Letter to the Rt. Hon. Ken Clarke Minister for Justice, 11th September 2010
Dear Minister,On the 20th May 2010 we wrote you about our long 7 -year struggle to bring to the notice of politicians the Revenue/VOAs corrupt acts against us. (No answer)
We described how one of the most inept and arrogant of government depts, the Revenue, has over many years, caused much damage to ‘honest government’.
We found the Revenues self-serving ‘old pals act’ more powerful than the ‘rule of law.
Despite having a disgraceful record, and amidst a new series of tax-calamities, the Revenue remains defiant in its self-serving deception. In a recent somewhat Owellian face-saving statement, this seriously contemptuous Revenue department claimed: “We want to give you a service that is even-handed, accurate and based on mutual trust and respect. We also want to make it easy as we can for you to get things right”
The Revenue, like other departments have totally lost touch re honest endeavour in their duty to ‘serve the public’ with some degree of honesty – not mealy-mouth excuses!
The Daily Express sees the Revenue as a sprawling empire of bureaucracy and waste. The Telegraph suggests the Revenue is seen as the ‘enemy’ Whilst the Independent suggests the Revenue have a culture of ‘bullying and fear’.
The nation is well aware, how over the years, untold millions have paid the wrong amount of tax. How the NAO held that the Revenue had overpaid tax credits to the tune of £6bn, whilst claimants had defrauded the system of some £3bn? It was claimed that there was an unacceptable high level of fraud and error. Following on from this continued civil service stupidity, some 80.0000 people were again given personal details of other claimants. And lately, details of 50.000 people who claim tax credits have again been posted to the wrong addresses.
We now learn that a senior HMRC civil servant David Hartnett is declared to have ‘a built-in arrogance’ re enormous tax errors. He suffers from the same contemptuous Whitehall arrogance to be found within numerous numbskull civil servants that have handled our Revenue case. He has been forced to make a ‘mealy mouthed’ apology to the nation, hopefully denting his ‘egotistical arrogance’.
This wine swilling gravy train abuser of public trust, is no stranger to the public sectors cover-up. He is said to be insular, supposedly unaware of his department’s abnormality and gross dysfunctionality and its corrupting influence that destroys public trust in governments handling of our taxes.
The nation asks why are we pouring money into this contemptuous Revenue dept.
We learnt in June that the PM had appointed you as International Anti-Corruption Champion, that you would work to stamp out incompetence bribery and corruption.
Those hundreds of thousands of us who have suffered from public sector deceit and fraudulence over the years are somewhat worried, just like Transparency International, that the necessary legal machinery will be somewhat ponderous. That this will somehow dilute the integrity of the original bold statement re tackling public sector ‘bribery and corruption’.
Its quite unforgivable that many politicians and officials have, over many years, kept a lid on serious public sector incompetents like David Hartnett in order to protect or advance their own careers.
Having been ‘hung out to dry’ for years by the public sectors cover-up culture, we have to continually restate our case against the Revenue/VOA. We also found just how inept and fraudulent the public sector can be. Now the Revenue is not necessarily the most corrupt or the most inefficient department. Severe public sector incompetence is widespread. So much damage has been done by government dept., that the vision of incompetent and fraudulent civil servants across the board is now a permanent fixture in the public’s mind.
In our case, Revenue/VOA fraudulently claimed that our banding appeal was ‘invalid’- it was a lie. It took us 16 months of angst to get their fraudulent ‘invalid’ verdict overturned. Then with cold brutality we were told that we would have to start the crooked Revenue process all over again.
I had cancer at the time and could not continue with my appeal. This misuse of power against victims of a corrupt complaints system encouraged me to fight on against public sector skulduggery fraud and corruption. It was then that I learnt that:
The public sectors ‘old pals acts’ are more powerful than the ‘rule of law’!
The VOA told us that a named person was handling our complaint – 18 months later we discovered that the person did not exist – so no one was handling our appeal; this was blatant civil service corruption of ‘good governance’. More corruption followed within the complaint procedure, aided and abetted by the ombudsman’s attempts to get the Revenue ‘off the hook’.
