I have an income support overpayment appeal later this month. One of the (many) issues which will be raised at the appeal will be the reliability of my client's statements. Part of the 'evidence' being put forward by the DWP to illustrate the unreliability of my client's statements concern an application for credit the client made several years ago. As part of the application for that credit the client made "...false declarations regarding employment on credit applications". I suspect that false declarations on credit applications are not unusual. And that such declarations may not be good indicators to brand other statements by a client as unreliable. I would apprieciate any information/reference that indicates how common it is for credit applicants to make false statements on their credit applications.

How have they got hold of these applications? Authorisation to gather evidence is provided by part VI Admin Act and I doubt that searching for details about a claimants credibility comes within s 109B. You might want to check also that they have provided evidence of their authority to snoop as required under s109B(4)(a).

I assume the I/S overpayment was the end result of a fraud investigation, because as said, fraud officers do certain powers to go looking for wayward bank accounts etc without signed Authorisations: I didn't think this stretched to credit applications though.

Even then, any Tribunal being only human, is going to be prejudiced from the moment they see that evidence - is it permissable? An appeal should be heard and decided upon on the merits of the case in hand - not coloured by previous history - In a normal Court of Law, previous convictions (not previous suspicions of possible unrelated misbehaviour) are brought out after one has been found guilty, not before, are they not? There has to be a principle of Law in here somewhere...

Thanks for the replies. The information was gathered as part of an investigation re council tax. During an interview with LA fraud investigators the client was informed that "...a credit search had shown a number of credit agreements..." in the client's name and that a number of those credit agreements related to a friend's business. The fraud officers were particularly interested in establishing a close relationship between the owner of the business and my client. The original IS overpayment decision, 2001, heavily relied on evidence provided by the LA fraud investigators.