Clause
86
Cross-border
exercise of
powers
Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
Mr.
Francois:
I thank the Financial Secretary for his kind
words and join him in enthusiastically congratulating both
Mr. and Mrs. Gauke on their elevation, which is
doubly
deserved.
Clause 86
relates to the cross-border exercise of powers by HMRC. The explanatory
notes
state:
“UK wide
criminal investigations can raise complex issues around jurisdiction
and the correct procedures and powers to use when gathering evidence
and apprehending suspects. This clause clarifies how evidence can be
gathered and suspects can be apprehended using powers that are familiar
and acceptable to the court where any proceedings are likely to
follow.”
In
light of that, there is a question that I would like to raise with the
Minister. In the case of an HMRC investigation that spans more than one
of the home nations, would there be a code of practice as to which
jurisdiction the investigation and potential legal proceedings would
take place under? The Financial Secretary in response to the previous
debate intimated that a guidance note is now being drafted by the
relevant prosecuting authorities and I am sure that the Treasury will
be liaising with them on that. I should like to press him on this a
little further while I have the
opportunity.
There are
many English residents who have their tax affairs dealt with by HMRC
offices in Scotland, such as the one in Cumbernauld. Conversely, many
Scottish and Northern Irish residents have their tax affairs dealt with
in England or Wales. Given that, what would happen in the case of an
English taxpayer who is in dispute with HMRC and whose only connection
with Scotland is via his tax office in Glasgow? If the dispute then
turns into a criminal investigation, could the English taxpayer be
arrested and prosecuted under Scottish law? Would he have to travel to
Scotland, hire Scottish lawyers or advocates and be put on trial in
Scotland even though he ordinarily resides in England?
How does the
Financial Secretary see all this working in practice? As he has already
referred to a guidance note, which I think would be welcome under the
circumstances, could he update the Committee on the progress of those
negotiations and give us at least an indicative date, if not a hard
one, for when that guidance note is likely to be published? I imagine
that
not least among the professions, including the legal profession, there
would be a great deal of interest in what that guidance note has to
say. I hope that the Financial Secretary can understand the spirit of
what I am asking him and perhaps give us a little further detail of how
this would operate in the real
world.
Mr.
Dunne:
To endorse some comments made by my hon. Friend,
who is shortly to become my European Friend, does this power give HMRC
the option to choose in which jurisdiction it wishes to pursue a case
against the taxpayer? If so, that would seem to put HMRC in a stronger
position in seeking redress against the taxpayer. It would seem
appropriate that there should be some safeguards to ensure at least
that such a decision is taken with the agreement of the taxpayer rather
than against the taxpayer’s
wishes.
John
Healey:
It is important in this discussion to remember
that prosecutions and the arrangements for prosecutions are now the
responsibility not of HMRC but of independent prosecutors. That is the
importance and the relevance of the guidance that I mentioned that will
be drawn up by the Revenue and Customs Prosecution Office and the Crown
Office in Scotland. They will work together on that guidance
note.
Perhaps
I can give an indication of how these matters are dealt with currently
in practice, which I think members of the Committee might expect to see
broadly reflected in the approach that will be taken in future. The
Paymaster General set this out in a letter in August last year to the
Chartered Institute of Taxation and it was reproduced in the
consultation document. The practice is relevant in the sort of
circumstances that concern the hon. Members for Rayleigh and for
Ludlow.
In practice,
the decision on where proceedings are to take place will usually be
taken on the balance of convenience——that is, where the
taxpayer and the majority of the witnesses reside. That is how these
matters are generally conducted now. As I began by saying, these
matters are now for the independent prosecutors to decide, not HMRC and
certainly not Government Ministers or Treasury officials. I hope that
that gives sufficient indication and some reassurance so that the
Committee feel comfortable about allowing the clause to stand part of
the Bill.
Question
put and agreed
to.
Clause 86
ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
5
pm
Sitting
suspended for a Division in the
House.
5.15
pm
On
resuming—
Clause
87
Personal
tax
returns
Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
The
Chairman:
With this, it will be convenient to discuss the
following: Amendment No. 247, in clause 87, page 61, line 8,
at end insert—
‘or within a reasonable time
thereafter when an electronic return cannot be delivered by reason of
the failure or non availability of an official computer system as
defined in Regulation 189 of the Income Tax (Pay as You Earn)
Regulations
2003’.
