Fraud: Staffing Levels

Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, this is an extraordinarily difficult area. As my noble friend says, the level of tax fraud and uncollected tax receipts is extraordinarily large. That is precisely why, within a tight settlement for HMRC and every other department, HMRC has been allocated an additional £900 million over the spending review period. That will take up the number of full-time equivalent staff dealing with fraud and other tax avoidance matters from 20,000 at present to some 23,000 by 2014-15. That adjustment has already been planned for. As far as the SFO is concerned, we are clearly not talking about remotely the same order of magnitude of numbers of people, as that body has fewer than 400 people. The new management of the SFO has taken enormous strides since 2008, when the management changed. For example, the average time taken over its investigations has dropped from an average of five years on pre-2008 cases to some 15 months on newer cases, and the conviction rate has significantly increased, so the SFO is very much showing how it has become more effective with less resource.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

Is the Minister satisfied by the resources that were made available for the investigation into the Phoenix four—the people involved in the so-called saving of Rover—which has resulted in no criminal charges being made, and literally a slap on the wrist being given to the directors who behaved so scandalously and betrayed the trust of so many people in Longbridge?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I will not be drawn into second-guessing decisions taken by the investigating authorities on any cases. However, I have heard absolutely no suggestion that the investigations in that case were in any way circumscribed by a lack of resource.