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HMRC settle with compensation in disability discrimination case
Why I sued HMRC for disability discrimination and accepted a settlement
I sued because nothing else worked.
Action on Hearing loss claim there are nearly 10 million people with a hearing loss in the UK; 800,000 of them have a severe or profound loss like mine. Lots of deaf people and those with other impairments such as mental illnesses and autism struggle with telephony. Yet HMRC and other large organisations have not yet got with the 21st century to provide viable and more accessible alternatives.
HMRC are a government organisation who deserve every bit of their reputation as bureaucratic bullies as they clearly demonstrated right to the end of my wrangles with them. They are the most disablist and rude organisation I have ever dealt with and I hope never to have to communicate with them again!
I hope publishing the outline of my case encourages other deaf and disabled people being discriminated against by HMRC or similar governmental/bureaucratic organisation to seek legal advice from Unity Law like I did or with another reputable law firm.
Telephony and HMRC
The problem started with HMRC's regular voice Working Tax Credits (WTC) advice phonelines being overloaded in 2008 - especially during out-of-work hours - the only times I had access to my TextPhone. (My blog entry on why telephony is difficult for me.
HMRC's phonelines have never been reliable or easy to get through to. This has been happening for years and is supported by HMRC's own research.
Some phonelines even have hold music which interferes with TextRelay by making my Minicom think it is receiving modem tone instructions as per the printout below.
Textphone users using TextRelay are more impacted by being unable to connect a call as it takes a lot longer for our calls to connect in the first place so we cannot quickly redial. I also found that once connected to HMRC lines I was "accidentally disconnected" an awful lot when being transferred, not something hearing people seem to experience.
HMRC's direct textphone lines (i.e textphone to textphone) are even worse! I don't think I ever got one to work in the past six years. HMRC now blatantly offer less favourable service to direct-textphone users by not answering their main working tax credits textphone line when they do answer their voice line equivalent as shown on the clickable screengrab of their website below.
I don't take incoming calls because most people and organisations don't use the 18002 dialing prefix properly. I also don't have anyone who can relay phonecalls for me reliably and feel that as a legally competent adult that I shouldn't need anyone to do this for me. I repeatedly told HMRC both of these things and that in the 21st century they should have secure webchat and email style systems but was told this wasn't possible for security reasons. There was no way for me to say that I'd rather take the "security risk" than be constantly discriminated against.
Extra disability issues
To make things even more complicated, in 2009 one of my other arm impairments suddenly worsened so I went from being able to type as much as I liked on suitable keyboards to having very variable typing ability and finding my Minicom's keyboard was not possible to type on for an HMRC length call.
HMRC and written correspondence
My very first letter to HMRC written after weeks of being unable to get through to by textphone for advice didn't contain the correct incantation of "HMRC's magic jargon words" so HMRC did not apply one of their own rules "4 week overrun" to my case.
By the time I knew that I needed to use magic words I had missed a very tight HMRC deadline which HMRC refused to waive. Over 4 years I
in an attempt to get HMRC to recognise their mistake. Some of them I tried multiple times. HMRC have no system for "We got it wrong with the original information".
Despite me telling HMRC that I struggle with some kinds of language because of a language impairment they also repeatedly refused to simplify or clarify the content or wording of their letters.
Most of my letters explained why telephones are inaccessible to me and that I don't have a third-party to handle my calls but this didn't stop HMRC repeatedly responding by telling me to phone them or for me to get a third party to do so.
HMRC Appointments needed telephony to access
I even tried to get a face to face appointment with HMRC, hoping that if I could speak to a real person and explain my case that they would stop stonewalling me with bureaucratese.
My first appointment request in writing, giving my availability and requesting Speech to Text Reporting STTR/palantypy (aka CART and VSTT) was treated as an appeal by the case officer who wrote back to me saying said appeal had failed and completely ignored my appointment request.
My second appointment attempt involved me phoning HMRC to tell them I needed an appointment with STTR/Palantypy support and was available any Wednesday. I ended up having to explain to the advisor that I couldn't take incoming calls and didn't have a third party who could answer a call over the next two days.
Eventually the advisor spoke to a manager and agreed to send a letter which took three weeks to arrive. The letter asked if I wanted a signer (NRCPD registered registered (RSLI) British Sign Language / English interpreter) so the information about STTR/palantypy had been lost - again. I tried to fax my reply requesting STTR/palantypy to HMRC but their fax machine didn't work so I had to post it - which caused further delay as I was unwell at the time.
HMRC cancelled my appointment (and didn't tell me)
I turned up to my appointment and reported to the reception desk where the staff couldn't find my name on any lists. It turns out someone had tried to email me (I think it never left HMRC's servers) and I was given a printout of an email:
We are in the process of trying to book a Pala Typist [sic] instead of a signer as you requested. We will need to rearrange your appointment for an alternative date. As soon as it can be arranged we will confirm the date and time and provide you with directions.
When checking my email on my phone to prove that I had never received this email I got reprimanded by staff because there were signs up banning people from using their phones.
As well as wasting my time - the whole experience was stressful and intimidating despite the staff being polite and having good deaf awareness.
HMRC then refused me a replacement appointment
After some more slow postal correspondence trying to set up a replacement appointment, where I yet again had to repeatedly tell HMRC my availability and that I needed STTR/palantypy not a signer (sign language interpreter), HMRC sent me a letter refusing me an appointment entirely.
