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Selected Cases and Summaries of Completed Investigations - April to September 2000
Volume 3 - 3rd REPORT - SESSION 2000-2001
Chapter 1
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITY
12. Case No. C.1286/00
Benefits Agency: administrative failings led to the arrest of a woman on warrant Summary
A man complained about the treatment of his daughter-in-law by the Benefits Agency. Following a fraud enquiry at a company Mrs A was making small repayments of benefit that had been overpaid. She and her partner then personally informed the Benefits Agency of their impending marriage and new address. That information was not properly logged and Mrs A was summoned (at her old address) to appear in court. She did not appear and she was subsequently arrested on a warrant obtained by the Benefits Agency. Eventually, after the referring Member of Parliament had made representations, the Benefits Agency paid £250 to Mrs A for gross embarrassment. After the Ombudsman's intervention, the Benefits Agency paid an additional £500 for the humiliation caused to Mrs A, and offered more fulsome apologies.
Full text
1. Mr X complained on behalf of his daughter-in-law, Mrs A, that the Benefits Agency (BA) failed to update their records of Mrs A's personal details, despite having been informed of changes to her marital status and her new address. That failure led to a summons being taken out against her, and to the gross humiliation of her subsequent arrest.
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Background
2. Income support is a non-contributory cash benefit for those who are not in full time work and whose resources are insufficient for their needs. Single parents with dependent children are not required to register for work but it is a condition of receiving income support that all earnings must be declared and that a person may not work more than 16 hours a week without losing all income support entitlement. At the time relevant to this complaint the first £15 of a single parent's part time earnings were disregarded for the calculation of income support but the earnings still had to be declared.
3. BA may conduct special exercises, known as fraud drives, to detect and stop benefit fraud being committed by identified groups of employees. Fraud drives may be conducted against the employees of a particular employer or against a particular type of employment. Where BA take a "bulk prosecution" decision concerning every case discovered on a fraud drive, they do so regardless of the sum of money involved. Once the details of the case have been presented to the local magistrates court in a process known as the "laying of informations", the case will proceed irrespective of whether the outstanding debt has been reduced or repaid by the date of the hearing.
4. Mrs A was known by her maiden name until her marriage on 27 February 1998 but for ease of reference I refer to her as Mrs A throughout the report. Her husband, Mr Z, is thus distinguished from the complainant.
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Jurisdiction
5. The commencement or conduct of civil or criminal proceedings before any court of law in the United Kingdom is outside the Ombudsman's jurisdiction, and I mention court proceedings only to set in context BA's handling of Mrs A's case.
BA's comments on the complaint
6. BA's then Chief Executive acknowledged that communications between different sections of Mrs A's local office had broken down and that she had not received a reasonable standard of service. He said that the local office had correctly followed all the procedures for dealing with a change of address, but since some of the recovery of overpayment records were no longer available, there was "potential" for an administrative error to have occurred. The Chief Executive said that, having examined Mrs A's case afresh, BA had decided to make an additional consolatory payment of £500 (£250 having been awarded following the Member's representations - paragraph 12.14). He had apologised personally to Mrs A for any inconvenience caused.
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Investigation
7. 1995
On 14 December 1995 Mrs A claimed and received income support for herself and her three children.
8. 1997
In May 1997 BA conducted a fraud drive at the company for whom Mrs A was working part-time. On 1 July BA interviewed Mrs A about her employment following which an adjudication officer decided, on 11 August, that the sum of £55.61 income support had been overpaid to her and was recoverable. Several other cases of people working at the company were considered at the same time.
9. 1998
On 7 January 1998 Mr Z claimed jobseeker's allowance for himself and Mrs A who returned her income support order book and reported her changed circumstances to BA's local office that same day. BA's records included an internal proforma dated 28 January concerning the deduction of monies for water rates which had previously been taken from Mrs A's benefit (whose name and national insurance number were quoted). On 16 February Mr Z reported that he and Mrs A were moving on 21 February to a new (specified) address. He also told the local authority of his change of address. The local authority in turn informed BA who acknowledged the information on 4 March. In the meantime Mr and Mrs Z were married on 27 February. BA subsequently received a copy of the marriage certificate.
10. On 19 February the local magistrates court summoned Mrs A to appear on 2 April to answer the informations laid by BA. The certificate of service showed that the summons, which was returned to BA on 18 March marked "gone away", had been sent to Mrs A's old address. BA instructed their representative that as the summons had not been served, he should apply for an arrest warrant at the hearing on 2 April. The prosecution report shows that as the defendant had not appeared in court, a warrant was issued for her to attend on 30 April. Mrs A was subsequently arrested and then appeared in court on 8 June. The hearing was adjourned to 18 June by which time the overpayment had reduced by instalments to £7.43 which was later recovered from Mr Z's benefit.
