Bribery - every step of the way..

The Bribery Act (BA) creates offences of bribing a person to induce or reward them to perform a relevant function improperly and, basically, being the bribee with the roles reversed.

The definition of a relevant function is interesting.  It includes “any activity connected with a business, trade or profession, any activity carried out in the course of employment and any activity carried out on behalf of a body of persons (corporate or unincorporated)”.

The second limb of the definition is that the activity is performed with one or more of the following relevant expectations: -

• It will be performed in good faith
• It will be performed with impartiality 
• That by virtue of performing the activity the person doing so is in a position of trust

So, improper performance of a relevant function would be a failure to perform it in line with the relevant expectation.  The test for whether performance is improper is what a reasonable person in the UK would expect.

What about the position of anybody introducing a lawyer to perform, for example, personal injury or conveyancing services in return for a fee?  What about the position of the lawyer?

Can it possibly be said that such activities don’t fall within one, more or indeed all limbs of the primary definition of a relevant function?

What is the saving for such activities? Is it that nobody has an expectation that this activity will be performed in good faith, or that it will be performed with impartiality or that the performer is in a position of trust?

Let’s put it another way.  Is the introduction from the estate agent to the lawyer who offered the highest referral fee immune from all this because the client knows that the referrer will act partially, in bad faith, to introduce to the highest bidder?

 

Is a reasonable person in the UK now resigned to the fact that their own insurers cannot be trusted and will act in that way? ("Utmost good faith" - ha!)

Does the essence of this legislation founder because the reasonable Brit is now hardened to the fact that in some parts of some industries people operate routinely on the basis of backhanders and not merit?

  

I looked at the Law Society’s guidance note for chapter and verse on referral fees to find...

•  “BA is a consolidation of the previous law relating to bribery.  With the exception of the creation of a new corporate offence, the offences under the Act have not changed markedly from those previously in force”; and

•  “There has been no implication that referral fees were illegal under previous legislation and therefore it is unlikely that such fees are illegal under the new arrangements.”

I don’t understand what “has been no implication” means.  I guess it must be that nobody has taken any notice of people like me who have suggested that referral fees are a form of bribery.

Perhaps what the guidance is saying is that not enough people have dared previously to suggest that referral fees amount to bribery and since the new law is just a restatement of the old law, er, that’s ok then.

The final word of caution from the Law Society is: 

• “However, you may wish to consider how the introducer is obtaining work that is then referred to you. If the introducer is paying bribes to gain the work, this may, in certain circumstances, be seen as them paying a bribe on your behalf.” 

It's quite simple. It's bribery - every step of the way.

Laughing gas..

So...caught a glance at The One Show this evening and an article about fuel prices which reminded me to respond to a recent e-mail from British Gas.

BG has supplied my gas and electricity for a year or two since I switched to a fixed tariff that expired last month. I was invited to consider the new discounted deals available.

Having chosen Websaver 12 Dual Fuel, logged into my existing account, (taking the opportunity to inspect latest bills for both fuels through the links displayed).

Then completed order, confirming that current supplier of both gas and electricity is BG.

My acknowledgment tells me that my electricity account has been switched to the new tariff and that BG will now supply my gas too. It will take 4 - 6 weeks to make the transfer from my existing gas supplier....

...which is - and has been during three decades at this and earlier addresses - er....British Gas.

Am now waiting for the BG engineer to turn up and replace my gas meter, cancellation charges perhaps - and who knows what else.

Nitrous oxide perhaps?

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, er, ha....

Win, win, win - and win again

Well done Jack Straw for blowing the lid off a scam that some of us have known about and complained of for ages.

Most ordinary folk I talk to resent the notion that their own insurers should be quietly profiting from the sale of their data to enable unknown third parties to profit from their misfortune too. Seems a natural reaction.

So - insurers sell the claim and make hundreds of pounds a case. In the course of doing so they help to fuel what they collectively decry as 'compensation culture' and potentially increase the number and value of claims, which they then have to pay (subject to the usual tedious and despicable techniques to avoid and delay).

And the cost of claims rises.

Neat answer to the problem they have helped to create and/or exacerbate? Increase premia. Make the punters out of whom they are already secretly profiting pay for the downside of this grubby process.

