Not fines, dammit!

To: The Today Programme

Hi -

Your Home Affairs correspondent failed to mention that what the Home Ofice has done is not to prosecute more employers of illegal workers. What are being levied are not fines - whatever Mr Byrne says.

They are now issuing administrative penalties, which are dealt with under civil procedure, if the person penalised understands how to fight them. (Which means an appeals process, eventually legal action.) The burden of proof has been reversed.

It is therefore no surprise that many more penalties have been levied than prosecutions and fines under the old, just, system. But worse, there has been nowhere enough time for significant numbers of appeals since the new regulations came into effect; the minister is cheerfully presuming that anyone his officials have chosen to punish is guilty.

It is a system that ought to be repugnant to any conception of fairness: punishment first, then condemnation, then the opportunity to prove your innocence at your own expense. And Mr Byrne is proud of that!

Yours sincerely

--
Guy E S Herbert

How the Empire was built.

To: The Economist:

Sir,

The right analogy (Leader, 15 March) is not New York's loss of the bond market, but the flight of private equity to St James's after Sarbanes-Oxley. It is the uncertainty and threatened disclosure that will frighten away the super rich; the £30,000 levy they will not notice, but may drive out highly skilled city workers. If equity is the object then why not get rid of the real anomaly whereby HMRC claims extraterritorial powers over Britons? Let anyone make money abroad without question and bring it home to spend it. That's how the Empire was built.

Yours faithfully

--
Guy E S Herbert