Or am I missing something?
Isn’t this just wrong?
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
Musings on the byways of popular culture
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It is wrong. It shouldn’t have been government policy in the first place, but there are problems in setting precedents in such circumstances. And our legal system sets great store in following precedents, once established.
To quote from that BBC report:
Paymaster General Nick Thomas-Symonds said it was a “standard approach” that changes to government policy do not apply retrospectively.
“Whenever you change policy there’s going to end up being a cut off point in it.”
If you allow that changing policy retrospectively can occur, you open up the possibility that other retrospective policy changes can be made too. And how far back do you go with a retrospective change of policy?
It’s both massively unfair and legally correct at the same time, isn’t it. Imagine the fuss if they brought back hanging and applied the death sentence retrospectively to all the murderers serving life sentences.
“Changes do not apply retrospectively. ”
Tell that to people I know who joined a legal tax scheme only to have it retrospectively made illegal.
https://uk.practicallaw.thomsonreuters.com/0-518-8006?contextData=(sc.Default)&transitionType=Default&firstPage=true
Unfortunately you can’t tell all of them because HMRC hounded a couple of members to suicide.
Whataboutery, perhaps, but equally as wrong as the OP example.
I was a member of a couple of supposedly-legal tax-avoidance schemes that were deemed illegal later on. Very common in the 1990s. It was exploitation of loopholes that were subsequently closed. Employment agencies and not-very scrupulous accountants made fortunes for doing very little and plenty of companies avoided responsibilities towards their employees. If you didn’t join your agency’s scheme you got no work. All the agencies were doing it and none of the client companies were hiring labour directly so you had no choice but to comply. No sick pay, no holiday pay, no payment for statutory holidays. At first the pay rates were better than average but soon they were the same as direct employment but without any benefits. Then when the schemes collapsed or vanished, you got bills for back tax from the Revenue. Generally only for a fraction of what you had avoided but significant amounts nonetheless.
The thing is, that ending the exploitation of legal loopholes is not comparable to retrospectively changing the law.
It was a tightening-up of how existing law was applied, in the case of ending those tax avoidance schemes.
Ending the charging of those wrongfully imprisoned for the cost of housing, clothing and feeding them required new legislation to reverse another older piece of legislation. If they’d made it retrospective at the time, they would have had to have a cutoff date, else it would have applied all the way back to Magna Carta or beyond.
Did you read the cases referred to in my link? I don’t wish to get into a discussion on it, but changes were in fact applied retrospectively, not as a way to “tighten up a loophole”. Full disclosure, I was a member of one. Your experience may differ. I refer you to notoretrotax.org.uk if you’d like a fuller picture.
The justice system should be paying out MORE in compensation as a consequence of the grotty accomodation they’ve been foisting upon innocent folk, not recouping costs for the use of a bucket, a rubbish bed and a shared room without a view.
Last year I heard one of the victims of this scandal saying how it doesn’t work the other way round.
He had his board and lodgings deducted from his compensation package.
He also pointed out that he worked a forty hour week in the prison laundry for which he was handsomely rewarded with £14, whereas £400 per week would have been a reasonable amount, but there was absolutely no question that HMG or the Prison Service were going to award him £386 back pay for every week he worked in the laundry.
If this were going to be bank breaking, I could understand.
But to how many people does this apply?
Re the point re retroactively refunding these absurd bed and board deductions
to victims of miscarriages of justice.
Surely they could easily cap the potential repayment amount by limiting claims to
those still living?
Given that the British justice system is (or used to be) regarded as the best
in the world, just how many living victims of such miscarriages of justice are there?