11. On 14 July 1998 Mr X asked BA to explain their conduct of the case. At a meeting on 6 August the sector manager explained the policy of dealing equally with everyone in a bulk prosecution (paragraph 12.4) and denied that Mrs A had been told that she would not be prosecuted. The sector manager said that although Mrs A had told BA about her change of circumstances in January 1998, she had only given them her previous name and address and her claim then became dormant. On 8 August Mr X told BA that his son and Mrs A had jointly reported their change of address and prospective marriage. He felt that they had done all that was required of them and asked why BA had issued an arrest warrant when the defendant's address was not "unknown". On 25 August BA replied that no details of his daughter-in-law's circumstances had been noted on her file as she was no longer claiming benefit in her own right. They said that it was normal practice to ask the court to issue an arrest warrant where a summons had been returned "address unknown".
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12. 1999
On 3 June 1999 a local Citizens Advice Bureau told BA that Mrs A wished to make a formal complaint about her treatment and subsequent arrest. They contended that BA must have held all the relevant information because there had been no problem in receiving Mrs A's instalment repayments following her change of address. They asked why BA had not requested the magistrates court to issue a bail warrant and said it was evident that there was no investigation of her case after the warrant had been returned undelivered. They said that had the case been handled properly the trauma of the arrest could have been avoided; they pressed BA to award compensation. On 9 June BA acknowledged the Bureau's letter and consulted solicitors who advised, on 8 July, that in sending the summons to the last known address, BA had satisfied the rules of service. Thereafter they were entitled to apply for a warrant. BA's special payments unit should consider any issue of compensation. On 18 August that unit decided that there had been no maladministration, as Mrs A had not given her new surname. They regarded the warrant for arrest as having been appropriate. They informed her accordingly. On 13 September Mr X said that, as BA had been told about the forthcoming marriage, they had (by default) been given his daughter-in-law's new surname, and records had not been maintained accurately. On 24 September the special payments unit told Mr X that although BA had been told about the impending marriage and change of address they were unaware of Mrs A's married name and could not update her records. They accepted that an error had occurred but did not consider that Mrs A had suffered gross embarrassment or inconvenience, or severe distress. On 1 October Mr X told BA that it should have been obvious that Mrs A would change her name on marriage unless she indicated otherwise. He was adamant that BA had been given all the relevant information to enable them to issue the summons to the correct address and in the right name. He said that Mrs A had been arrested in front of her three young children; that she had been detained in a police cell and subsequently handcuffed and removed to court where she had been further detained until her appearance in court. He described her experience as a gross humiliation and said he found the unit's letter to be unhelpful and insulting.
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13. On 12 October the Member made representations on Mrs A's behalf expressing considerable dissatisfaction at the treatment that Mrs A had suffered and calling for substantial recompense. On 18 October the special payments team decided to award £250 for gross embarrassment. They apologised separately to Mr X and to his daughter-in-law for "the mistake which led to this claim", making payment on 3 November.
Later developments
14. On hearing of the proposal to increase Mrs A's award by £500 (paragraph 12.7) Mr X told the Ombudsman's staff that he was mainly concerned to secure a more fulsome apology from BA.
Findings and conclusion
15. In my view, by agreeing in October 1999 to make a consolatory payment to Mrs A, BA had effectively abandoned their previous stance: that ignorance of her married name explained their pursuit of Mrs A by means of an arrest warrant. It was right that they should give up such an untenable position. After all Mr Z and Mrs A had gone to considerable lengths (paragraph 12.10) to keep the authorities informed of their planned marriage and new address.
16. In authorising a payment of £250 BA considered that departmental failings had caused Mrs A "gross embarrassment". Given the circumstances of her case I agree with Mr X that the word "humiliation" would have been a more appropriate description. While I very much welcome the then Chief Executive's decision to award a further £500, I criticise those drafting his personal apology to Mrs A in terms of " any inconvenience which this Agency may have caused" (paragraph 12.7). I asked the new Chief Executive if she would be prepared, through the report, to offer her sincere personal apologies to Mrs A that BA's lack of care in 1998 had led to what must have been a distressing and humiliating experience. She gladly did so.
17. I regard the new Chief Executive's apologies to Mrs A and the payment in all of £750 to her to be a suitable outcome to Mr X's justified complaint.
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