Identity Theft

I think I've been the victim of identity theft. Or, rather, I think our flat has.

We live in a flat in south London, the one of six or seven in a converted house from somewhere around the turn of the century before last. Some of us own and the rest rent on short term lets directly from the freeholder. Consequently, over the years people come and go, and it is easy to lose track of faces and names.

Hoards of letters arrive addressed to people who don't live in our block. There is a shared hallway and no individual post boxes. Sometimes there is more post for people who are not here than people who are, which says something about modern life.

Much of it is junk mail from desperate pizza companies and even more desperate estate agents, the latter assuring us breathlessly that they are desperate for vendors in a vibrant market.

By chance I open a letter addressed to the Occupier, expecting yet more grovelling to put our flat into the rental sector, but what I find is notification by British Gas that the resident, Ms Francis (let us say), having incurred £1,800 in unpaid gas bills, a warrant has been obtained to disconnect us on the 17^th of June.

Of course the letter doesn't tell me anything useful like details of the Court, so I can't write to the magistrate to explain the mistake. 

I find a letter addressed to Miss Francis at our address and decide to open it. It is a bill from British Gas for £1,800. This is really weird, as I know for a certain fact that no Ms Francis has lived here for 24 years. Now getting used to rifling Ms Francis' mail, I discover a letter from Barclay's in Mumbai relating to a high value account. Well, to me a minimum deposit of £15k is seriously high value.

I call nice Colin from British Gas and spend an hour and a half on the phone. He believes that I am the true resident and the the reason for the confusion must be that Ms Francis moved in next door four years ago and they accidentally closed down our account and billed it to her. He says his priority is to stop us from getting disconnected. Just as I am about to give him my contact phone numbers we are disconnected.

Barclay's website advises me to report suspected fraud using my secure log-in details. Sadly I do not have Ms Francis pin number, so I decide to call the telephone number provided.

I call Barclay's. London, not Mumbai- Doh! I spend 26 minutes listening to voicebots and kak music. Finally a human voice. Nasty Kyle eventually tells tells me to write to Barclays head office in the UK, as he can't do anything about their bank in India- not even make a record of my call . OK, perhaps I shall. I wonder if Barclay's will pay for the phone call and the postage stamp?

I call British Gas, and vaguely helpful Carrine assures me she will e-mail Colin who will call back within 24 hours.

You guessed it. Nobody calls.

I think I'm going to go to Hackney Police Station and report a theft soon. Or will I get in trouble for opening someone else's mail? And anyway, a theft of what?

A theft of the identity of the place where I live, it seems. Or a theft from a bank in one country that isn't the same as the bank with the same name in another country. Or maybe theft of my peace of mind. 

I am starting to become uncertain whether I really am me and have a good look in the mirror just to check. It looks like me all right- now to persuade everyone else to believe it. As I don't drive and my passport has expired, I have a sinking feeling this is not going to be easy. 

The Justice Project (Twitter ye not)

Twitter in the courts? The concept is antithetical to lawyers. We servants of the court eschew exposure, espouse confidentiality, we do our dirty tricks in private. Our paper darts and legal daggers work far better away from public scrutiny.

And to be blunt, 140 characters a case is not sufficient to justify our juicy wages. “But My Lord, our fees!”- Devotees of Private Eye will recognise Mr Justice Cockle-Carrot, who always extends the case beyond lunchtime so that posh boys in wigs can justify their cash. Yet here I was, participating in a project where messages would be sent to the world in real time from the courtroom.

With me is The Justice Gap's own Jon Robbins, here for the Guardian in a project to send tweets throughout the day.

Our first hurdle is that journalists being able to twitter in Court (with permission from the Judge) is brand spanking new, and moreover confined to cases heard in open court. Thus, in criminal or employment trials, to name but two, where members of the public are entitled to attend anyway, Jon can send his little chunks of data onto that yellow-brick road that is the internet for all to see.

However in home repossession cases the hearings are in private, for a very good reason. The legal issues involve the prospect of loss of a home, which like the right to a family life and correspondence that has not been intercepted, is a qualified right enshrined in Article 8 of the Human Rights Act. This is the right to family, home and privacy.

I sweat about what we are doing the night before. Will I make a tit of myself to readers in Singapore or Siberia? What the heck am I doing?

