Government Computer fiasco  
denies children both parents

THE QUEEN On the application of
KEVIN BARBER  v SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WORK AND PENSIONS
Two day Judicial Review Hearing - Tues/Wed 9/10 July 2002 - RCJ, The Strand, London, 10.30

Judicial Review starring the brilliant Richard Drabble, QC.

  Richard Drabble, QC, (see Times Law Report, Sex Discrimination in Jobseeker's allowance unlawful, 05 May 2001) is presenting the human rights challenge on behalf of a fireman father, who has a true 50:50, four day on, four day off, shared care arrangement for his children which has been endorsed by courts.

In a situation of absolute parity of care;

• the fireman is being denied access to any of the financial benefits that the UK makes payable for parents who care for their children.
• CSA tarred him with the abusive <Absent Parent> label.
• UK laws threatens to put a stop on this fireman's wages.

The fireman's case is that when you care for children as much as the mother then there is no absent parent.

• Will the fireman be forced to continue to wear the <Absent Parent> tagging ?
• Does the treatment he receives violate parens' human and civil rights ?
• Is it justified to condem the fireman to a life of to social exlusion ?

The Skeleton made on behalf of the fireman father is an exemplary and thorough compilation of easy to read pertinent anti-discriminatory case law from European Courts. Anyone affected by Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination cases (such as pupils now studying at the bar, trainee journalists,) would gain considerable benefit  from Drabble's unique understanding in this area of expanding law.

The Skeleton made on behalf of the Secretary of State shows that the real reason for not giving equal treatment to all parents who care for children is because of the Department of Work and Pensions relies on a computer system which has been in operation since 1975. The Department of Work and Pensions' Sprawson Report highlights the ineptitude and incompetence by Civil Servants to deal with IT.

Civil servants report that when they try to bring the 1975 system into line with new Government requirements the system crashes. Civil servants report that attempts the meet the new legal requirements placed on our Government should be resisted in order to save their ancient computer system.

Judge rules that 1975 Computer code deprives fireman of equal treatment.

  FIREMAN LOSES FIRST ROUND IN CHILD BENEFITS CHALLENGE

Firefighter Kevin Barber today accused the Government of "unfairness" as he lost his High Court test case battle over child benefits.

A judge rejected his claim that the money should be split equally between separated couples when father and mother played an equal role in caring for their children.

Mr Barber had challenged a Government refusal to allow him and his ex-wife Karen to share child benefit for one of his two sons, even though they jointly care for the boy under a shared care arrangement.

The case involving Mr Barber, of Spinney Crescent, Beeston, Nottingham, is one of several attacking the "all-or-nothing approach" of the Government to shared care arrangements and various welfare benefits.

Rejecting Mr Barber's application for judicial review, the judge, Sir Richard Tucker, ruled there had been no unlawful discrimination or breach of his rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.

The judge said the policy operated by the Department for Work and Pensions was "reasonable, legitimate and proportionate".

The child benefit payments were relatively small "so the system must be kept simple and the costs of administering it must be kept low".

So far these aims had been achieved, with only 1.9% of the total sum involved going on administration.

The judge said: "I find that the present system works well and offers an efficient service at a relatively low cost.

"In my judgment there is no justification for a change in that system. The defendant's policy is legitimate and proportionate."

After the hearing, Mr Barber described the system as "simply unfair".

He asked: "Why can't the benefit be split and the actual circumstances of each member of the former couple and of the child be considered?

"Looking after a child equally does not appear to give you equal rights to get help from the state.

"The Government says that it wants to support families - yet in a situation like mine there are two families and only one is supported. That is simply unfair.

"I am currently considering my options as to appealing, and have been advised that I have grounds to do so."

Mr Barber's solicitor Conrad Haley, of the human rights pressure group Public Law Project, said: "It was disappointing for us. The judge feels that the administration of the child benefits system would be hampered by having to look more closely in these sort of cases where child benefit might have to be split, and that would increase costs and the time it takes to decide claims.

"We feel that is outweighed by the hardship to parents, which is much greater than the potential administrative problems that might arise.

"The judgment was disappointing as the judge failed to grapple with some of the issues which were raised, but these things can be difficult at this
level.

"It might be that the Court of Appeal will take a different view."

webmaster@fathercare.org

Background:

Three forces came together to block the intention of Parliament when it enacted the 1989 UK Children Act. At that time, Members of Parliament were of the opinion that parenting in general and fathering in particular were important, and so the Act stated that after divorce, Shared Parenting should be the norm. That is, there should be a move away from the implicit nature of England's adversarial system, where in a divorce action, as in any other legal action, everything relevant should be given as a trophy to the victor in the case. By passing the Children Act, Parliament asserted that a child should retain contact with both his or her parents; the outcome of a divorce should be a draw rather than a victory.

