Asked by: Lord Weir of Ballyholme (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government what additional staff and funding they have provided to allow HMRC to pursue unpaid tax.
Answered by Lord Livermore - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
As announced by the Chancellor in July 2024 (and confirmed in the Budget in October 2024) £1.4 billion of funding will be provided to HMRC over the next five years to recruit an additional 5,000 HMRC compliance staff, raising £2.7 billion per year in additional revenue by 2029-30.
In addition, the Government confirmed at the Budget in October 2024 that £262 million will be invested over the next five years, to fund 1,800 HMRC debt management staff, raising £2 billion per year in additional revenue by 2029-30. Further investment of £272m to modernise HMRC’s IT and data systems and increase tax receipts as a result, is expected to raise additional revenue of £700m per year by 2029-30.
As part of the Spring Statement 2025, a package of measures to help further close the tax gap and raise over £800 million in additional gross tax revenue per year by 2029-30 was announced.. Specifically, investment of £100m in 500 additional HMRC compliance staff and £114m in 600 additional HMRC debt management staff, as well as £87m to increase collection of overdue tax debt using Debt Collection Agencies acting on HMRC’s behalf.
Asked by: Lord Weir of Ballyholme (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assumptions they have made in their budget estimates for additional resources gained from the recovery of unpaid tax.
Answered by Lord Livermore - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government expects an additional £6.3 billion per year to be gained by 2029-30 from the measures announced as part of the Budget in October 2024 and Spring Statement 2025. These estimates have been certified by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility.
Asked by: Lord Rogan (Ulster Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government what are the Barnett consequentials for Northern Ireland following its agreement of a new funding package for community pharmacies in England.
Answered by Lord Livermore - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Barnett formula applies to all increases or decreases to UK Government Departmental Expenditure Limits (DEL). As the Community Pharmacy Contract is being funded from within existing Department for Health and Social Care’s budgets, there will be no additional Barnett consequentials for the devolved governments. The Barnett formula has already been applied to funding previously allocated at the Budget in October 2024 and Phase 1 of Spending Review 2025 for 2025-26.
The Block Grant Transparency publication breaks down all changes in the devolved governments’ block grant funding from the 2015 Spending Review up to and including Main Estimates 2023-24. The most recent report was published in July 2023, and the next version of the Block Grant Transparency will be published in due course.
The Northern Ireland Executive’s 2025-26 Spending Review settlement is the largest settlement in real terms of any since devolution and ensures that the Northern Ireland Executive continues to receive over 24% more per person than equivalent UK Government spending in the rest of the UK, including the 2024 restoration financial package.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether fiscal rules or defence priorities determined that more than 90 per cent of the expenditure transferred to defence from overseas development assistance is allocated to capital expenditure; and how this allocation correlates to the 35 per cent of defence expenditure currently allocated to capital spending.
Answered by Lord Livermore - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Chancellor’s Spring Statement document, published on 26 March, set out the Resource DEL and Capital DEL uplifts to defence spending over the scorecard period.
A greater proportion of the uplift will be Capital DEL funding. This reflects the needs of defence, and will enable the accelerated adoption of cutting-edge capabilities, and rebuild stockpiles, munitions, and other essentials depleted after a period focussed on international terrorism and global crises. This Capital DEL focus also supports the Chancellor’s mission to boost growth, enabling greater spending on novel and innovative technologies.
The allocation of this uplift and the MOD budget will be confirmed as part of the Spending Review 2025, which will conclude on 11 June 2025.
Asked by: Gregory Stafford (Conservative - Farnham and Bordon)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of increases in employers National Insurance Contributions on levels of employment.
Answered by James Murray - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Office for Budget Responsibility published the Economic and Fiscal Outlook (EFO) in March 2025, which sets out a detailed forecast of the economy and public finances, including their forecast on levels of employment https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-march-2025/#:~:text=Real%20earnings%20grow%20by%201.4,%2D26%20to%202029%2D30.
Asked by: Mel Stride (Conservative - Central Devon)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to paragraph 3.2 of the Office for Budget Responsibility's Economic and Fiscal Outlook, published on 26 March 2025, how the policies scored at the Spring Statement differ from the policies announced by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on 18 March 2025; and for what reason these policies were changed.
Answered by Darren Jones - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
In response to feedback from the Office for Budget Responsibility, the government made amendments to the policy parameters of two measures. Firstly, the Universal Credit standard allowance will reach £106 per week in 2029-30, an increase above inflation. This differs to the level of £107 per week in 2029-30, which was the latest policy assumption at the time of the statement to the House delivered by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on 18 March 2025. Secondly, the government will freeze the reduced Universal Credit health element level for new claimants, in line with our objectives to rebalance the system, rather than uprating it by Consumer Price Index inflation, which was the policy assumption at the time of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions’s statement to the House on 18 March 2025.
