Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the compliance of the HMRC’s Voice ID system with the General Data Protection Regulation; and whether HMRC obtain sufficient consent before using voice recording to identify a person.

HMRC carried out a Privacy Impact Assessment of its Voice ID system when it went live in January 2017. The system relied on the implied consent of the customer, which was compliant with the data protection legislation in effect at the time.

Now that new data protection legislation has come into effect, HMRC has reviewed the Voice ID system and made some immediate changes to ensure customers are better informed about how their data is collected and used, how to provide or withhold consent and how to withdraw consent at a later stage.