Fortunately Stephen, a stalwart Duty Solicitor for over 30 years catches that ball in the morning shift, before I'm due to start. He has a word with the Ushers, then a word with the District Judges, who don't mind the challenge.

At the same time, over at Romford County Court another journalist on the same project is barred from all the hearings.We must be doing something right.

Working as a duty solicitor in a housing court in Hackney is remarkably different to the world of Cockle-Carrott. District Judges have 5 to 10 minutes or so to decide whether someone will lose their home.

Rita has lived in her council flat for 17 years. Her mother is very ill . Rita knows how to cook, that's her job. When she goes to take care of her mum instead of working she can't pay the mortgage. She is £4k behind but has over £100k in equity. Result? "Out on your ear or sell your home in eight weeks."

“This will affect the rest of my life”says Rita, and Judge is harsh but fair. “Sell up or pony up” the Judge says (I paraphrase). Rita doesn't understand, and I hope we have enough time for her to make the right decision together.

Bob has kids and a marital break-up. He sends wads of cash here and there, now child support for his kids, now his rent. He assures me he is ashamed at the thought of accessing benefits, and so he did not get the help he was entitled to when he needed it. He's a second generation immigrant, with the sparkle of an entrepeneur in his eye.

I want to swat him on the back of the head, 'cos he's been paying tax and NI into the system for years. When he loses his job he's legally entitled to certain benefits and tax credits.


Yet, I respect him. No-one has handed the world to him on a plate, and here is a person that will pull himself up by his boot-straps, and the rest of us with him incrementally.

Jon's thumbs blur on the tiny device he is holding.

In the last case of the day a young refugee, let us call him Ishmael, makes a Lazarus application. Evicted this morning, he seeks to revive his tenancy from the dead. I play Captain Ahab, ranting about the great white whale, yet I know in my heart that I am sunk and floating on a coffin.

It seems to me that the intrusion on matters that affect the home and family should rarely be sampled by the media. It seems to me that private agony at the loss of your home, or the intrusion of the state into your correspondence should not be paraded by all and sundry.

Yet, antithetically, if the world knew how casually you might lose your home, 140 characters to your neighbours or the Judge would not be enough to explain. 

Score draw? Duty Solicitor 10 saves, two replays, one loss on penalties. Curiously, equal to the win rates of both Roberto di Matteo and Gus Hiddink in their spells at Chelsea football club at time of writing.

Nutso or What?

On every other Wednesday in the afternoon up to 18 clients pitch into our office to get free immigration advice. Unfortunately our reception is quite small, and at times it feels that the members of the public we serve are trapped upright like sardines.

Every Wednesday morning up to 12 clients pitch up to get free employment advice. Like Vienna sausages in a tin, we wriggle around each other to get to the door and politely try not to step on anybody's corns.

Some Thursdays there is room for the client's children to do the colouring books with crayons. For about a month there was a toy road in the toy box, and the children were delirious with joy slotting the pieces together and driving matchbox-like cars (I'm dating myself here) round and round cardboard trees.

One time the Kurdish mother points out that there are staples in the toy-box, which is an obvious health and safety hazard. She didn't put it quite like that.

Eventually all the children's books and good toys get nicked. Although as a lawyer I must frown on theft, particularly at an impressionable age (learn right from wrong kid!) I can't help thinking that is what the toys were given to us for.

We're lucky enough to work in a beautiful building in Lower Clapton Road, smack dab next to Hackney Police Station. The dividing wall with the police station says “Property of the Metropolitan Police”. In case you should find a wall with those words on it lying around on Streatham Common, that wall has been stolen.

Across the road from us is a charming park where five years ago someone was murdered. For a while they put wreaths and cards on the Victorian ironwork, but these blew away, like memories.

There is a plan afoot by the Coalition Government to stop people with money problems from accessing local free legal advice from charities and other providers. It is called the Gateway Scheme.

Under the Gateway Scheme people with money problems who still qualify for free Legal Aid could come in to our reception and wait at the end of a line. Well, a line's a polite phrase. Anyway, when they get to the front and we are able to understand that they have debt problems, they would have to call an official government debt line and ask for permission to speak to us.

I'm not joking.

Fortunately the House of Lords has given the Gateway Scheme a good kicking. Unfortunately, rumour has it that the Commons will rush it through on a Money Bill. As far as I can tell, this means the Government has spent all the money it will already and if there is a vote of dissent in the Lords against it it will override it.