Amendment
No. 245, in clause 87, page 61, line 8, at end
insert—
‘(c) on or
before 31st January for a non-electronic return, if submitted by a
person who is registered
blind.’
Amendment
No. 246, in clause 87, page 61, line 16, at end
insert—
‘(A1) This
section shall not come into force until the Commissioners have
conducted an independent review of the security and reliability of the
HMRC electronic filing
system’.
Clauses
88 to 90 stand
part.
Government
amendments Nos. 241 and
242.
Clause 91 stand
part.
Given the
number of clause stand part debates contained within the group, I
intend to call the Minister first, to speak first to the group of
amendments, and then allow the debate to continue from there, with the
will of the Committee.
John
Healey:
We now move to a section of the Bill that examines
and makes provisions for the filing dates and filing methods of
personal tax returns. Clauses 87 to 91 introduce changes to the income
tax self-assessment tax return filing dates. These changes flow from
the report and review of HMRC’s online services that Lord Carter
produced for the Government. It was back in 2005 that my right hon.
Friend the Paymaster General asked him to advise on measures to
increase further the use of HMRC’s key online services, to
maximise the potential benefits that could be gained for the taxpayer,
and also to ensure that sustained and efficient delivery of services
resulted from that greater
uptake.
At
Budget last year, we accepted Lord Carter’s recommendations, and
clauses 87 to 95 establish the primary legislation that will enable
those recommendations to be implemented over the coming years,
including changes to the filing requirements for pay-as-you-earn, VAT
and corporation tax, which will be introduced in phases from
2009.
Clauses 87 to 89
introduce differential tax return filing dates for tax returns that are
required for the year 2007-08, and then in subsequent years. Tax
returns issued by HMRC after 6 April 2008 will need to be filed by 31
October 2008 for returns submitted on paper, or 31 January 2009 for
returns filed online. Clause 87 sets out the changes to the existing
filing date rules for personal tax returns that are completed primarily
by individuals, clause 88 sets out the changes needed to the filing
date rules for tax returns completed by trustees, and clause 89 sets
out the equivalent changes for partnership
returns.
Lord Carter
originally recommended shortening the self-assessment tax return filing
periods both for paper and for online returns. Some hon. Members will
remember the discussions that I had in the Finance Bill Committee last
year with the hon. Member for Fareham about this matter. As I expressed
at the time, I had some sympathy with his argument. Clearly, I had
to explain then that we were not legislating for any changes in that
Bill, but we are now.
At the time,
I explained that HMRC had published a partial regulatory impact
assessment with recommendations for our adoption of those changes. I
explained also that HMRC had published a partial regulatory impact
assessment with recommendations for our adoption of those changes.
Alongside Lord Carter’s report, we specifically invited views on
the recommendations and the partial regulatory impact
assessment.
Last year,
we set 30 June—I think—as the deadline for responses and
comments. I gave an undertaking to the Committee as well that we would
take into account the views expressed in it and during the consultation
process. In light of views expressed and received on the partial
regulatory impact assessment, Lord Carter himself considered the
further representations in the evidence from tax practitioners and
revised his recommendations on self-assessment tax return filing dates.
The Government listened to and accepted those revised recommendations
in July last
year.
Lord
Carter’s report states also that HMRC should continue to consult
practitioners on the detailed implementation of his proposals. I can
confirm that that has happened and continues to do so. The spirit in
which HMRC has worked with tax practitioners and their representative
bodies has allowed us to take a better approach in the Bill. I hope the
Committee accepts that. It was ably summed up by Paul Aplin, chairman
of the tax faculty at the Institute of Chartered Accountants, when he
acknowledged that HMRC was abiding by what he called the Carter
principle, which is that
“nothing is launched until
it’s been tested and proved fit for
purpose.”
I would like to
make clear also to the Committee that we are not introducing compulsory
online filing for any income tax self-assessment returns. Lord Carter
did not recommend that and it is not our policy to do so; I do not want
the Committee be under any misapprehension over
that.
The introduction
of differential filing dates, however, will encourage the further
growth of online filing by capable and competent individuals confident
about using IT and, of course, by agents. It will do so by offering the
incentive of a longer period in which to file an online return.
