in August (two months exactly since they recieved my original letter) asking me to fill out my employment history for 2006. I did that and sent it back. Cue the clock starting again on my claim (they say it'll be up to two months from the date of my last communication arriving with them). More or less two months since I sent back that form I get another letter today, saying that they've sent back my P60 (which wasn't enclosed) and that my stuff from edexcel was not sufficient, despite what I had been told four months ago.

At the moment I seem to be able to go between extremes of emotions. I ended up getting very angry very quickly and I called them and first yelled at the person who answered the phone and then requested a supervisor and yelled at her. When I'd yelled at them for about 20 minutes about how the legnth of time wasn't acceptable, nor was the fact my P60 was MIA, nor was the conflicting advice I had got from their office I got off the phone to them and burst in to tears. I went from angry to very sad and virtually helpless in a matter of seconds. Now I feel bad for yelling at them. I've done jobs like that and I know it's not their fault, but I was very angry and had to take it out on someone. I called edexcel who don't do P60s and are instead sending me a statement of earnings. I'm now more than a little terrified. I am waiting for them to send me the right document as soon as possible. I'm basically combining the incompetence of Edexcel with the incompetence of the tax office. I'm starting to wonder if I'll see my money this side of Christmas.

As I said above, it's days like this that make me wonder if I can ever be a useful member of society again. It probably doesn't help that my hormones are all over the place at the moment, as I have come off the pill to see if it helps with my depression. At the moment though I just feel even more out of whack than before. Argh. I'm also annoyed at myself. It's moments like this that I feel a real burden on those who are close to me, especially my husband. Don't worry, I'm not going to do anything silly, I've never been that depressed. I just needed to get it all out. There.

By the way, I still haven't filled in the forms for Incapacity Benefit. I'm so scared of getting them wrong. Wow. Talk about lame excuses.

I got home after a rather lovely evening with benc, fooflington, rahslowe, claire_tanner and her Ben and found a letter from the DVLA on the doormat, addressed to me.

"Shit" says I. "Why are they sending me letters?"

My guilty concience saw a speeding ticket, 3 penalty points on my licence and a fine.

It was a reminder that my car tax was due.

Clearly I've been doing things I shouldn't have been ;)

I also got a "sorry we missed you" card from Interflora. Will need to go to town tomorrow to pick them up. No idea who the hell would be sending me such things. I'm really rather confused right now.

If it was you, thank you in advance.