Oral Answers to Questions Debate

Full Debate: Read Full Debate
Department: HM Treasury

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Evans Excerpts
Tuesday 26th June 2012

(12 years, 4 months ago)

Commons Chamber
Read Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chloe Smith Portrait Miss Smith
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I can confirm that, through the actions of this Government, pump prices are 10p a litre lower than they would have been under the previous Government, who had scheduled in 12 fuel duty rises while they were in office and six more for afterwards.

Chris Evans Portrait Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
- Hansard - -

14. What the average waiting time for calls to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs helplines was in (a) the last 12 months and (b) the previous 12 months.

David Gauke Portrait The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

The average waiting time for a customer calling HMRC’s helplines in the past 12 months was four minutes and 19 seconds. In the preceding 12 months, it was four minutes and 13 seconds.

Chris Evans Portrait Chris Evans
- Hansard - -

A constituent of mine has had a nightmare experience trying to get through to HMRC: he phoned several times throughout the week, but never spoke to an adviser and kept getting an engaged line. His is just one of many cases involving HMRC in my constituency office at the moment. With 10,000 HMRC staff being laid off, how do the Government hope to clamp down on tax avoidance when they obviously cannot collect taxes in the first place?

David Gauke Portrait Mr Gauke
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

The first point to make is that the numbers of front-line staff dealing with tax avoidance and tax evasion are increasing over the course of this Parliament, in contrast with what happened during the last Parliament. There has been improvement in contact centre performance in the number of calls that get through, but more progress is needed. HMRC is deploying staff more flexibly and conducting small-scale pilots to see whether the private sector can provide additional capacity. HMRC is determined to improve performance.