There follows a guest post by an author, who wishes to remain anonymous, who is an experienced independent restructuring and turnaround professional with successful HMRC dealings going back over 20 years.
It was always the case that the Government’s rush to help businesses at the beginning of lockdowns would inevitably lead to some issues further down the line. In this article I argue that there is a disconnect between the broad policy agendas of the Treasury and HMRC. In particular, HMRC should not try to close businesses that have been adversely affected by COVID-19, provided the businesses can make a good case that they can recover over a reasonable time period. HMRC should not unilaterally apply a timescale for debt repayment that is unrealistic for a business.
The Treasury has always appreciated that COVID-19 affected businesses might not recover for several years. The introduction of the Business Recovery Loan Scheme, and its recent extension until June 2022, is evidence of this. The Business Recovery Loans are repayable over periods up to six years and are underwritten by Government guarantees of 70-80%.
There can be no doubt that the overall policy of the Treasury is to support COVID-19 affected businesses as long as reasonably necessary.
However, HMRC does not appear to have got the memo and is largely adopting the same approach to collecting overdue debt from businesses that it used pre-pandemic.
HMRC publishes its policy on collecting overdue debt online. The current version shows no evidence of any consideration of two key factors. Firstly, whether a business has genuinely been affected by COVID-19 and needs a certain amount of time to recover. Secondly, whether that business has Government guaranteed loans – either from the earlier CBILS and CLBILS loan schemes, or from the more recent Business Recovery Loan Scheme. The important fact to remember is that all of these loans were awarded on a loan-worthy basis. This was emergency funding directed at businesses that could demonstrate they’d been adversely affected by COVID-19 and had credible recovery plans.
HMRC is a serial closer of businesses that fall behind in tax payments. They have preferential treatment in the event of an insolvency, so their debt ranks above other unsecured creditors, and this leads them to take action earlier than other unsecured creditors who will often face disaster if the business in question fails. Other unsecured creditors and are more likely to try to support recovery, even if reluctantly. Job-secure HMRC staff are less concerned about the failure of businesses they call ‘customers’.
By way of evidence, Freedom of Information requests show that from 2017 to 2019 HMRC issued 12,342 Winding Up Petitions, of which roughly 45% caused the businesses to fail.
So, we now face the entirely likely and illogical situation whereby HMRC will attempt to close businesses – sorry, ‘customers’ – who may have a Government-backed loan. The collateral damage may mean that the cost to the taxpayer is higher than the actual debt itself.
However, we cannot have an HMRC process that applies different rules to businesses that have sought Government support than to those that haven’t. There are many businesses that have been affected by COVID-19 but didn’t take on additional debt.
Common sense dictates that HMRC should not be allowed take independent action to close businesses that can demonstrate that they have been adversely affected by the pandemic and are in the process of recovering. If HMRC has concerns about debts not being paid, it can always enlist the support of the many corporate recovery specialists who are generally better equipped than tax inspectors to judge the recovery prospects of a business.
It was clear during the pandemic that HMRC wasn’t given policy guidance to complement the various support packages put in place for businesses by the Treasury. When the Government guaranteed £80bn of loans to get businesses through the pandemic, it did so on the understanding that recovery would not be immediate for many businesses. Why, then, should HMRC try to close down businesses that can’t repay debts quickly enough?
It seems HMRC remains a law unto itself. Calling taxpayers ‘customers’ is a good example of how HMRC confusingly positions itself. It is a branch of the Civil Service, not a supplier. A client of mine received this chilling comment last year when pleading for leniency.
Surely jobs, infrastructure and communities should be at the heart of HMRC’s priorities? The comment is, though, clear that HMRC should look at the best Net Return to the Exchequer.
It is time for Rishi Sunak to get to grips with this threat to the survival of thousands of businesses, which is hardly in the national interest. I’m not suggesting that businesses which are inevitably going to fail should be protected from market forces. But HMRC must take a much longer, more pragmatic view.
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Guilty or not, the case is useful for distracting attention from the Unmentionables.
You have a point M A k and if true it confirms the evil and depravity infesting the establishment.
The most telling passage for me is this:
“The judges sound rather tired of trying to get their heads around the case. They write virtuously of having to read “a vast volume of material” (para 17). No wonder it was tempting, even if mistaken, to categorise the medical evidence as an ancillary matter; the tiresome business of going through all the medical evidence bit by bit could thereby be disposed of by the Appeal Court judges, just as it could be by the jury at the trial.”
I rather suspect this is what has overtaken these judges. Basically yet another version of CGAF, too lazy and quite possibly not bright enough to go through pages of medical evidence. Far easier to condemn a poor girl to a lifetime of prison rather than do a job properly.
The real criminals are still free and masquerading as doctors in our hospitals.
That’s exactly it Hux, and they brook no dissent in the Stalinist National Harms Service.
Even hunger can do it.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/justice-is-served-but-more-so-after-lunch-how-food-breaks-sway-the-decisions-of-judges
This case stank from the beginning.
The reason we have cases like this and the Post Office scandal is too many dodgy barristers and judges – particularly judges who were dodgy barristers. And one dodgy judge or barrister is too many.
How is it none of the prosecuting barristers noticed there was something wrong about so many people supposedly dipping their fingers in the Post Office till?
And what about the judges?
Don’t pretend none of them noticed something was amiss?
Medical evidence has a history of being dodgy too and so have the experts who give it – not all mind – but enough and one is too many.