The nation is waking up to the gross dysfunctionality within the Revenue department, and wonders how politicians have allowed this long-term fraudulence of ‘good governance’ to exist for so long? The well documented long-term error strewn contempt and stupidity from the Revenue, with its tax errors and abuse of millions of personal details, makes the public realise that its about time the ‘couldn’t give a damn’ Revenue was ‘cleansed’ and a new honest ‘regime’ put in its place.
Despite this department being guilty of untold millions of errors, its many inept staff has the comfort of being protected by unions, the Cabinet Office, and friendly politicians. Just to give a view re Revenue ‘inner squalor’, it was once disclosed that HMRC takes most of the corruption across the board of all departments! Such is the depth of ‘inner squalor’ that has been allowed to thrive within the Revenue/VOA and Whitehall.
Why are we paying taxes to this bunch of arrogant thieves, who have surreptituously slid millions of our money into their civil service pension funds? This is theft from the public purse - just how many other fraudulent 'wheezes' are in operation or in the pipeline? Surely David Hartnett is aware of such skulduggery?
Despite this theft from the public purse, it would still be difficult to pin point the most inept, the most dysfunctional, the most corrupt department, because all departments are wasteful and tend to fail to deliver on government projects. However, with some panache and without a care in the world, they all manage to enjoy an enormous costly ‘sick note’ culture, and pay themselves millions in unwarranted bonuses; whilst millions go down the drain.
Whilst it is recognised there are many good civil servants, the incompetents, the fraudsters and crooks within their ranks are doing damage to our nations coffers.
Critics have rightly identified the civil service has an invisible and unaccountable group, all but invisible to scrutiny.
I am not a party hack, nor as can be seen, an academic. I am an 84-year old ex front-line soldier, a war pensioner who complained about a crooked Revenue/VOA employee; I was eventually transformed from being a whistleblower to become a victim of the corrupt public sectors complaint system that closes rank against complainants.
For my pains at being a whistleblower against the Revenue/VOA, I suffered ‘porkies’ from the protective ombudsman then, after we had asked her to resign, we suffered hounding evening phone calls? It would appear that public sector’s cover-up culture is always ready to spring into action to defend the indefensible!
The corruption of power continued as I eventually faced Revenue barristers and lawyers - a despotic misuse of government machinery.
This corruption of our human rights was particularly painful, as a front-line soldier, a war pensioner; I did not deserve to be so corruptly handled by such fraudulent government machinery. However, the Revenue/VOA miscreant was protected by an extremely costly and fraudulent government complaint procedure influenced by dodgy Revenue lawyers and ombudsman.
We again declare, that such public sector dishonesty is encouraged by the likes of Sir Gus ODonnell who with the panache of a Fagin, declares that civil servants if broken open, will disclose like a stick of rock running through them, the words Honesty, Objectivity, Integrity and Objectivity. Such blatant deceitful protection of the many seriously inept and fraudulent civil servants simply allows the decrepit status quo to flow like undiluted sewage throughout all departments to the detriment of good government.
The nation still suffers the continuing stench from well-documented fiddles within Parliament and Whitehall. Max Hastings declares ‘We have become prisoners of public services with vast powers and privileges, but woefully inadequate bosses, staff and sanctions for incompetence’.
Edward Leigh long-time chairman of the powerful Public Accounts Committee, who was well aware of public sector incompetence, called for an end to wasteful decision making and stated that the UK ‘rarely gets the best deal’ and is often ’ripped off’ by suppliers. In fact we are rapidly becoming a dysfunctional state – thanks largely to civil service incompetents and political acquiescence re inept and fraudulent civil servants.