Butler-Sloss, in an extraordinary judgement  http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/zbbsloss.htm  [1994] 1 FLR 669 exploited the mantra "The interests of the child come first" which is repeated at the beginning of the Act to justify her defiance of the intention of the 1989 Act. She judges that the decision as to what are the child's best interests is in the giving of the subjective judgement of the judge (herself) (possibly but not compulsorily guided by the Court Welfare Officer, who we have found out may be completely untrained). 

It is worth noting that Canadian Senator Anne C Cools has researched the mantra "The interests of the child come first" and come to the conclusion that in the last twenty years, its meaning has been altered from its obvious meaning to its now meaning that the interests of the mother come first. In a recent speech Butler-Sloss explicitly stated that by putting the mother's interests first, one put the child's interests first.

The second factor leading to the present situation is the infiltration of all of our institutions by radical feminist ideas, whose primary article of faith is that males are violent, abusive and a particular danger to children. In particular, fathers represent the main threat to the safety of their children. At least for a mother, the family home is a more dangerous place than the street, and this probably applies to children as well.

This ideological reign has caused the Home Office to give radical feminists in academia including Stanko of RHC millions of pounds of taxpayers' money to fabricate statistics which massively inflate the figures for male violence, while they do no research into female violence.

The third factor leading to the present crisis resides in the entrails of our Government. The first hint of this problem was a letter to Chris Smith by Harriet Harman then Secretary of State, that it was administratively inconvenient to deliver various state benefits intended for fathers. Currently, the British Government is fighting an expensive, determined rearguard in a number of cases in its own and in the European Courts to delay the moment when it will finally be forced to stop this defiance of Parliament, and also to stop its blatant sexist discrimination against men, undermining the intentions of Parliament, which include help for a father who is caring for children to get back to work, and help for a father who falls sick to continue to care properly for his children.

(Parliament's intentions relates to many benefits are being resisted, including denying the added benefit intended for a sick father because he has the care of children rather than only himself, and also the added benefit to encourage a father to get back to work when he is caring for his children rather than only for himself.) The Times reported that the Secretary of State recently lost the Hockenjos case in the Appeal Court and was denied the right to appeal to the House of Lords. However, taxpayers' money continues to pour into the government's legal fights, to retain sexist discrimination as long as possible.

It has now transpired that the "Administrative Difficulty" that caused Harried Harman to insist on continuing to discriminate against fathers resulted from the government's incompetence over its computer system for paying these benefits. The Sprawson Report says that splitting the relevant benefits as intended by Parliament when parents have separated must be resisted because the government's 1975 vintage computer system would not be able to cope. Previous attempts to increase its versatility have been traumatic.

Thus, (1) Butler-Sloss's ignorance of the importance of a father in a child's life (and recently she admitted that she had been wrong in her feeling over the decades that this was not important; "In 1970 I don't think we recognised the importance of a child having both parents .... My thinking has certainly evolved." - Sunday Times, 17feb02) combined with (2) radical feminist ideology deep in the heart of our government and also (3) government incompetence in the matter of computer systems, combined together to create a united drive to cut the links between child and father for perhaps a quarter of the children in this country, in total defiance of the intentions of parliament and of all the research into what happens to children when this is done.

Government computer systems.

Private Eye has linked the failure of government computer systems with corruption. At a time when the US Administration was investigating corruption which involved the Florida company EDS buying up US politicians and then installing its computer systems in government, it reported that EDS retained both Conservative and Labour British MPs as "consultants". Thus, government computer systems involve a slush fund. At a time when the Inland Revenue and SA systems bought from EDS were failing disastrously, our government bought a further system from EDS for the CSA, which then failed.

Today, 28june02, p3, Private Eye reports Peter Foster, [computer analyst] as saying "one of the biggest problems for government IT spending is that 'EDS has half of all the services revenue which makes it difficult for others to break in and get the sort of competition that ensures value for money'." Our government spends £4,000 million per year on IT systems.

It appears that a quarter of the children in this country have to be cut off from their fathers in order to protect the tiny "consultancy" fees being paid to a handful of Conservative and Labour MPs. The cost to this country, since all research finds that those children are much more likely to end up in jail, be teenage pregnant, etc., will be massive.