DTI's response to the complaint
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73. Where I decide to conduct an investigation into a complaint referred to me, the provisions of section 7(1) of the 1967 Act require me to afford the principal officer of the department or authority concerned an opportunity to comment on any allegations contained in the complaint. In response to the statement of complaint in Mrs A’s case DTI said that the scheme rules had made clear that compensation was only payable for the last period of continuous employment on Icelandic water vessels that lasted for two years or more and that ended after 1 January 1974. Any break of more than twelve weeks away from fishing in Icelandic waters broke continuity if other work was done during the break. DTI said the independent adjudicator had rejected Mrs A’s appeal on 18 May 2002. The adjudicator had accepted that DTI was right to pay Mrs A only for the period after 19 May 1972. In his letter to Mrs A, the adjudicator explained that the reason why Mr A fished on the Saxon Forward (a non-valid vessel) was quite understandable but, under the rules of the scheme, it constituted a ‘relevant break’. The decision of the adjudicator was final. DTI did not believe that the only reason why Mr A fished on the Saxon Forward (a non-valid vessel) was that he was left with no alternative by the Unemployment Benefit Office, while waiting for a vessel to be refitted. It appeared there were other factors. They referred to a letter from Mrs A’s representative of 26 April 2002, in which he stated that Mr A had stayed at home at the relevant time in 1972 to look after his wife, who was in poor health. They also referred to a letter from Mrs A to the adjudicator of 26 February 2002, in which she stated that her husband fished on the North Sea at that time in 1972 on the advice of a doctor because of her health.
74. DTI explained that the purpose of the twelve week rule was that the scheme should only compensate those who earned their living almost exclusively from Icelandic water fishing – people who had been doing other work had not suffered such a serious loss of employment. If a former trawlerman was sick, unemployed, suspended, sitting for a mate’s ticket or waiting for a refit, it did not break continuity. The only thing that broke continuity in a between-voyage gap of more than twelve weeks was ‘work other than as an Icelandic water trawlerman’. It was almost inevitably the case that, wherever a line was drawn, whether it was a cut-off date or some other qualifying condition, someone would fall just the wrong side of it. DTI had taken the view that it was necessary to set limits in that way, otherwise they would have had to decide between cases involving all kinds of ‘personal’ issues and that is what would have made the scheme almost impossible to administer.
75. DTI subsequently told me that officials believed that they had understood the ‘pool system’ and the nature of the distant water industry when devising the scheme. One official involved in the scheme had worked on the previous ex gratia scheme 1993-95, and in setting up that scheme officials had consulted the Sea Fishing Authority and some trawler owners. While DTI accepted that, with hindsight, the design and launch of the compensation scheme in October 2000 had not been to the standard expected, officials had researched MAFF and Hansard extracts and a book on the trawling industry when considering various options for the scheme. Although they acknowledged that they had failed to fully review the scheme when problems arose, they had addressed those problems, albeit incrementally, and had then reassessed claims already paid. They said that they believed they had fully recognised the complexity of the distant water industry and had made the scheme as flexible as they could, and that at the time they could not have done any better. As to National Insurance records, while they agreed that they had not approached the Revenue about such records until over a year after the scheme was launched, they said that there had not been any difficulty previously in obtaining that information for the 1993-95 ex gratia scheme (as a result of which they did hold National Insurance information on some trawlermen), and so they could not have foreseen that there was no gateway with the Revenue for that information when the scheme was devised.
