Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mel Stride and Toby Perkins

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

T10.     I welcome what the Chancellor said to my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) a few minutes ago about investigations into the promoters of some of the disguised remuneration schemes, but that will not do many of the victims much good. A business in Chesterfield is facing bankruptcy because of the charge. How might his review actually help the people who have wrongly taken advantage of this advice?

[Mel Stride]

It is largely companies that fall due to the loan charge, rather than individuals—of the 6,000 cases currently being settled, 85% by value relate to companies. HMRC has always been clear that appropriate payment arrangements will be in place to ensure that those outstanding amounts of tax, which after all have been avoided, aggressively and in a contrived way, can be settled sensibly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mel Stride and Toby Perkins

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

Regeneration is of course a devolved matter, but I can assure my hon. Friend that the Government will be supporting Perth via a £150 million commitment to the Tay cities deal.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

7. What information his Department holds on the amount of elite-level professional tennis that will be played in Scotland in 2019.

HMRC Estate Transformation

Debate between Mel Stride and Toby Perkins

Tuesday 29th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to be as passionate as she is about protecting the existing workforce and making sure that we do not lose the workforce’s vital skills. That is why we have taken this approach. We are ensuring that the new locations are viable for those from the old. For example, we are assisting those who need to travel by meeting some of their travel costs over three to five years. We very much want to keep the high level of skills in the organisation.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Businesses in Chesterfield that I have spoken to that have had cause to query HMRC judgments have found the organisation monolithic and unresponsive to their queries. Does the Minister have any assessment of how many successful businesses go bankrupt or have a huge financial deficit as a result of a lack of experience in HMRC, and what will he do about that?

[Mel Stride]

If we look at all the metrics, we can see that HMRC is doing extremely well on customer service at the moment, including time taken to answer telephone calls. There is always more to do, and we will continue to work at this, but it has a good record to date.