Harrow Council has abandoned its prosecution of Mrinal Patel today. No surprise there, then. I expressed myself in moderate terms while criminal proceedings were under way, but summonsing her under the Fraud Act 2006 always looked dodgy – it’s difficult to see how you can really call a school place property.
I agree with Harrow Council that some offence needs to be drafted to cover this. As I explained in my last post on this, the sanction of withdrawing a school place a council thinks has been gained by fraud is not enough. In spite of what civil libertarians might say, it’s important to ensure the threat of strong action deters people from anti-social behaviour such as unfairly gaining their children a school place that should by rights go to another child.
But I think questions need to be asked, too, about what Harrow thought it was doing here. Clearly it’s given up now because it thought, presumably on counsel’s advice, that it did not have a reasonable prospect of conviction, or indeed of commital to the Crown Court – in other words, than the courts were unlikely to accept their “school place=property” argument, and interpret the Fraud Act as applying here. But if I was saying that a month ago, Harrow’s lawyers must have been alive to the problem by then. Harrow have been working on the case since at least May. And given that this is such a high-profile case, it’d be strange if they took the decision to prosecute without counsel’s advice. So how did Harrow come to believe, until today, that a prosecution was appropriate?
If its lawyers genuinely advised, until a few days ago, that the prosecution was likely to succeed, and changed their mind this week – I think it’s strange, but fair enough. But it’d be a scandal if Harrow decided to proceed with this in full knowledge of the legal difficulty they’ve now acknowledged, with the purpose of gaining publicity for their campaign to get new legislation. Avoiding that kind of unjustified prosecution is the whole purpose of requiring a lawyer to make the decision to prosecute based on the evidential test laid down in the Code for Crown Prosecutors (which I’ve no doubt local authorities apply).
Yes, Head of Legal. As discussed in the earlier thread, this was a non-starter under the Fraud Act 2006.
" it'd be a scandal if Harrow decided to proceed with this in full knowledge of the legal difficulty they've now acknowledged, with the purpose of gaining publicity for their campaign to get new legislation."
I suspect that they have thought of getting a new law after realising that the Fraud Act does not cover the conduct. If it was their plan all along then it would be a disgraceful abuse of legal process.
No doubt someone in the present government will be willing to squeeze a clause into some bill currently making its way through parliament.
Never discount the power of Groupthink in local authorities and in their legal departments.
I'm not from Harrow but I can imagine: some client officer who has taken the issue a bit too personally is on a mission. The lawyers, bending over backwards to please this "client" roll a case out.
But there is at least one nervous lawyer, one who needs to cover his/her arse with their own "manager" when the case goes tits up.
They get counsel's advice – either a QC or a top junior's and copies sent to the client officer and their manager, hey even the relevant cabniet member might be involved.
And the point of bringing counsel in at this late stage? The luxury of saying: "I told those guys".
Too bad the client didn't listen to advice when it was first given. Too bad the legal managers choose pleasing idiots over the law.
Isn't it heartwarming to know public funds and legal "strategy" in local authorities turn on the whim and ego of over-promoted client officers and the absence of backbone in these authorities' "Heads of Legal"?
I would love to see a legally aided target judicially review the authority's decision to take proceedings one day.
I don't think the ethics of this situation are as clear cut as you suggest. Why should the young Patel have a worse education because his or her parents did not live in the "right" place? The catchment area restriction is utterly iniquitous.
People need to remember that if one child manages to circumnavigate the rules because their parents are rich enough to be able to afford 2 homes then another child loses out.
These sort of games have a tendency to magnify any real or perceived differences between schools.
One of the problems is the obsession with 'choice'. Research has shown that so called 'choice disproportionately benefits the middle classes who have more time and resources (and yes, maybe the wherwithall) to exercise such choice.
But of course, these things are nice middle class crimes and therefore so much worse than nasty poor people's crimes like benefit fraud. Just like education is part of the middle class welfare state which must therefore be supported at all cost whereas we are told daily that welfare cash benefits cost us too much.
Anyone who knows the patel surname and other castes from the Indian state of Gujarat – Dahlia, Almola etc. , knows that these are wealthy people living under the guise of being economically backward. They are well versed in tax and immigration fraud and have a very strong community that supports their actions. They typically own grocery stores, liquor stores and other cash business. Avoid paying taxes and sponsor every relative to come to USA. They get food coupons meant for poor,they milk the welfare and tax loop holes to the full extent.
The Immigrations services already backlists them.
If you are wealthy and if you have power than any case can be dropped down like this one.
Apostille info