Representations made consistently to Lord Carter identified that as a
significant driver in increasing voluntary take-up. The option to file
income tax self-assessment returns on paper remains for everyone, but
it will, of course, require earlier filing by those who choose that
option.
Clauses 87 to
89 preserve the minimum period of three months currently allowed for
the completion and filing of a return when the notice requiring the
return is issued by HMRC after 31 October. That is a feature of the
current system and will ensure that the minimum three-month period for
completion is always given, regardless of whether the tax return is
filed on paper or online. The rule changes in clause 89 for partnership
returns depend on whether the partnership consists of one or more
individuals or companies.
For partnerships that consist
of one or more individuals, the notice to file a partnership return
will, as a result of those changes, specify filing dates no
earlier than those available to individuals and trustees—31
October for paper returns and 31 January for online filing. For
partnerships consisting of one or more companies, however, the notice
to file a partnership return will specify dates no earlier than nine
months for paper returns and 12 months for online filing after the end
of the partnership’s period of account in any tax
year. Clause 90 makes
a small number of consequential amendments to existing provisions
resulting from the introduction of differential self-assessment tax
return filing dates under clauses 87 to 89 to ensure that the periods
during which a tax return can be amended subsequently by a taxpayer
stay linked to the 31 January for all paper and online tax
returns. No one will be disadvantaged by filing a tax return
early.
This
substantial group of amendments includes three tabled by the
Opposition, on which I shall briefly give the Committee my views.
Amendment No. 247 seeks to provide an open-ended alternative to
the 31 January filing deadline for electronic returns in the
event of a systems failure or the non-availability of HMRC’s
online service during the peak filing time on 31 January.
I hope that the amendment is a
probing one—no equivalent amendment has been tabled in relation
to clauses 88 or 89—because it is unnecessary. As I have
stressed, HMRC’s self-assessment systems have been strongly
capacity tested in the past two years and are now based on what I
regard to be, and what I hope that the Committee will accept is, a
strong design and IT infrastructure. Carter encouraged us to give even
greater attention to this issue than we were already giving it. The
online self-assessment system performed very well in the 2006 online
filing peak, and better in 2007. In the final 24 hours of the 2007
peak, 150,000 tax returns were filed—almost two a second. In
total, more than 3 million were filed in that way in the last
tax
year.
Julia
Goldsworthy (Falmouth and Camborne) (LD): Many of the
representative bodies have noted how admirably well the system coped in
January 2007. However, the Chartered Institute of Taxation reported
online filing failure rates of up to 10 per cent. Was the Minister
about to give his assessment of the failure rates, especially during
that busy
period?
John
Healey:
I was not, principally because we are talking
about the self-assessment online tax system and the capacity of the
HMRC system to accept and process filings. In those final 24 hours, the
system was accepting and processing about 6,000 an hour—almost
two a second—which is a significant performance.
HMRC is clear and on the record
regarding what will happen if there is an unforeseen breakdown in the
service, and I am happy to confirm for the Committee, on the record,
that no one will be penalised for the delivery of a late return in such
circumstances. However, I should make it clear that HMRC already has
the power, under section 118(2) of the Taxes Management Act 1970, to
put that into practice. I hope that hon. Members will not press the
amendment to a vote.
Mr.
Dunne:
Will the Financial Secretary give
way?
John
Healey:
On amendment No.
247?
Mr.
Dunne:
On the point about the capacity of the Revenue
computer.
John
Healey:
I was about to move on, but I shall give
way.
Mr.
Dunne:
What work has HMRC done to consider
capacity? The Financial Secretary talked about the speed of processing
in January when a total of 3 million returns were filed
online. How confident is he that if the move encourages substantially
greater numbers of taxpayers to file online, the computer systems and
software within HMRC will be able to cope with a doubling, tripling or
even quadrupling of capacity? The Government’s track record on
the delivery of such IT programmes is not
stellar.
John
Healey:
Partly encouraged and underlined by Carter, I am
confident that we have been sure to test the capacity that will be
required of the system in good time, and that we will move to reforms
only after that has been proven. We have already tested successfully
the capacity for what we forecast will be the peak flow in January
2008. We will begin testing for the capacity that we expect in 2009 13
months before that. The testing has been done in good time to allow us
to have the confidence to move forward with the reforms. When that is
set alongside the increasing track record of the system, it should give
us confidence that the system will perform as expected. In the event
that it does not, the amendment is unnecessary, because HMRC already
has the powers to ensure that no one is penalised for that, and I have
given the Committee the commitment that no one will be penalised in
such
circumstances.