Over many years there has been an enormous lack of integrity shown by our persecutors the Revenue/VOA. So much so, that recently a group of MPs held a special meeting in Westminster Hall calling this severely dysfunctional agency to account in order to save British Ports from going bankrupt etc. Many MPs attending castigated the Revenue/VOA’s stupidity along with its neglect and severe incompetence. It has been claimed that the VOA made so many errors they could not be put right.
One MP described the VOA as having a ‘litany of disasters’.
After listening to other MPs add to the ‘litany of disasters’ the Treasury issued a VOA executive ‘cover-up’ apology re its general stupidity and contempt of its public duty to deliver an honest public service. This Treasury ‘get out of jail’ apology was issued after many years of VOA neglect around the whole of Britain, and was described by one MP as being “ in the league of ‘mealy mouthed’ statements that made Pontious Pilot’s hand washing an act of generosity and decency”. Too often public sector apologies are no more than mealy-mouthed expressions of regret at being caught out.
We also received a Revenue/VOA ‘mealy-mouthed’ apology; it came about that the ICO instructed us to write to Mr Hallworth a VOA executive asking for information re our case. So we wrote to Mr Hallworth on the 24/5/06. He showed much contempt, re our case that we had to chase him up. We informed the ICO of this Executive’s dragging of feet, with the result the ICO informed us they had sent the VOA executive a Strongly Worded letter?
Astoundingly this seriously dysfunctional and contemptuous VOA Executive Hallworth, despite the ICO’s prodding, did not reply to us until 14 months later?
This VOA Executive penned his ‘mealy-mouthed’ apology when he wrote, (10/7/07) “ I would like to take this opportunity to apologise for my delay in writing?”
We repeat, this ‘mealy mouthed’ VOA apology came 14 months later, even though we and the ICO had been chasing up information? Such is the Revenue/VOAs contempt for good governance.
One of the seriously inept VOA executives was promoted to the Treasury. This old pals act promotion of someone who was clearly a bureaucratic incompetent (who was also involved in our case) is pure Treasury decadence; being clearly against the moral aspirations of the electorates desire for justice and ‘good governance’. In the House of Lords, in a debate re the Revenue/VOAs gross neglect, one member described this corrupt agency as making a ‘Cataclysmic series of errors’. Eric Pickles MP exposed how the VOA and Government deliberately covered up known errors in council tax bands – fraudulent connivance in filching from the electorate.
Such is the ‘inner squalor’ within parliament and Whitehall, that those we appealed to re corrupt civil servants acts against us were all caught up in Parliamentary or Whitehall deceit and worse. Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Jack Straw, Liam Byrne, were involved with the ‘snouts in the trough’ saga, while Sir Gus ODonnell and the ombudsman have been too protective of inept and fraudulent civil servants. The point we are making here is that those we had appealed to re corrupt acts by civil servants, would not have been clean enough to take the seriously fraudulent Revenue/VOA to task.
We repeat, that the ‘old pals act is more powerful than the ‘rule of law’.
The dodgy ombudsman system is appointed, but not regulated by parliament, just how democratic is that? The ombudsman office is largely a window dressing operation. Despite the kudos from the Equitable Life saga the proportion of complaints from the electorate that are investigated by ombudsman is extremely small – with little or no justice for the majority of complainants; they are left floundering as victims of deliberately engineered negligence.
In a recent report ‘Every complaint matters’ only 3% of complaint made to the ombudsman are actually investigated, the ombudsman system can be seen as a malfunctioning body. Investigating just 3% of complaints is an Orwellian political deception.
Much ‘slap on wrist’ injustice given out by ombudsman allowed many a crooked official and civil servant to get ‘off the hook’. Again politicians and governments have condoned this squalid misuse of power.
The public is unhappy with the systematic maladministration by ombudsman. Revealingly, more than 10% of complaints made to the largely inept PHSO result in a complaint being made against the incompetence and worse of the said PHSO itself.
It needs to be recognised that within the ombudsman system there is a cultural malaise that has purposely failed to tackle miscreant officials.
Yours sincerely,
AW&I Tanner cc to the many interested in public sector incompetence, fraud and corruption.