back to article Home Office minister owned by own rules

Home Office minister and Attorney General Baroness Scotland - the government's chief law officer and the woman who put in place rules making businesses take the blame for employing illegal immigrants - has been caught apparently employing, er, an illegal immigrant. The Baroness has now terminated the employment of her …

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  1. david 63

    The Attorney General...

    ...has examined the evidence and decided there is no case to answer.

  2. Sam Liddicott
    Happy

    the sad news is...

    the sad news is that she needs to be prosecuted for Labour to have any chance in the next election.

    I don't think the legal penalties available to the courts are enough to ensure Labour's victory though...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Ah the irony

    What's the betting that the excuses used by Baroness Scotland to blag her way out of this, and I've no doubt at all lthat she will, would be inadmissable if used by regular member of the public who don't have the ears of cabinet members?

    Paris, because she hasn't got a clue either.

  4. Grease Monkey Silver badge

    Of course...

    ...they will publish photocopies of some very authentic looking documents. It shouldn't be too hard to fake some^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H find some that have been in her filing cabinet all along.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Deport her for immigration + PAYE evasion

    They should deport her, not the cleaner, who just wanted to do an honest days work, the Baroness. Since it's the Baroness who failed to get the documentation and also has the duty to pay her PAYE as an employer, which she didn't do.

    Looking at her bio she (the Baroness) was born in Dominica to Dominican parents. As NuLabour pointed out, being in Britain isn't a right, it carries responsibilities. Like not employing illegal immigrants. So they should deport the Baroness back to Dominica, if they want to uphold their racist themes.

    As Phil Woolas pointed out:

    http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090601/text/90601w0035.htm

    Mr. Woolas: "The UK Border Agency is committed to ensuring that we remove those foreign nationals who pose a risk of harm to our society. It has been made clear that all those who commit crimes within the United Kingdom and meet the published criteria will be considered for deportation action.....Over the past five years the UK Border Agency has deported or removed over 15,000 foreign criminals from the UK, including a record 5,395 in 2008."

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BusinessLink website explains what excuses...

    The site has been updated, the excuses now include:

    You are a peer, an MP, a senior government official or belong to the same club as any of the above.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No PAYE, makes it a criminal offence

    Yep, failure to deduct and declare PAYE for employee is a criminal offence, courtesy of NuLabour in 2004. She certainly did not declare PAYE for her housekeeper if she didn't have papers. She didn't receive invoices from the housekeeper I think, so she can't pretend the housekeeper was self employed. Thus it is a matter for the police not the Borders and Immigration.

    http://www.mikelennard.com/?t=20

    "Responsibility for the deduction and payment of PAYE to the CIR rests on the employer. Under s NC 2(1) Income Tax Act 2004[1] (ITA 2004) the employer is required to make a “tax deduction” from an employee’s salary, bonus or other lump sum payment in accordance with the PAYE rules “at the time of making the payment”. The employer must pay to the CIR the amount of that tax deduction within a prescribed period: s NC 15(1) ITA 2004."

    "Criminal Liability

    "In terms of s 143A (1) TAA 1994, a person commits an offence if he or she “knowingly applies or permits the application of the amount of a deduction or withholding of tax made or deemed made under a tax law for any purpose other than in payment to the CIR”

  8. Ministry of Truth
    FAIL

    Good Ridance

    Car Cras Legislation bites minister in the arse! Shocker!

    Lessons learned - zero - Shocker!

    How terribly middle management, to be so insecure in their position that they constantly push down on the people below them, just to lift their snouts a fraction higher in the trough.

    Go. Just stop the farce. Don't insult us with your excuses. Apologies do not excuse your constant explotation and fundamental failure to govern. All of you. We're sick of it.

    Before you let the door hit you on the way out you can settle your parliamentary food bill too.

    Cheerio

  9. Rob
    Go

    In light of your last paragraph

    Gordon Brown has my full confidence...... so when's he off then?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Of course ministers understand

    the consequences of their policies, but they always seem to avoid them when caught

    "I saw documents that made me believe"

    I had a log book for a car I bought sent by DVLC, I still got fined for recieveing stolen goods

    lets see what happens, I bet all UK border force fine victims are waiting with baited breath to see this one....

    anon cos I worked at the Home Office during Blair's reign, got out to a less corrupt gov dept now

  11. asiaseen

    It is very satisfying

    when politicians shaft themselves. Undoubtedly, however, CPS will determine that there isn't sufficient evidence for a prosecution

  12. Mike Shepherd

    Non-rewritable

    A number of government departments specify that, when an important document is stored electronically, this must be on some "non-rewritable" medium (like CD-R).

    The "non-rewritable" requirement is intended to prevent subsequent alteration (forgery), but it doesn't seem to have occurred to them that you can simply making an altered copy (to another CD-R) and destroy the original.

  13. SuperTim

    No excuse.