5.30
pm
Amendment No.
245 would extend the paper return filing deadline to 31 January for a
person registered blind. I am not sure whether the hon. Member for
Rayleigh is using it as a probing amendment, but I notice that he does
not seek similar provision for people with other disabilities. At
present, many of the small number of blind people who complete tax
returns receive help from HMRC or from friends. That level of support
will not change. I urge the Committee to bear in mind five things.
First, there will still be nearly seven months available in which to
file a tax return on paper. In the unlikely event that all the
information needed is not readily available within that period,
provisional figures can always be
used.
Secondly, in the
event of a serious difficulty, when a blind person cannot file on time,
HMRC would sympathetically consider any reasonable excuse for late
filing and not apply a penalty. Thirdly, many blind and partially
sighted people are likely to find that the online services that HMRC
provides make the task of filing returns easier, as on-screen forms are
increasingly easier to interpret and to
complete.
Fourthly,
HMRC is developing a new web portal as part of the improvements that
the Carter review has encouraged us to make. Those will be in place in
time for the filing date changes in 2008 and those will comply
with the widely accepted industry standard of access, known as WC3AA,
which removed significant barriers to accessing web documents. In this
case, for example, a blind person will be able to use a screen reader.
Those with a physical impairment that precludes use of a keyboard or
mouse—who, incidentally, would not be covered by this
amendment—would be able in the future to operate these services
by voice commands. So online services are likely to be more accessible
and easier for blind people to
use. To reassure the
Committee fifthly and finally, I point out that HMRC is conducting
further research to examine access and some of the barriers for
disabled people to online services. So although I am always sympathetic
to the arguments that have been advanced, the amendment is not
necessary.
Amendment
No. 246 would delay the introduction of differential filing dates for
personal tax returns pending an independent review. That is not
necessary either. I have explained why we can be confident about the
security and reliability of the system, and we will move to the reforms
only once we have tested and established those
features.
I hope that
I have covered the quite substantial territory of this group, which
covers clauses 87 to 91 and Government and Opposition amendments. The
two Government amendments add two minor consequential changes not
picked up in clause 90 as drafted. It is important that we make those
changes. I am grateful to the Chartered Institute of Taxation for
pointing the relevant issues out to us. I am glad that we have been
able to respond with the
amendments.
Mr.
Francois:
As the Financial Secretary says, this is a large
group. As he has just spoken about the Opposition’s three
amendments, I propose to speak to the amendments reasonably narrowly
first and then make some slightly wider points on clause stand part. If
that is acceptable procedurally, Mr. Illsley, that is what I
shall do. In his usual thorough manner, the Financial Secretary has
addressed some, but not all, of the points that I wanted to make. I
hope that he will bear with me if, for safety’s sake, I go
through all of them.
Amendment No. 247 is designed
to build flexibility into the system in order to overcome situations in
which HMRC’s IT system is unavailable to taxpayers. The proposed
filing deadlines allow little flexibility and, as in the case of the
Taxes Management Act 1970, potentially involve the imposition of strict
penalties for missed deadlines. That means that were there to be a
major IT failure, many millions of taxpayers might be unjustly
penalised. The Financial Secretary appears to have given us a
commitment on that, and I shall come back to it later.
A quick look at the
Government’s management of similar projects shows that that is
far from being a theoretical worry. For example, the online portal of
HMRC’s tax credits computer has been shut since 2005. At the
time, the Financial Times reported:
“When the system went
live, it collapsed under the weight of business, contributing to the
huge number of overpayments and the continuing row over how those
should be paid
back.”
That was in
October 2005. Then, as we now know, there was an attempt at a major
organised fraud against the tax credits system via the e-portal. The
Exchequer was defrauded of millions of pounds until the fraud was
detected and the portal had to be closed in order to prevent it from
continuing. An
occurrence that was similar in some ways affected the PAYE computer
this year. It was not able to cope with demand after what
Accountancy Age reported as
“a series of crippling glitches to
the system ...at one stage the system was down for an entire
week.”
That picture is
slightly different from the one that the Financial Secretary painted
this afternoon, however artfully he put it
across.
