Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many individuals and companies have been prosecuted for tax evasion in each of the last five financial years.

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is not a prosecuting authority. Where cases do proceed to the criminal courts the prosecution is carried out by the relevant independent prosecuting authority. This is the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in England and Wales, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) in Scotland, and the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland (PPSNI). Prosecutions for criminal offences are only instigated against individuals, not companies.

This Government has invested over £917million over this Parliament which has seen the volume of mass market evasion prosecutions implemented as a result of HMRC Criminal Investigations increase fivefold.

The table below shows all prosecutions arising from HMRC criminal investigations including those for money laundering, other prohibitions and restrictions and other non-fiscal offences.

The following table excludes cases prosecuted for money laundering, other prohibitions and restrictions and other non-fiscal offences as included in the table above and shows prosecutions for tax evasion offences only.

HMRC is not able to supply a time series of full year prosecution decisions and convictions resulting from their criminal investigations for years up to 2009–10. Complete, comparable data is only available from 2010–11 onwards.