This means all the time spent in the Lords debating the issues will be a complete waste of time. In effect, the passing of an Act of Parliament will have been a charade.

Nutso or what?

PS Can we have some more toys and books please?

British Kid

Irina is from Bulgaria. She has a child who is British, and in school. Her son understands that Mummy and Daddy fight.

For many years Irina has lived with a British partner who does not let her work or draw Child Benefit. He doles out money, he locks her out of the property with her “half caste” child when he wants to, he pushes and squeezes her, he generally abuses and controls her.

When he is happy she is a lovely bird in a gilded cage. For many years she has been frightened. Her son shares in her fear.

I sit and sift through the paperwork and realise that if Irina were to flee her home with her child, we should have a cast iron benefit system in place to help this victim of domestic violence and her British child. Sadly we do not.

Instead, she has literally no rights at all to welfare benefits or public housing. Or else she has, but proving it is strewn with mind bending mine-fields, impossible to read European directives, a smattering of immigration law, a bit of family law, a lot of inter-disciplinary work, confused public agencies with bad guidance.

I call the women's refuges and learn that if Irina has residency problems, they can not help her. Even refuges for battered women are under the cosh for cash. If they can't be sure they can get Housing Benefit they can't run as a going concern. The staff are ashamed and apologetic.

So I have a case where Irina and her British child must potentially fight their case tooth and claw in the immigration court, in the benefits tribunal, in the housing courts, in the family courts. All this to ensure that a British kid and his mother can get away to a place of safety.

Under the new Legal Aid Bill this is an issue we won't care about much longer, because from April 2013 the practice of social welfare law is dead in all but name. There won't be any funding in place to protect the interests of a British child with a foreign mother like Irina,

When did we become so cruel? When did vested power become so cynical?

When did they decide to make Law Centres Extinct?

Benny & the Cop

A few years ago Benny called us up to tell us that his landlord had turned up with the police to put him onto the street. As you may imagine, he was quite upset. As it was six o'clock on a Friday, I was quite upset. I rescheduled the appointment with my pint by a few hours.

Benny lived in a house in multiple occupation. That is to say, a number of residents rent bedrooms but share facilities like kitchen and bathroom. Sometimes these are four bedroom flats, sometimes vertical Victorian buildings that once were respectable homes for a middle class family with three or more servants. Sometimes the residents are families squeezed cheek by jowl, sometimes youngsters trying to hack it.

Each case is a snap-shot of people living on the margins in expensive London.

In Benny's case the landlord had turfed out one of the tenants by means unknown, and moved a relative 's possessions into the property. He's trying to get around the protection from eviction legislation by pretending that his family was living there all along, and just taking lodgers.

Thus, he would avoid going to Court . He would give reasonable oral notice and then put his lodgers onto the street.

I ask Benny to give his mobile phone to the Constable, and I ask him whether he is confident that an illegal eviction isn't occurring, which is an offence by the way, and I have some papers which make me worried.

The Constable tells me he's just here to keep the peace, and that he's not trained to assess civil disputes. The landlord goes away and eventually gets a proper order, and Benny has to leave.

So far so dull. What worries me is this.

Although the Police have ample powers today to bust the fake tenants who sport forged tenancy agreements and trash the landlord's possessions in the back garden, they choose not to. They wisely accept that they are not trained in civil law. Or they lazily prioritise drug smugglers and and gang killings. You take your pick.

The LASPO Bill will criminalise squatting. At this point the Police will have to arrest Benny, unless he has a lawyer conveniently at the end of a phone. And the Police will then in many cases assist illegal evictions. Which is an offence.

With evictions climbing as Housing Benefit caps start to bite in posh boroughs like Westminster, and in less posh boroughs like Hackney, I ask myself this question. Is it cheaper to criminalise alleged squatters, and force the CPS to learn housing law, or is it better to allow charities and other legal aid firms fight it out in the civil courts?

Violence in Office

The Law Centre is surging with people. More and more have eviction notices, court dates and tight benefit appeal deadlines. Volunteers and staff perch in every office, trying to advise the poor and the upset.

The photocopier hums as Kim meticulously turns over piles of paper and documents. A member of staff is sitting with Pierre, a shattered refugee who, it turns out, has been drinking. We don't have alarm bells (heck, we ain't got staplers) and he becomes florid, incoherent and waves his arms around. All at once he becomes terrifying.