Don’t forget Roy Meadow who invented the Munchhausen’s Syndrome by Proxy theory which was without any scientific basis and trashed in the High Court. And then he gave evidence of a one in a billion or so chance of two children in the same family dying suddenly when the probability was less than one in two thousand – it being more likely that such children might be genetically disposed to dying of sudden death.
And of course we cannot trust anything in medical journals as three British Medical Journal editors proved here: How the case against Andrew Wakefield was fixed – in eight steps
There is free to read explanatory text on each page with five free to view/listen videos and podcasts, with also a paid option.
Euripides has still not been sued by the BMJ and he claims he never will be as it is all true.
When one reads the so-called “confession” on the post-it note it sounds less like a confession and more like the confused rambling of somebody under immense stress as a result of the investigation and the allegations against her. As the author says, accused people under such stress can not only admit to things they haven’t done but actually start to believe they’ve done them. Given the flawed medical evidence, absence of witnesses, absence of forensic evidence, absence of any prior criminal behaviour, absence of mental health issues, and her good reputation among the nurses, then I think the note was not a confession of anything.
I understand the infamous shift rota was a major plank in the “evidence” against her, even though it was presented devoid of context. I go to my local supermarket often. If somebody drops dead in the shop does that make me guilty of murder? That seems to be the level of logic applied in the Lucy Letby case. I really hope and pray that poor woman doesn’t give up hope.
Yes, I agree. I read the post-it note shown in the article in the Telegraph. It certainly gave the impression of someone who was at their wits end with the sadness of all the things she was having to deal with.
She was well-liked by the other nurses and the “statistics” that were presented as another piece of “evidence” have been torn apart by many eminent statisticians as utterly flawed.
I also gleaned from the DT article that the medics who took the matter to the police (or gave evidence – I forget which) have been given life-long anonimity protection.
Anyone who is convinced she is guilty should maybe read ll about poor Sally Clarke –
https://www.markedbyteachers.com/university-degree/law/the-case-of-sally-clark.html
But don’t mention the FACT that her son was jabbed a matter of hours before he died.
The Judge would not allow evidence of that, after hearing expert evidence from… bigpharma.
As I started to read this article, the Matthew Eappen case came into my mind (UK au pair working in US accused of shaking baby and causing death, sometime in the mid 1990s). I wonder now if he was vaccine damaged.
The au pair was Louise Woodward. She was accused of shaking the baby violently, causing brain injury. The defence presented medical evidence showing that the head injury was three weeks old – the bones had started to heal. The jury decided to convict anyway. The judge reduced the conviction from murder to manslaughter and released her.
American juries convict in over 95% of cases, regardless of the evidence; whenever someone in the US is arrested, their defence lawyer will advise negotiating a plea bargain, because nobody gets a fair trial.
The evidence regarding Matthew Eppen was that he had already had a fractured wrist which was an old injury. Louise Woodward was not accused of that but it begged the question – who did it?
It was a question never investigated before or during or after the trial.
It is one of those pieces of evidence conveniently ignored – like the supposed blood sample of Henri Paul, driver of the car which crashed and lead to the deaths of Dodi Al Fayed and Diana Princess of Wales.
The blood sample was clearly switched from a recent suicide as it had extremely high levels of alcohol and lethal levels of carbon monoxide.
The evidence and video evidence of Henri Paul showed he was sober prior to getting into the car.
The blood sample vanished so could not be checked against Henri Paul’s DNA.
It disturbs me when the talking heads (JHB is one of the worst for this) say things like “X was found guilty in a court of law….” as if that was the end of it.
You’d think those experienced in news presenting or journalism in general would be MORE open to the idea that injustices happen and not all that rarely.
This whole case feels very dodgy; I hope all the digging that’s going on (Norman Fenton did a good interview with someone about this case) will raise public awareness because nothing else will shift the wigged ones.
A few months ago I read a very detailed analysis of this case (apologies, I don’t recall the source). It convinced me there were significant problems at the unit that combined were contributing to the mortality rate. For one thing the alleged actions of Lucy would have to have been done in a location in full view of anyone walking past but there was also a lot of data about a sequence of errors that led to each fatality.
I believe this poor woman has been found guilty lest the truth of the situation tarnish the reputation of our impeccable NHS.
If people were to start doubting its sacrosanct status they may feel less inclined to keep funding it ip to the hilt.
It also sounds like her defence team perhaps missed a few tricks that would have placed some doubt in the minds of the jury.
That’s my view, for what it’s worth.
Detailed analysis of the Letby case here that I think some are referring to here … https://lawhealthandtech.substack.com/archive
Thanks for brining attention to this case. From the start doubts were raised,
Did the anonymous grasser,s have to appear in court I wonder ?
A very poor decision made by a broken judicial system. I am sorry for Lucy. She was a scapegoat for a broken NICU. An underperforming dept of the nhs.
“If you are sure that someone on the unit was deliberately harming a baby or babies you do not have to be sure of the precise harmful act or acts; in some instances there may have been more than one. To find the defendant guilty, however, you must be sure that she deliberately did some harmful act to the baby. “
So we have not really progressed much from the bad old witch burning days .
She’s a witch
Are you sure?
Yes
Ok, burn her.
There is very little evidence against her and she has been made a scapegoat for the failings of the CoC Hospital.. I live near there and it has always had a poor reputation.