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DWP Compliance
Does anyone have any details or guidance on the powers/limitations on the powers of Compliance?
We have someone who says they are the victim of a malicious report (working, high capital, the lot) ; Compliance are, amongst other things, asking for banking details going back ten years. Neither the claimant nor the bank has these.
Does anyone have experience/information that will help?
There is a power to require the bank to produce the documents in a case of suspected fraud - see s109B Social Security Administration Act 1998.
They can obviously, beyond that, ask you to provide whatever they like. If you don’t have it (say you dropped it into the North Sea - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/feb/14/wagatha-christie-case-coleen-rooney-rebekah-vardy-ex-agent) then you can’t provide it and so be it.
If DWP are unable to acquire it through other means, then a decision maker or tribunal could theoretically draw an adverse inference if they didn’t believe your explanation as to why you can’t provide it.
There is guidance on fraud investigations here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fraud-investigations-staff-guide
Thanks for this, Elliot.
In my experience part of the problem is that compliance officers act as a ‘law unto themselves’ and make unreasonable requests for information based on no more than a ‘hunch’ (based on malicious allegations etc) or because they don’t appear to understand the qualifying conditions for the benefit concerned. This can result in protracted correspondence arguing that the request is unreasonable or irrelevant. The same compliance officer can often be the ‘investigator’, decision maker and appeal writer.
. If you don’t have it (say you dropped it into the North Sea - ..) then you can’t provide it and so be it.
Don’t forget the Ophelia and CIS/620/1991
. If you don’t have it (say you dropped it into the North Sea - ..) then you can’t provide it and so be it.
Don’t forget the Ophelia and CIS/620/1991
Ah! Ophelia. That poor Hungarian girl. Did she die in vain? *
• Ref’ – Tony Hancock
Who he? (ed)
I still use ‘Are you insinuating that I’m portly?’ (The Lift)
‘spoliator [meaning: person who intentionally alters or destroys a document].’ - I have to work that one in somewhere!