DRAFT Tax Credits (Income Thresholds and Determination of Rates) (Amendment) Regulations 2016

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2016 General Committees

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

I wish to take issue with the rationale for why the change is happening and why it is happening now. I am a fairly new member of the Public Accounts Committee, to which HMRC officials are regular visitors, and I do not share the confidence in HMRC’s ability to react suitably in real time. Office closures have caused issues, but its ability to respond to customers through its various helplines and to manage that process is well documented in our reports.

HMRC officials are not the only regular visitors that cause the Public Accounts Committee concern about the adequacy of data collected across Government Departments to manage such changes. Every Department seems to have a problem with data and systems and there is no evidence that real-time information is efficient. Concerns have also been raised about the impact assessment and how the change will affect real people.

Government Members like to report that what we introduced in 2003 did not go well. We hold our hands up. It did not go well. We put in place measures to ensure that things were better, so it is a shame that the Conservatives do not want to learn the lessons of that previous system.

The Public Accounts Committee has also been looking at the roll-out of universal credit. It is thought that some of the changes here will be picked up in how universal credit is rolled out, but the PAC has concerns about how that is going and about the Department’s ability to inform Members of Parliament about when and how the change will reach their constituencies. I have no confidence in the Government’s ability to make this work in practice and urge that an impact assessment be reconsidered.