One of the other lawyers speaks some French, and eventually he seems pacified and burst into tears. His history is truly heartbreaking, he has serious mental health concerns and suddenly he falls asleep.

We shepherd him out without calling the police and he seems brighter and more happy. "Adieu"says the member of staff rustily and Pierre looks crushed. "Au Revoir" says the member of staff and suddenly his smile is like a sunbeam. Man, this French is tough.

Years ago Patrick, a sad old man drinking and lost from his family was evicted from social housing for being an annoying drunk. We argued that he was vulnerable because he had a tendency to self harm. The Authority deemed the risk low. We explained to him why this was the end of the line.

Patrick perfectly understood the legal niceties of risk assessments, and on the day of his eviction arrived at our office blind drunk and cut his wrists in the bathroom. An ambulance came and he survived. He also bled all over the donated children's toys which forced us to throw them all away.

We have a policy that prohibits abuse of staff, racist ranting and threatening behaviour. Yet vulnerable people with severe mental health problems increasingly come to our door. It seems we are the favourite port of call for those who drink at  the last chance saloon.

Eventually another client begins to scream. It might be something that the Council or their landlord is doing to them. It might be blame and recrimination towards our advisers who have not warded their misfortunes with legal argument sufficiently. In the end it makes little difference.

Working in this environment takes its toll. All that stress, all that shouting, the adrenaline becomes poisonous after a while. Experienced lawyers, trained to work with the worst of the worst, can't keep on working in these conditions.

In a sense I agree with Kenneth Clarke and Jonathan Djanogli, sponsors of the Bill that will strip most funding from social welfare Legal Aid. If the public services worked properly, and they should, I would happily hang up my shingle, because there would be no need for a lawyer.

No need for a lawyer then? Yet cases for the Social Worker and the Therapist keep on arriving at our door. When we are gone, where will these people, these human beings, be sent to next?

Happy New Year

So I come into the office. Among other delights is a sea of letter from the Legal Aid people querying our funding applications or outright rejecting them. My particular favourite concerns Danny, a former showman who wants to sue his former landlord for disposing of his life's belongings when it shouldn't have.

In Danny's case we have a letter cutting off my client's legal aid because he has not paid his contribution. A letter of the same date confirms receipt of the same contribution. I try to telephone the Legal Aid people but the recorded message tells me that they have cut their telephone access by 4 hours a day "to improve efficiency". So I will have to write. Unfortunately they can take between 4 weeks and several months to reply. And meanwhile, Danny's case remains in limbo.

This stuff must be dry as dust to non lawyers, but as Frontline's readership now includes people in Macedonia, Venezuela and Australia (thanks guys my hubris needs constant fuelling) there seems to be some interest so here's a crash course. In an emergency we can grant 4 week's Legal Aid. However currently the Legal Aid people are taking eight to twelve weeks to put the Full Legal Aid in place. This means that typically we risk being unfunded, or not knowing when we're funded, for weeks at a time. Working without funding threatens charities, already falling like flies, and leaves the client exposed to legal difficulties. What to do?

In the the case of Denise, who has been in the UK for 16 years after arriving as a child, she risks losing her home because the Home Office is years late in looking at her case and meantime she can neither work to support her family, as she wishes, nor claim benefits. Through some legal jiggeryy pokery we manage to issue a judicial review in the High Court to get Social Services to pay her rent and provide her with £30 a week on food vouchers, and appear before a District Judge in the County Court to suspend a warrant of execution (that's the magic piece of paper that you moves you from your home onto the pavement).

Then we have to keep on working but don't know whether we'll get paid for the subsequent twelve weeks' work while we wait for Legal Aid paperwork to arrive. Had we done nothing, Denise could have lost her case at the next hearing. Children would become homeless. This is not why we come into the office every day. So we're gambling on it all working out with our funders and do the work anyway, but too often we manage to secure a triumph for the client, then are told two thirds of our work won't be paid for after all.

Meantime they've already cut our funding by 10% across the board, in anticipation of a further 64% cut to the number of people in Hackney who will lose civil Legal Aid if the Bill goes though.

The cuts in one guise or another are already all around Legal Aid. Happy New Year. It's lucky I'm such a philosophical fellow.