    The cleaner in question was on a student visa that was 5 years old as i understand it. I bet she gets off with this though.

    Who's in? A tenner says no charge, though i only give evens on her still having her job in 12 months.

  14. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    A Test of Labour Integrity which impacts upon National Security and Government Credibility?

    It will be interesting to see if anything happens and whatever happens will set a precedent for the law which others in a similar situation can cite and expect similar/no more severe treatment.

    What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

  15. Pete 2 Silver badge

    No biggie

    Well if *most* MPs can blatantly ignore their own rules apropos expenses, without any serious legal implications (or even the mention of "fraud") I see no reason why this lady shouldn't be able to weasel out of her legal position in this case too.

    I suspect the worst that will happen is that she has to resign from her government job, before quietly slotting into a position in the private sector. An escape route which I would fully expect she's been cultivating for some time anyway, in the expectation of her party going to do very badly in the election sometime in the next several months.

  16. Richard 102

    Luckily

    ... she's hired Obama's aunt to take over the job.

  17. Spleen

    Anyone surprised?

    It is incredibly expensive for employers to employ people legally, what with tax, regulation, litigation, more tax, etc. Plus the "progressive" (i.e. regressive) tax system means that if an unemployed person takes a minimum-wage job legally, once you factor in the benefits he forfeits back to the state, he effectively pays income tax of about 90% for the privilege of trying to be a productive citizen. The two factors combined mean the country would collapse if black-market employment was outlawed.

    Unless you expect our masters to clean their own offices and grace-and-favour houses and raise their own spawn, news like this should surprise no-one.

    (And no, I'm not referring to the policies of any particular "party". Neither differs significantly on either side of the above equation.)

  18. Ed Blackshaw Silver badge

    @amanfromMars

    What's up? Your comment made sense, and without any random capitalisation and inserted acronyms, not only syntactically, but also in content! Are you not feeling well?

  19. david 63

    Gordie was on the beeb...

    ...aparently it was a 'simple mistake'.

    I hope that becomes a legal precedent.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    @Rob

    "Gordon Brown has my full confidence...... so when's he off then?"

    Thursday 3 June 2010 - not a day before he's forced out kicking and screaming!

  21. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    She was paying tax and NI

    If you read one of the BBC articles: "He said she was registered for tax and national insurance prior to her being hired and that the attorney general had paid tax and national insurance on her wages."

    Whilst I think she should be hung out to dry, we shouldn't point fingers at things that she didn't do either.

  22. David Barr

    Where does this go now?

    Let's assume she's unable to produce copies of the documents that she "checked".

    Who decides if she should be prosecuted. And if they decide not to prosecute, can anything be done to change that?

    It's a beautiful irony that the person responsible for creating a law has fallen victim to it. I don't actually believe Baroness Scotland has done anything wrong in hiring this woman, it seems the woman had already slipped through the cracks in the system. However she was the one who created the draconian law, so she should be prosecuted by it.

    Many of New Labour's laws have been badly written, and pushed through parliament regardless. Remember the anti-terrorist laws used against Iceland, and against the elderly heckler at the labour party conference? I wonder if Baroness Scotland had anything to do with those legal masterpieces?

  23. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Thanks for asking/phishing. :-)

    "What's up? Your comment made sense, and without any random capitalisation and inserted acronyms, not only syntactically, but also in content! Are you not feeling well?" ... By Ed Blackshaw Posted Friday 18th September 2009 13:03 GMT

    Ed, They always make sense, but obviously not to everybody. And that is not by accident , because they are specially crafted for a particular and peculiar [irregular and unconventional] audience which registers its views/shares their thoughts here.

    And I'm feeling particularly fine, today ...... with only the smallest of clouds in the sky being zero BOFH and PFY fare.

    You might like to consider that the Register is not a simple website biting the hand that feeds IT but a very Sophisticated Application Program.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    @ amanfromMars 1 - GREAT!

    Now I am doomed to scour internets for textual stenography algorithms for the entire weekend... and beyond! :)

  25. Anon999
    Flame

    Re:Non-rewritable

    CD-R and DVD-R media contain manufacturing date in the disc info.

    So if you are about to create a forgery of CD-R you must have to be able to obtain a disc that is at least as old as the documents in the disc.

    And this is already something most people do not know about, so they would be easily caught if they burn a fresh disc with altered documents.

  26. Gordon Jahn

    Re: Non-rewritable

    Good point Mike - I was also thinking that even a non-rewritable disk can be appended to and, in so doing, the directory entry can be updated to point to a new version of a file. AFAIK when you drop a CD-R into a machine, it only shows you the latest directory, so without a bit of digging to check for multiple sessions on a disk, you'd never know if it's the first, or nth version of the file anyway, even if the disk is non-rewritable.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    One law for us..etc

    How come any member of this government who breaks the law is never held accountable.

    Time for the revolution??

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