My father who is of Pakistani dissent has trouble reading English and has been accused of benefit fraud. Help!

Question: My father is fiercely independent lost his wife (my mother) 15 months ago. Unfortunately, she was the one who handled all of the bills and finances, but my father refuses to accept help with these matters now. We have tried to keep an eye on things as much as possible, but we cannot be there to watch everything he does, all of the time and me and my siblings all work.

It would appear that a couple of months after my mother’s death, the council sent him a letter asking him to update his details and this is where the mistake occurred. I would find these letters and forms difficult to understand, so for somebody in his position they should have given exception I would have thought! As it turns out, he didn’t fill the form in correctly and the council were making overpayments to him, but he wouldn’t have understood why this was happening.

None the less, we now have this hanging over our heads so we’d really like to fight this as we feel this is a bit of an injustice as he was grieving for my mother who handled all of these things. He would never have intentionally set out to claim more than he was entitled to. But he’s being made to sound like a criminal now for not filling in a form properly!

Answer: All is not lost. Where an applicant the benefit speaks poor English the benefit office have a legal obligation to make sure that he understands what he is signing. The judges are very sympathetic to people put in this position and expect a high standard of co-operation and probity from the benefit fraud office and investigators.

The solution is to get to them before they get to you, and provide a full written statement which Hylton-Potts can help with, cover with proof of his inability to read English well, character references and probably a medical report, that will give the best possible chance of making this go away without a prosecution and criminal record

You will have attended an interview under caution. That was a mistake. We never allow our clients to be interviewed. There is no compunction to say anything, even if they arrest you.

We handle things quite differently by sending in written statements, which are much better way of getting your story across. I’m afraid that keeping your savings is not the only problem.

What you have to establish is the amount of benefit you have that you should not have had. This is important because the Court of Appeal set a tariff and an immediate custodial sentence is the tariff if you have received an overpayment of more than £5000.

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