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The City Council's Benefits Section was trying to recover an alleged overpayment of HB/CTB due to their claim that they had not been advised of the amount of a Tax Credits award (when in fact they had, but had lost the information). Because they had previously been notified by the claimant that a Tax Credits application was being considered, they admitted that the overpayment was non-fraudulent but attempted to recover it anyway.
Some time after this admission, they wrote to HMRC to ask about how much Tax Credits had been paid to the claimant. The letter heading on the letter to Tax Credits specified the Fraud Section as requesting the information, despite there never having been a fraud inquiry.
Later, at the Appeal hearing, appealing against the council's attempt to recover the 'overpayment', the Benefit Section's representative admitted, in front of the Tribunal Chairwoman! that they used the Fraud Section letterhead because that was the only way they could get information about Tax Credits from HMRC. In other words, they implicitly, and falsely, purported that a fraud investigation was under way in order to satisfy a criterion of HMRC's for divulging personal information.
This seems to me as though it might be a criminal offence but I'm not sure which. Any suggestions?
You would first of all need to find out what criteria the HMRC use for sending information out to see if they have done anything wrong. If they have it would probably be come under data protection laws.
However, I doubt that they received any information they were not entitled to by doing this. After all they need information on claimants tax credits to assess claims. More likely to get a slap on the wrist and told don't do it again than any real legal action taken.
From working in Local Government and liaising with others I know that it can it be very frustrating trying to get information from another Government department. You really need the information urgently due to case deadlines, etc but the other department are in no hurry to send it as this is extra work for them and they have work and deadlines of their own. Sometimes it can be a real battle to get any information at all.
When I was working on rent arrears cases often trying to get information from HB was torturous however, if we had a court hearing date then it was fairly easy to get information.
This sounds to me that this would be the case here - HMRC will take their time sending the information unless they see a real urgency in the matter. So the Benefits Section send it as a possible fraud case to make them send the information quicker (or to get them to send it at all).
It would be so much easier for everyone if the different benefits could be linked up so that people did not have to go through this nightmare of forms and proof of this and that every time they need to make a new/renew a claim. It would also be easier to uncover/prevent real fraud cases.
Yes, thanks for that, Aviva: it's obvious (now you mention it ) that the thing to do is to find out HMRC's rules for passing information to other organizations. I'm aware that Benefits and Tax agencies can share certain personal information but the representative definitely said that using the fraud section heading was the ONLY way to get the information. That might mean, of course, as you wrote, that HMRC needs incentive to provide it in a reasonable time. It's still pretty rough on the claimant, though, to have who-knows-how-many agencies with records that suggest that he was being investigated for fraud when he wasn't ... Thanks, again!
Misuse of 'Fraud section' headed letters?
of HB/CTB due to their claim that they had not been advised of the amount of a Tax Credits award (when in fact they had, but had lost the information). Because they had previously been notified by the claimant that a Tax Credits application was being considered, they admitted that the overpayment
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) that the thing to do is to find out HMRC's rules for passing information to other organizations. I'm aware that Benefits and Tax agencies can share certain personal information but the representative definitely said that using the fraud section heading was the ONLY way to get the information. That might mean, of course, as you wrote, that HMRC needs incentive to provide it in a reasonable time. It's still pretty rough on the claimant, though, to have who-knows-how-many agencies with records that suggest that he was being investigated for fraud when he wasn't ... Thanks, again!