HMRC Self-assessment Helpline

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)]

My Lords, I do not have the details of who was told at what stage, but even though HMRC is a non-ministerial department and has a close relationship with the Ministers with oversight of HMRC, operational decisions are taken by HMRC’s management. The decision on the helpline followed two trials last year, the evaluations for which were published, showing that closing access to those helplines for certain people had no adverse effects at all. A commitment has been made that the helplines will remain open over the year ahead, but we are focused on listening to feedback and ensuring that as many people as possible can make the transition to online services, which have a far higher customer satisfaction rate than the phone lines.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, it is not just this particular shambles: HMRC’s own surveys, which you can read in its annual reports, show that customer service has pretty much collapsed within that departmental agency. Its leadership has failed to recognise that the huge shift to self-employment, contract work and gig work has pushed swathes of ordinary people into a tax minefield. I ask that the Government provide HMRC with more resources to deal with this issue, but will they also tackle the culture at HMRC, which, at the top, remains focused on compliance through aggressive enforcement rather than through proper customer service and support? Most people want to pay the right tax; they just do not know what it is or how to do it.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I do not fully recognise the picture that the noble Baroness paints. Over the course of this Parliament, the amount of funding provided to HMRC has increased from £4.3 billion in 2019-20 to £5.2 billion in 2024-25, and the overall customer satisfaction across phone, web chat and online is 79.2% versus a target of 80%. However, I recognise that there are certain elements within the HMRC offer where taxpayers need to get a better service. That includes answering correspondence for some of the more complex and hard-to-reach people: the vulnerable and the digitally excluded. That is exactly why, quite frankly, we need to move resources from taxpayers who can and should use online and ensure that those resources can be targeted at those areas where customer service is not as good as it should be. That is what we intend to do.