You may remember that last week Mrs. Patel appeared at Harrow Magistrates’ Court; she’s being prosecuted by Harrow Council under section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006, the accusation being that she gave a false address in order to get her son into a particular school. She’s pleaded not guilty, and says she was genuinely living at her mother’s at the relevant time.

First of all, aside from this particular case, let me say I have no difficulty in principle with this kind of prosecution. I can well imagine that parents do lie sometimes to gain places at desirable schools, and I disagree that merely rescinding the place is enough to tackle this. If that’s all councils did about it, then parents who cheat would be no worse off for their cheating; you might as well cheat, because the very worst possible outcome would be the same as if you’d acted honestly in the first place. I wouldn’t be at all happy with that, and (unpopular though it is at the moment) I’d much rather allow councils to use legal powers to investigate – if need be by surveillance – and prosecute any offences, than to see social advantage gained by lies. Because if you’re relaxed about this sort of parental behaviour, it means you’re relaxed about the fact that the children of honest parents are as a result sent to worse schools and perhaps worse lives. Compared to that injustice, the impact of councils’ action on the civil liberties of a few parents is laughably insignificant.

But legally, I’m interested in the charge here. Under section 2, fraud is only committed if a false representation is made with intent to gain, or cause loss to another; and section 5 makes clear that means gain or loss in money or other property. To convict, then, in a case like this, the council must succeed in arguing that a school place is some sort of property (even assuming it can prove any false representation has been made in the first place, which Mrs. Patel denies of course). But is it? Property needn’t be a tangible thing – copyright is a form of property, for instance – but it seems a stretch to see a school place as an enforceable right or entitlement akin to property. The alternative would be to argue that wrongly allocating a school place would somehow mean the council lost money – but surely it costs the same to allocate a place to one child as it does another.

No wonder there’ll be legal argument at the hearing on 8 July.

2009-06-02T10:10:00+00:00Tags: , , |