| HOUSING — Housing benefit — Entitlement — Requirement to notify change of circumstances affecting entitlement — Whether defendant’s formation of company from which he received no money requiring notification — Social Security Administration Act 1992, s111A(1A) (as inserted by Social Security Fraud Act 2004, s16(1)(b)(2)}
R v Passmore
CA: Toulson LJ, Butterfield J and Judge Wadsworth QC: 18 June 2007
If a change in a person’s circumstances did not affect any entitlement of his to any benefit under the social security legislation there was no obligation to disclose that change to the prescribed person.
The Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) so held when allowing an appeal by the defendant, Paul Darren Passmore, against his conviction on 13 October 2006 in the Crown Court at Isleworth (Judge Powles and a jury) on four counts of dishonestly failing to notify a change in circumstances relating to a claim for housing and council tax benefit, contrary to s111A(1A) of the Social Security Administration Act 1992, two counts of dishonestly producing a false statement with a view to obtaining benefit, and one count of dishonestly making a false statement with a view to obtaining benefit, contrary to s111A(1) of the 1992 Act.
TOULSON LJ, giving the judgment of the court, said that the single issue was the proper interpretation of the words of s111A(1A) which made it an offence for a person dishonestly to fail to give a prompt notification of a change of circumstances affecting any entitlement of his to any benefit under the relevant social security legislation. The defendant was in receipt of housing and council tax benefit. He subsequently formed a company but did not disclose that fact to the prescribed person and was prosecuted for failing to do so. It was his submission at trial that the formation of the company was not a disclosable circumstance because he received no money from the company so that it made no difference to the amount of benefit to which he was entitled. The prosecution contended that a change of circumstances affected a person’s entitlement to benefit if it was something a benefit officer would properly wish to know in order to check that person’s entitlement, whether or not after carrying out such a check the amount of the entitlement was found to be the same. Their Lordships preferred the defendant’s submission. Their Lordships considered King v Kerrier District Council [2006] EWHC 500 (Admin) which counsel for the prosecution had submitted had been decided per incuriam because it had proceeded on a wrong concession by the prosecution, an approach adopted in the present case by the trial judge. Their Lordships found it difficult to identify what was said to be the material erroneous concession. The Divisional Court in King’s case had read the words in the sense contended for by the defendant in this case, namely that the change in circumstances must have affected the entitlement. That decision was not binding but it was of persuasive authority and their Lordships agreed with it. The prosecution argument involved reading into s111A(1A), a penal provision, quite extensive wording. In their Lordships’ judgment the meaning advanced by the defendant was the natural and ordinary meaning of the words.
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