Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many staff work on customer compliance in (a) total and (b) each team in HMRC.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
The average full-time equivalents (FTE) in HMRC currently working on customer compliance activity in 2023/24 is approximately 17,300.
Within Customer Compliance Group staff are deployed across a wide range of compliance risks. Internally, these are usually grouped by customer segment, tax head or specific tax risk being worked.
HMRC publishes information on the amounts spent on compliance by customer segment in our annual report and accounts at Tax by different customer groups – 2022 to 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). The information for 2023/24 will be available in 2024. HMRC does not release detailed breakdowns of this information for operational reasons.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he has made an assessment of the potential impact of the closure of the Taxpayer Protection Taskforce on trends in the level of uncollected tax.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
At Budget 2021, the government announced an investment of over £100 million in the Taxpayer Protection Taskforce to combat error and fraud in the COVID-19 financial support schemes administered by HMRC. This investment enabled HMRC to deploy compliance staff to the Taxpayer Protection Taskforce for the lifetime of the taskforce, and to backfill for those staff to prevent an opportunity cost to the collection of tax revenues.
As planned, HMRC began to transition the activity and the staff working on the taskforce into business-as-usual tax compliance activity from March 2023.
Our compliance activity on the COVID-19 support schemes up to end September 2023 has protected over £1.6 billion worth of grants. This is made up of £430 million prevented from being paid out and over £1.2 billion recovered from overpayments.
We remain committed to tackling error and fraud in the COVID-19 support schemes where this is the most cost-effective use of resources.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many house purchases have not been subject to stamp duty due to the Stamp Duty Land Tax (Temporary Relief) Act 2023 since that act was introduced.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
HM Revenue & Customs HM Revenue & Customs do not publish separate information on the number of residential property transactions not subject to Stamp Duty Land Tax due to the Stamp Duty Land Tax (Temporary Relief) Act 2023.
However, transactions not subject to Stamp Duty Land Tax due to the Stamp Duty Land Tax (Temporary Relief) Act 2023 are included in the total number of non liable residential transactions with a purchase price of more than £125,000. This is published by HM Revenue & Customs in the quarterly Stamp Duty Land Tax statistics: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/quarterly-stamp-duty-land-tax-sdlt-statistics.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what data his Department holds on the (a) number and (b) total cost of replacing (i) laptops, (ii) mobile phones, (iii) memory sticks and (iv) external hard drives that have been (A) lost and (B) stolen in the last year.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
The following table includes the number of lost or stolen devices in HM Treasury in the last year.
| Lost | Stolen | Total cost of replacing |
Laptops | 4 | 4 | £9,187 |
Mobile Phones | 39 | 10 | £32,594 |
Memory Sticks | 0 | 0 | £0 |
External Hard Drive | 0 | 0 | £0 |
All departmental IT is fully security encrypted.
The departmental security unit records and investigates each reported loss. If appropriate, the police are invited to undertake further inquiries.
Laptops and mobiles that are reported lost or stolen are deactivated and set to remotely delete.
There has been no data loss or compromise as a result of these losses.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will make an estimate of the impact of inflation on the average price of (a) oranges, (b) chocolate, (c) candy canes and (d) toys in the last 12 months.
Answered by Bim Afolami - Economic Secretary (HM Treasury)
Inflation data for games, toys, and hobbies can be downloaded here https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/datasets/consumerpriceinflation.
The ONS also have a shopping prices comparison tool which shows inflation for oranges and chocolate, and can be found here https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/articles/shoppingpricescomparisontool/2023-05-03.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what information his Department holds on the number of people who have paid a charge to withdraw money early from an ISA in the last three years; and if he will make an estimate of the total value of those charges.
Answered by Bim Afolami - Economic Secretary (HM Treasury)
Withdrawals from ISAs do not attract a statutory withdrawal charge. The exception is the Lifetime ISA where a 25% charge applies on the amount withdrawn, other than where the withdrawn funds are used by a first-time buyer to purchase a home that costs £450,000 or below, or where the investor is terminally ill or aged 60 or over. Statistics on the number of individuals making unauthorised withdrawals from the Lifetime ISA and the value of these charges can be found in HMRC’s published annual savings statistics 2023.
www.gov.uk/government/statistics/annual-savings-statistics-2023
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what information his Department holds on the number of people with Help to Buy ISAs who have bought a house in each of the last three years.
Answered by Bim Afolami - Economic Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government is committed to supporting people of all incomes and at all stages of life to save, and to making the aspiration of home ownership a reality for as many households as possible.
The Help to Buy: ISA scheme continues to support existing account holders save for a deposit towards their first home. The number of property completions is available online at Official Statistics on the Help to Buy: ISA scheme - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will make it his policy to increase funding for suicide prevention in the 2023 Autumn Statement.
Answered by John Glen - Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
Government is committed to mental health support and suicide prevention. In September, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) published the new Suicide prevention strategy for England and launched the Suicide Prevention Grant Fund which makes available £10 million from 2023 to 2025 to support suicide prevention. It is the responsibility of local integrated care boards (ICBs) to plan services to meet the needs of their communities, including deciding how much funding they provide for mental health services.
It would not be appropriate to comment on the content of the 2023 Autumn Statement at this time.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of 4 July 2023 to Question 191850 on Taxpayers, if he will take steps to publish the further breakdown of this information by 20 July 2023.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
HMRC does not publish this information.
HMRC’s Personal income by tax year statistics contains constituency-level breakdown of taxpayer numbers for 2020-2021, the latest available outturn, in Table 3.15.
HMRC’s Income Tax liabilities statistics publish a high-level regional breakdown containing the number of taxpayers in each income tax bracket. This includes outturn data up to the 2020-2021 financial year and projections for the following years up to 2023-2024. This information can be found in Table 2.2.
For projection years, HM Treasury does not publish this information at constituency level.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many (a) basic, (b) higher and (c) additional rate taxpayers there were in each Parliamentary constituency in the latest financial year for which data is available.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
HMRC’s Personal income by tax year statistics contains constituency-level breakdown of taxpayer numbers for 2020-2021, the latest available outturn, in Table 3.15. below:
Further breakdowns of this information are not readily available and cannot be provided in the time available.
For projection years, HM Treasury does not publish this information at constituency level.