Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many HM Revenue and Customs staff working in tax investigations have been employed in each year since 2010.

The number of staff employed in the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) Criminal Investigation Directorate each year since 2010 (as at 31^st March) is as follows:

The figures provided include all resource, including managers, deployed both operationally and non-operationally within the Directorate.

From 1 April 2016 the HMRC Fraud Investigation Service (FIS) was formed from the merger of the Criminal Investigation and Specialist Investigation Directorates.

Since the creation of FIS from 1 April 2016, the focus and deployment of the previous specialist civil investigation and criminal investigation resource has been brought together in line with HMRC’s Serious Fraud Strategy. This means HMRC deploy the appropriate criminal and civil resource to their case work, which makes it difficult for 2016-17 to ring-fence resource deployment that is specifically on criminal investigation.