Church and State blog: HM Revenue and Customs: My Self-Assessment address has been updated by HMRC without my authority and Declan has just been informed by Newham Council that our Housing Benefit may be suspended as a result (WITH DOUBLE UPDATE 14/7/2017)

Thursday, July 13, 2017

HM Revenue and Customs: My Self-Assessment address has been updated by HMRC without my authority and Declan has just been informed by Newham Council that our Housing Benefit may be suspended as a result (WITH DOUBLE UPDATE 14/7/2017)

Re: Internet cuts since 26 May 2017

From my earlier blog post's Update 14 July (9.16am):

"And it's not just Facebook blocks, blocks on public access to our Church and State website and the daily targeting to fluctuating degrees of category pages throughout the site that Declan and I are dealing with these days. We have also been dealing with Internet cuts since 26 May. See my blog post of 21 June, Internet cuts: We pay £65 per month for BT Infinity but feel we are in a race against time to stay online (WITH UPDATE 14/7/2017 RE: 61st Internet cut since 26 May 2017)."

We had to suspend work on our Church and State website on 15 June after 4 internet cuts in one night. 4 internet cuts on 25 June; a record-breaking 6 cuts on 6 July; 4 cuts on 12 July; none since midnight today (as of 14 July at 9.16am).

The War on Free Expression

It is our narrative going forward that we are being harassed even by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). In my previous blog post, I published my Tier 1 complaint against HMRC after I discovered a stop on my mail (see their note in bold in the first snapshot above). I told them that my address had not changed since 17 May 2014 and therefore did not require updating. I also informed them that such an update could result in the suspension of our Housing Benefit; the last two times Declan has had to update his address with HMRC, Newham Council wrote that they suspended our Housing Benefit because the Department for Work and Pensions notified them that our address had changed. Nonethless, HMRC have gone and updated my address without my authority (see the second snapshot above). It remains to be seen what, if any, effect this email of mine to HMRC CEO Jon Thompson will have on matters:

For the attention of Chris Boylett, Head of Newham Benefits Service, Newham Council

Jon Thompson
Chief Executive and Permanent Secretary
HM Revenue and Customs

Address removed for email

13 July 2017

Tax Reference [number removed]
Housing Benefit Reference [number removed]

Dear Mr Thompson,

Newham Benefits Service (NBS) has confirmed that my husband's Housing Benefit may be suspended as a result of an unauthorised updating of my address by HMRC on 11 July 2017. Please find attached an ACR recording of his phone call to NBS this morning.

Please would you provide me with a letter stating that HMRC will not update my address again without my authorisation. As stated in my Tier 1 complaint below, my home address has not changed since 17 May 2014.

Yours sincerely,

Maria Dolores Heavey
UTR: [number removed]

M: 0788 043 7681
E: dheavey@gmail.com

UPDATE 14 July (10.57am): This morning Declan wrote directly to Head of Newham Benefits Service Chris Boylett for assurance that our Housing Benefit will not be suspended. We think it unlikely that HMRC will provide us with a letter stating that they will not update my address again without my authorisation. This means that we are looking at having to go through their complaints process (Tier 1, Tier 2 and Independent Adjudicator), and then make a complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman; that is, if we decide not to complain to the Independent Police Complaints Commission about serious staff misconduct involving criminal or near criminal behaviour; see my blog post of 29 November 2016, Will it take the Independent Police Complaints Commission to protect our address with HM Revenue and Customs? (WITH UPDATE 22/12/2016).

Dear Mr Boylett,

I refer to my wife's email to HMRC CEO Jon Thompson as below.

Please could you provide me with assurance that Newham Benefits Service will not suspend my Housing Benefit as a result of the unauthorised updating of my wife's address by HMRC on 11 July 2017.

I can confirm that my address has not changed. It has been effective from 17 May 2014, not 11 July 2017.

Yours sincerely,

Declan Heavey
Managing Director
Network for Church Monitoring

UPDATE 14 July (11.42am): Declan has just phoned Newham Benefits Service (NBS). He was told that his email to Chris Boylett above has been received and that our Housing Benefit "is still open"; there was no assurance, though, that it won't be suspended. Still no response from HMRC to my Tier 1 complaint dated 9 July, two days before they went and updated my address without my authority; see my previous blog post of 9 July, We're back again to HM Revenue and Customs: Is it the intention of HMRC to harass me to have their stop on my mail removed? (WITH DOUBLE UPDATE 10/7/2017).

Re: Investigatory Powers Tribunal

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) dismissed Declan's complaint against the secret services on papers in less than three weeks, on 1 September 2011, stating that it was "obviously unsustainable". This is paragraph 11 of Declan's updated complaint to the United Nations under Article 19 (freedom of expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

11. The IPT was created in October 2000 by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and given the power to investigate any complaints against GCHQ, MI5 or MI6, as well as complaints about surveillance operations mounted by the police or any other public bodies. On 5 March 2014 the Guardian reported that the tribunal, which claims to be completely independent of the UK Government, is secretly operating from a base within the Home Office, by which it is funded. The newspaper found that the IPT had investigated about 1,500 complaints, and upheld only 10; five of these concerned members of one family who had all lodged complaints about surveillance by their local council. No complaint against any of the intelligence agencies had ever been upheld. The discovery that the IPT is lodged within a Whitehall department fuelled criticisms of the tribunal that had been levelled by rights groups, lawyers and complainants. The IPT's critics complain that the secrecy is excessive and that its procedures are stacked so heavily in favour of the government and against complainants that it is fundamentally unfair. According to the Guardian, some senior lawyers have described the IPT as "Kafkaesque", while one eminent barrister has dismissed it as "a kangaroo court". The newspaper also reports that as a consequence of the secrecy surrounding the tribunal and the perception that it is unfair, many would-be complainants spurn it.

Click to enlarge

From My Picks:

9 June: Ministry of Justice: Complaint to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice against the County Court at Central London, Royal Courts of Justice (WITH UPDATE - Day 13 21/6/2017)

'Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' - Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

Church and State blog

Thursday, July 13, 2017

HM Revenue and Customs: My Self-Assessment address has been updated by HMRC without my authority and Declan has just been informed by Newham Council that our Housing Benefit may be suspended as a result (WITH DOUBLE UPDATE 14/7/2017)

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