Baroness Meacher
Main Page: Baroness Meacher (Crossbench - Life peer)Local Government Finance Bill
Baroness Meacher Excerpts
Baroness Meacher
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, in moving Amendment 6, I shall speak also to Amendment 7. Clause 13 provides for the creation of new criminal offences that could apply to claimants who provide information to the best of their ability, or indeed to advice workers acting in good faith on behalf of their clients. Many innocent people could find themselves liable to criminal charge or under investigation by the police. Proposed new Section 14B(1)(b) introduces a criminal offence for failing to comply with any requirement under specified regulations—I will not go into the detail of the regulations—or failing to comply with the requirements of any arrangements entered into in accordance with such regulations. Proposed new Section 14B(1)(c) creates a criminal offence for,
“failing, when required to do so … to provide any information or document in connection with a person’s liability to pay council tax”.
The sub-paragraphs also apply to a refusal to comply, but these amendments do not apply to people who refuse to comply, because presumably if someone refuses to comply, that is done knowingly and willingly. I am focusing simply on the failure to comply, and I shall try to explain why we need some adjustment. The amendments require that a person knowingly fails to comply with a requirement if their failure is to amount to a criminal offence. My noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd will suggest some alternative wording that might be introduced into this proposed new section, and indeed I sent a note to the Minister to explain that.
I want briefly to explain why the thrust of the amendment is important. Clause 13 will not apply to the great majority of council tax payers whose council tax is based on the predetermined value of their property. They do not have to submit information about their income year by year. The people who may find themselves charged with an offence will be single and vulnerable people entitled to a discount assessed on the basis of their circumstances.
The groups of vulnerable people at risk of criminal charge will include those with serious mental impairment and their carers; spouses or dependants of foreign students who may not speak English very well; people in prison or other forms of detention or in a bail hostel; and people in hospital or in care homes and hostels. Without help, these claimants are at risk of providing wrong information. Many of them have difficulty getting through each day without worrying about whether a form they completed months previously remains correct in every detail.
The circumstances of these vulnerable people often change frequently. People with chronic conditions, for example, move in and out of hospital fairly regularly. The citizen can never be sure, at the time of or after submitting information, that the regulations will not have changed since the year before. A significant risk to council tax payers arises from Regulations 3, 10 and 11 of the Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992, which require information to be supplied by taxpayers within 21 days if they are served by written notice or assumptions change in the course of the financial year. If Clause 13 of the Bill is passed without our amendments, council tax payers who are unaware of Regulations 3, 10 and 11—surely nearly all of us—and who therefore fail to act in accordance with them become potentially liable to a criminal prosecution.
Let us put ourselves in the position of someone coming out of hospital, probably still severely unwell. These days, as we know, people do not remain in hospital a single day longer than they absolutely have to. They will probably find a pile of post on their doorstep. We can expect those people to concentrate on getting well, coping with daily life, shopping, cooking and doing the usual daily chores. It may be some weeks before they feel up to dealing with the pile of unopened mail—maybe beyond the 21-day limit. Such a council tax payer will not have knowingly failed to comply with any requirement for information, yet they may find in that pile of mail an order requiring them to provide information which they will inadvertently have failed to comply with. Can any one of us seriously suggest that, in that situation, that person will have committed a crime?
Alan Murdie, a barrister who edited the CPAG handbook on council tax for 14 years and who has kindly briefed me for this debate, is concerned that this situation will be made worse because the standards of administration of council tax are apparently worse than at any time in the past 20 years. He is well placed to make that judgment. At best, says Alan Murdie, people will be pursued in error and, at worst—I must say that this shocked me, but I trust this person who deals with these situations all the time—the provisions will be used to extort money from people by unscrupulous officials. Mr Murdie says:
“The council tax is the most complicated local taxation system ever devised. Even after 20 years many aspects of the tax are unclear and open to argument and errors are rife throughout the system. The council tax has gone beyond what ordinary members of the public can understand”.
The council tax benefit regulations alone are apparently longer than the whole of the General Rate Act 1967.
Z2K is experiencing a growing number of cases involving vulnerable people being targeted with demands for money which they do not owe—that, for me, is deeply distressing. Just one example is that of a young man who was threatened with enforcement and imprisonment for tax that he did not owe to Southwark Council. He committed suicide. How many more people are at risk of suicide if these provisions go ahead without any mens rea requirement? The Government risk a re-run of the 1990s, when thousands of people were wrongly jailed for local tax default, resulting in more than 1,000 cases being overturned on appeal in the High Court on judicial review and in cases coming before the European Court of Human Rights.