These updates were made after statement, once the Office for Budget Responsibility had given its final assessment of the costings and behavioural assumptions associated with the measures. The adjustments we have made ensure we continue to strike the right balance between setting strong work incentives and fiscal sustainability. This package remains consistent with the government’s Green Paper and the statement to the House made by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on 18 March 2025.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of 13 February 2025 to Question 29188 on Agriculture and Business: Inheritance Tax, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of reviewing her Department's data collection methods to enable the collection of data on the number of estates containing woodlands impacted in the 2026-27 financial year.
Answered by James Murray - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
HMRC guidance sets out that woodland is only agricultural property, and therefore qualifies for agricultural property relief, if it is occupied with, and that occupation is ancillary to, agricultural land or pasture. It will include woodland shelter belts, game coverts, fox coverts, coppices grown for fencing materials and clumps of amenity trees or spinneys. Woodlands occupied for purposes that are not agricultural, such as amenity woodland or woodland used for the production of commercial timber, are not agricultural property. However, they may be eligible for woodlands relief or business property relief.
Executors must include the value of any timber and woodland owned by the deceased that is not part of a farm in box 69 of the IHT400 form, alongside the value of the deceased’s other interests in any business or partnership (which may or may not be related to woodlands). Some farms may also include coppices, small woods and belts of trees that shelter the land, and the value of these should be included in the value of any farm, farmhouses and farmland owned by the deceased in box 68 of the IHT400 form.
However, as stated in our answer to UIN 29188, while estates include supporting documentation about the type of assets on which they claim agricultural and business property reliefs when submitting their claims, only the value of eligible assets is digitally captured in a format available for further analysis. It is also combined with the value of other assets in the boxes mentioned above, and these may or may not be related to woodlands. As such, any further level of detail is not readily available from historic claims to estimate how many future estates might contain woodland. It would be disproportionately costly for HMRC to manually review historic claims to digitally capture this information.
As detailed in my recent letter to the Chair of the Northern Ireland Select Committee, Inheritance Tax is currently operated by HMRC using a predominantly paper-based system. As part of my work to modernise HMRC, we plan to move to a digital system.
Asked by: Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative - Thirsk and Malton)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether (a) local authorities, (b) state schools, (c) universities and (d) NHS Trusts subject to the business rates surcharge for properties with a rateable value over £500,000 from April 2026 onwards will receive compensation for those business rates.
Answered by James Murray - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
We are creating a fairer business rates system that protects the high street, supports investment, and is fit for the 21st century.
To deliver our manifesto pledge, we intend to introduce permanently lower tax rates for retail, hospitality, and leisure (RHL) properties, from 2026-27.
This tax cut must be sustainably funded, and so from 2026-27 we intend to introduce a higher rate on those properties with Rateable Values of £500,000 and above. This will apply to the most valuable properties, including large distribution warehouses such as those used by online giants, so that they can help support the viability of high streets.
The Spring Statement confirmed the spending envelope for phase 2 of the spending review. We will consider the full range of priorities and pressures facing departments in the round, including any impact of the higher multiplier, when setting these budgets.
Final details on the large business multiplier will be set out at Budget 2025, in light of the outcomes of the 2026 revaluation.
Asked by: Martin Wrigley (Liberal Democrat - Newton Abbot)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of 1 April 2025 to Question 42193 on Digital Technology: Taxation, what recent discussions she has had with her G20 counterparts on the taxation of the digital economy.
Answered by James Murray - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors met in February 2025. International taxation was among the topics discussed, including OECD/G20 work on addressing the tax challenges arising from the digitalisation of the economy through ‘Pillar 1 and 2’ reforms to international corporate taxation. South Africa subsequently published a Chair’s summary of these meetings which is indicative of G20 members’ views.
Asked by: David Chadwick (Liberal Democrat - Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to the Secretary of State for Transport's Oral Statement of 24 March 2025 on Road Maintenance, whether she has made an estimate of the Barnett consequential funding for Wales of the additional £500 million highway maintenance funding.
Answered by Darren Jones - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
At Phase 1 of the 2025 Spending Review, an additional £500 million was allocated to the Department for Transport to fund local highways maintenance in 2025-26. The Barnett formula was applied in the usual way to changes in the Department for Transport’s Delegated Expenditure Limit (DEL) budget.
At Spending Reviews, the Barnett formula is applied to changes to each UK Government department’s overall DEL budget, rather than to individual programmes.
The Welsh Government’s Spending Review settlement for 2025-26 is the largest in real terms of any Welsh Government settlement since devolution. The Welsh Government is receiving at least 20% more funding per person than equivalent UK Government spending in England. That translates into over £4 billion more in 2025-26 and includes £1.7 billion through the operation of the Barnett formula.
The Block Grant Transparency publication breaks down all changes in the devolved governments’ block grant funding from the 2015 Spending Review up to and including Main Estimates 2023-24. The most recent report was published in July 2023. An update to Block Grant Transparency to include Autumn Budget 2024 changes will be published in due course:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/block-grant-transparency-july-2023