HMRC continue to demand the money
In 2012 I got various letters threatening me with debt collectors and court if I didn't repay the alleged overpayment. I wrote back telling them that I wasn't paying and that I would be happy to explain to a court how hard I had worked to communicate and how inaccessible HMRC were...
HMRC then told me they would change my tax code to extract the money. This is very clever as it's not possible to legally challenge that. When I tried to phone HMRC to object as per instructions in the letter HMRC's phoneline hold music interfered with my Minicom 6000P causing it to continually spew nonsense before disconnecting after about 20 minutes of waiting to connect to an adviser.
Legal support from Unity Law
At this point I did what I should have done in 2011. I sought legal advice from Unity Law a specialist firm of disability discrimination solicitors. Unity's staff were fantastic, the lawyers did everything by email and postal letters, they never asked me to phone them, after a communication misunderstanding they followed my advice on communicating more clearly with me and always answered any questions that I had.
Unity started out asking me to write to HMRC to request an appointment again telling HMRC that I could not use the telephone. HMRC took over seven weeks to reply telling me that I had to telephone their enquiry centre for an appointment.
My lawyer decided this constituted
My case was taken on a Conditional Fee Agreement (no win, no fee) as we had a higher than 50% chance of success - an option which would be less possible for me today due to changes in the law about legal cases.
I had to find every letter I had sent or received from HMRC, scan them, log them and email them to my lawyer who used them to start drafting my case against HMRC and sought advice from a barrister. I also requested my personal records "Subject Access Request" from HMRC under the Data Protection Act and got some interesting screenshots of HMRC advisers notes which showed serious misunderstandings about disability rights and the law which I sent to my lawyer.
My lawyer then drafted A letter of claim which was basically a time-line of problematic events, quotations of large sections of the law, request for HMRC to compensate me, fix the problems and cover my legal costs.
For a summary timeline of my dealing with Unity go to my blog entry on it.
HMRC's initial responses
Upon receipt of our first pre-action letter HMRC requested and we granted an extension for them to investigate.
HMRC's first response was sent to me instead of my lawyer (in breach of the solicitor's code of practice) and while it finally acknowledged HMRC had made a mistake about the overpayment and was arranging repayment with a mere £25 "compensation" for inconvenience it suggested I could use a third-party for phones; didn't acknowledge the disability discrimination complaints and refused to pay my legal fees.
My lawyer and I were not impressed, so she drafted up another legal letter telling HMRC that they needed to answer the disability discrimination claims; telling me to use a third-party was legally inappropriate (It's HMRC's duty to make reasonable adjustments not mine) and that if we didn't receive a suitable reply we would proceed to court-action.
HMRC assigned a new lawyer at their end and requested a further 28 days to respond and proof that I was legally disabled. I felt HMRC had wasted the time they had already had in not taking me seriously and fobbing me off but my lawyer advised that we should allow it and suggested she suggested an initial settlement offer, which I agreed to.
HMRC agree to settle
taking into account of the stress that this matter has causednatalyad
I did my research and found the compensation amount I was offered was higher than the few disability discrimination payouts I've been able to find online:
the few recorded court outcomes I could find for non-employment disability discrimination.
HMRC accept that there have been occasions where they have fallen short of the standards
However they do not accept that those shortcomings amount to having a provision, criteria or practice (PCP) which creates a substantial disadvantage to
We do not accept that we are in breach of obligations under the Equality Act 2010 (or otherwise) but we do accept that we could and should have done things better and apologise for these shortcomings.
The allegation implies that textphone lines are always unanswered but the result of our own "mystery shopping" (part of our published research) was that the mystery shoppers were able to get a response. However we accept that persistence through repeated calls and waits may be needed to get through.
We are aware our textphone service does not always meet the standards we desire
The mystery shopping was done over two weeks in March 2012 and the report is actually pretty damning and well worth reading!
Textphone technology is different to ordinary telephone and as a result it is not integrated into the contract centre IT architecture.
This means that these phones cannot ordinarily be answered by advisors working to answer voice calls and as our contact centres are often under great pressure we accept that there are times when the textphone service suffers.
This is basically admitting that textphone calls are likely not to be answered when the callcentres are busy - which is quite often!
I'm both happy and unhappy with the outcome
I am unhappy that HMRC continue to maintain a systematically and institutionally disablist position of failing to recognise that my issues arose and were perpetuated due to poor accessibility of their systems.
It was never about the money, nothing compensates me for the six years of stress, worry, fury and frustration at being constantly stonewalled by jargonistic bureaucracy. Nevermind the hours spent fighting HMRC and just doing the legal case - it's probably still a pathetic hourly rate! However I shall enjoy spending the compensation and saying "HMRC paid for that!".
I am unhappy that HMRC still consider it acceptable to insist on telephony being the primary contact method and continue to tell deaf people to get "third party assistance" when this disables us!
When I expressed concern at "nothing changing" if I have the misfortune to have to deal with HMRC again my lawyer said that I should contact Unity immediately if HMRC discriminates against me in future.
What next for deaf people and HMRC
Organisations such as Pardon, UK Council of Deaf people (UKCoD) and so on have been involved in consultations with HMRC at a high level feeding back information from people discussing difficulties online.
At around the time my settlement letter was received I discovered HMRC now offer an online appointment booker which has a variety of communication support options on it.
We need to stand up for ourselves, insist on appropriate communication channels and support. If HMRC and other agencies discriminate against us, we need to complain and if necessary seek legal advice or request that representative bodies such as Action on Hearing Loss raise concerns at a high level.