The amendments will not prevent any vulnerable people being wrongly charged over debts they do not have. The amendments will, however, reduce the number of such cases—I hope significantly. I know that the Minister is aware of the widespread concerns about Clause 13. I trust that the Government will be able to make the limited concession encompassed in the amendments.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I have listened with sympathy to the noble Baroness, but I think that she is tackling the wrong end of the spectrum. If it was as she suggested, we would certainly need to do something about it. I may need to give the following explanation.
The clause is intended to allow flexibility to create offences similar to those already in existence relating to council tax benefit. It does not create any additional offence beyond those. The offence that exists is under Section 111 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992. It is that of refusing or neglecting to comply with a requirement to enter into arrangements allowing authorised officers to access electronic records. It is also an offence under that section for a person to refuse to provide information or produce any document when required to do so in accordance with the legislation.
The information may be required from one of several classes of persons and bodies: for example, from banks, employers or utility companies. We seek the flexibility to create a similar offence in regulations where a person falling under those categories fails to comply with the requirement to supply information needed in relation to the council tax support scheme. To be clear, that would relate to circumstances where an individual or organisation holding information about a council tax payer has failed to provide information when required to do so. A small number or persons, such as the self-employed, might fall into both categories, but this is not about requesting information directly from vulnerable taxpayers, as has been suggested. I hope that the noble Baroness will be assured on that point.
Baroness Meacher
I am grateful to the Minister, but she referred to the fact that failure may not necessarily apply to the person themselves. My concern is that it can apply to a vulnerable person—just out of hospital, for example—who has not opened their mail and who unwittingly therefore falls foul of compliance with regulations. That is my concern. There may be all sorts of crimes in relation to bankers and what have you, but my concern is for vulnerable people. It seems from the wording that those people could be caught up in those crimes.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I am seeking advice from the Box about the words, “not necessarily”. My understanding is that this is not about the person concerned; this is about organisations from which information may be sought with regard to the ability to pay council tax or possible fraud. It is not about the individual taxpayer.
Perhaps I may read what has been passed to me, because it is important. To be clear, the powers that the noble Baroness seeks to amend relate to powers to require information about a council taxpayer—for example, about their income. Many investigations take place across the system. The powers recreate those which exist in relation to council tax benefit, as I said, and regulations made under the powers are subject to the affirmative procedure, so will be subject to debate in both Houses.
What the noble Baroness seeks to achieve is not part of the provision, because it does not affect the person themselves—the noble Baroness described accurately people who might not be able to give that information, who may be vulnerable and who should be looked after in a different way by the council.
I share the desire of the noble Baroness to protect vulnerable taxpayers, but the amendment will not, for the most part, impact on them. It affects powers that would apply only to those who hold information about the taxpayer—I say this again because we need to be clear about it—not to council tax payers themselves and only in certain circumstances which recreate offences which currently exist under council tax benefit. Those are criminal offences, as I outlined.
Council tax payers who accidentally or unintentionally fail to provide information to the local authority should not be prosecuted or convicted for a genuine mistake, but that is not what the power provides for.
I recognise the concerns expressed by noble Lords, but I think that the noble Baroness is shooting at the wrong fox. When the regulations come to this House, which they will in due course, we will be able to make that absolutely clear. I have done my best to assure the noble Baroness that this is not about individual taxpayers who should not be pursued, but is about where information may be required to see whether it is appropriate to undertake further investigation. I hope that with those explanations the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Meacher
I am very grateful for the Minister’s response and to my noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for their contributions to this debate. I have to say that if I am shooting at the wrong fox, the fox is very well camouflaged because I do not see it. It is not clear to me—perhaps it should be, but it is not—that the person and their advice worker, who is also feeling very vulnerable in this situation, cannot be caught up in this legislation. Therefore, I ask the Minister for further discussions about this to see whether there is a way of improving the wording to clarify that the council tax payer and their adviser will not and cannot be charged with a criminal offence when they have acted in good faith.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, it is not possible to change the legislation because we are in the last dying hours of passing it through this House, but the regulations will come to the House for the affirmative procedure. I am happy to have further discussions with the noble Baroness in the interim.
Baroness Meacher
I am very grateful for that reassurance. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.