Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many and what proportion of telephone calls to HM Revenue and Customs were answered in (a) 2015 and (b) 2016.

HMRC’s published historic data series includes figures for 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17. This data sets out the number of telephony contacts and the percentage of total call attempts handled by HMRC Contact Centres.

These figures, along with the length of time which callers waited before ending their call without speaking to an adviser, are set out in the table below:

The percentage of total call attempts handled by contact centres includes calls handled by an adviser and calls where the query was resolved without speaking to an adviser, for example, after listening to a recorded informational message.

HMRC’s telephone service standard is to answer 85 per cent of phone calls to advisers. This has been the primary telephony target since 2022-23, and there is published performance against this metric since 2020-21, which can be found in HMRC’s historic data series on Gov.uk.

A target of 85 per cent of adviser attempts handled was reviewed and confirmed as part of HMRC's funding settlement at the Spending Review in June 2025.

HMRC has not made an assessment of the additional level of funding that would be required to enable HMRC to answer all telephone calls. The target of answering 85 per cent of calls to advisers, which was agreed at the Spending Review in June 2025, strikes the necessary balance between delivering a good service and providing value for money to taxpayers.