|
A quick Google produced the following:
Benefits advisor told Prudhoe woman to lie to tribunal
Posted by The Journal on Dec 23, 08 09:08 AM in News
Sandra MacKinnon
A benefits adviser who wrote a letter urging a client and her husband to lie to a tribunal panel was jailed yesterday for six months.
Paul Brennan ran Lancashire-based Benefit Information Services Ltd providing assistance for people making disability claims.
He drafted a letter to Sandra MacKinnon, pictured, from Prudhoe shortly before she was due to attend a resumed hearing in Newcastle into her long-running claim.
In it, he advised Mrs McKinnon to ask her husband to ring the tribunal and claim she was unfit to attend the resumed hearing because of illness.
He also said he would be contacting the tribunal claiming he had broken down on the way to the hearing.
But he landed himself in the dock at Newcastle Crown Court when the letter was mistakenly sent to the tribunal because of a clerical error.
Brennan, of Bamber Bridge, Preston, Lancashire, had denied doing acts tending and intending to pervert the course of justice but was convicted after a trial.
Paul Cross, defending, said: "The letter was drafted by him when he was under a great deal of stress that meant he could not prepare Mrs MacKinnon's case properly.
"The purpose of the suggestions he made was effectively to try and get an adjournment."
Jailing him for six months, Judge John Milford said Mrs MacKinnon, 50, was an honest woman who now understandably felt bewildered and upset by Brennan's behaviour.
He told Brennan: "Mr Cross submits that the lies you intended should be told to the tribunal did not go to the merits of Mrs MacKinnon's case only to a new hearing at which you would be better prepared.
"This is a case where you were urging others, your client and her husband, to deceive the tribunal. I am satisfied no sentence other than custody can be justified."
|