Oh, and then blame claimant lawyers. 

Use that propaganda and false statistics to persuade gullible senior political figures who think the country has 'never had it so good' to pass legislation that makes it uneconomical for innocent victims to get decent representation and adequate compensation.

Tell claimants they can trust insurers to be fair (ha!) and pay what the claim is worth, that they won't get any more if they go to a lawyer.

Insist wherever possible that claimants use legal expenses insurers that are (ultimately) under the control of the companies who pay the claims - whose hand they will not bite or be allowed to bite.

Nirvana - sell the claims and make some money, get rid of hostile lawyers to keep compensation low, make victims bear more of the cost of using lawyers - and still charge the punter more on renewal. 

Win, win, win - and win again.

What a filthy trade.

Cutting edge courts..

One of our local courts, as others, now accepts filing of documents by e-mail. Hurrah!

Well – in principle, at least.

So we e-mailed a formal reply to a defence last week but the court staff were seemingly not empowered to open the attachments.  Everyone else, almost without exception, to whom we send documents in PDF format seems to have no difficulty with Adobe Reader –described as “the global standard for reliably viewing printing...”

One recipient did recently but they were using the comparatively ancient Version 7.  Adobe X is free to download and takes minutes to do so.

(What puzzles me is why the court staff confirmed that they were able to open another document that was sent by separate e-mail in exactly the same format.)

But the simple answer when you have the technology is to convert to good old JPG which even someone still running Windows 2.1 would be able to open…

….yep – you’ve guessed it!

So we’ll use the fax.

No we won’t – because the court office does not have one any more, where e-mail filing is “enabled”. 

The march of technology – awesome isn’t it?

We were told we shall have to send it by post.  Right…

…maybe we should use “Special Delivery” courtesy of the Royal Mail (see last Wednesday’s post)??

Guaranteed Delivery

It’s a lie.

Today we took delivery of an A4 brown envelope posted on Monday 13 June 2011, at a cost of £7.

It bears the Royal Mail Special Delivery sticker endorsed with the assurance “guaranteed by 1pm next day”.

It was delivered to us at business premises that are open throughout normal business hours every weekday on Wednesday 15 June.

This is the second time in about five weeks that we have received “special delivery” packages on the day after the next working day, in breach of the so called guarantee.

As a bonus, the envelope delivered today was so badly damaged it was just managing to cling onto its contents.

So, how much is this swindle worth to the Royal Mail every year?

Exam Hell

Most of us have to take exams at some point in our life.  A few people enjoy it..

We don’t need muppets setting questions that are not just “impossible”, but truly impossible.

A fundamental gaff hit the headlines last week but how many times does it happen?  How many more cock-ups happen at the start or the end of the process?

Distrust and lack of integrity in the system is on the up.  Reliance upon it has fallen.

Through a couple more generations we shall create a new breed of “examiners” that probably struggle to devise a question, even if they can string enough words together.

There will be no accurate measurement of ability.  How will employers recruit?  Probably just on the basis of who talks a good job.

Many of those will be making it up.  They will probably make up a few more things when they get in and others will follow.

So it spirals. 

No (waste of) expense spared

We often wait weeks for reasonably simple matters to be processed by the county court and for straightforward orders to issue.  It is very frustrating and it wastes time and money.

When it comes to allocation questionnaires, courts seem regularly to push what are in my humble view more important things to one side in the haste to dish out peremptory orders if the questionnaire is filed even a few hours late.

A recent example...

We have a small claims matter where the questionnaire wasn’t filed on the appointed day.  Ironically, the reason was that we took seriously (many don’t) the requirement to check dates of availability of witnesses and awaited a return call from the client.

So the fax went first thing the next morning.  We even troubled to ring the court to check that the staff had seen the endorsement that urged them to ensure it went straight up to the District Judge.

We had anticipated of course that the moment there was non-compliance with something so serious as the filing of an allocation questionnaire, the file would hurtle upstairs.

The staff assured us that the letter was received even that, yes, it would be brought to the Judge’s attention straight away.

Two days later, we had an unless order.

Two blank printed questionnaires (we use electronic forms), guidance notes (er, thanks...) large envelope and a stamp ensured that more time and money that the Court Service does not have was completely wasted.