John
Healey:
Will the hon. Gentleman accept that, as the
Committee has no doubt realised, these clauses concern the arrangements
for filing self-assessment forms, not tax
credits?
Mr.
Francois:
I do indeed. However, I am simply giving
examples of other Government IT programmes, including Treasury ones.
The Financial Secretary is tempted to tell us that everything has been
tested and is robust, so I am considering whether other
Treasury-related IT systems have been robust. The record is far from
reassuring.
A concern
that there could be similar problems with the self-assessment system
was shared by 75 per cent. of the nearly 1,000 accountants who
responded to the “Working Together E-group” survey, which
was organised by, among others, the Association of Tax Technicians, the
Chartered Institute of Taxation, the Institute of Chartered Accountants
of England and Wales, and the Association of Certified Chartered
Accountants. That found strong support for the proposition that HMRC
needs
“a fallback in the
event of an HMRC system failure”.
Let me give a practical
example. Andrew Sherry, a chartered accountant from Stourbridge in the
west Midlands, sent me an e-mail in early May in which he
reported:
“I
have several times tried to log onto the Inland Revenue agents PAYE
system over the last week only to get the message that there is a
system error. Having spoken to the helpline I am told that this is
because the system is unable to cope with the volume. The Government is
pushing for us to file everything online and every year the system
fails.”
Our amendment is
designed to remedy concerns such as that. It would address the
situation by extending the deadline in the event of a computer systems
failure, so as to give the taxpayer a reasonable time in which to
submit a return.
I
should say, in response to the Financial Secretary’s very fair
question, that our purpose in tabling this probing amendment is to
highlight the issue and to seek assurance from him that taxpayers will
not be unduly penalised if they make reasonable attempts to file online
but are prevented from doing so by a computer or computer-related
failure on the part of HMRC. Given that he could see what we were
trying to do, and given his pretty categorical assurance that HMRC will
not attempt to penalise taxpayers in the event of a clear failure by
one of its IT systems, I am grateful for what he has said, and I am
sure that the professions and taxpayers will be grateful for that
reassurance, too.
That leads me on to amendment
No. 246, on the security of the system. Our amendment is designed to
ensure that there has been a full independent evaluation of both the
security and the reliability of the IT system on which the electronic
filing process is based, before the change of filing dates in 2008. The
history of the Government’s recent IT systems highlights major
concerns over whether they are capable of designing a system that is
secure enough for personal details included on tax returns.
Just today,
the Public Accounts Committee published a report entitled
“Delivering successful IT-enabled business change”. That
could be a fair description of the change that HMRC is going through,
following the merger in 2005. The PAC looked into the issue in some
detail and was quite critical of the Government’s record on
running major IT programmes. Among other things, the PAC
reported:
“Lack
of relevant experience, combined with a regular turnover of
post-holders, adds unnecessary risk to the management of IT-enabled
change.”
Interestingly,
the PAC also said that there is a lack of internal discussion and
learning from past mistakes,
stating:
“The
lessons from Gateway
Reviews”—
that is,
IT project
reviews—
“are not
shared consistently across
departments”.
Given the
vast amount of money that the taxpayer now spends via the Government on
major IT programmes, it is rather concerning that the PAC seems to feel
that where something has gone wrong in one Department, other
Departments are not being allowed to share the lessons that have been
learned from what in many cases is the waste of a large amount of
taxpayers’ hard-earned money.
The recent history of problems
with major IT systems includes the medical training application system,
or MTAS, problems with the Child Support Agency computer system, CS2,
and continuing tax credits IT failure, as well as major problems with
the PAYE system. I do not need to try your patience, Mr.
Illsley; all I ask of the
Committee—
Stephen
Hesford (Wirral, West) (Lab): Will the hon. Gentleman give
way?
Mr.
Francois:
Of course. I would not dream of trying the hon.
Gentleman’s patience, either.
Stephen
Hesford:
Are there any problems with grammar
schools?
Mr.
Francois:
I am not aware of the IT systems that most
grammar schools use, but I hope for their sake that they work better
than the Government’s CS2 computer, which has been a disaster
from start to finish.
I shall not reiterate all the
background to the MTAS fiasco but, as the hon. Gentleman is clearly
interested in the subject, I shall give him a little bit. We know from
the Secretary of State for Health’s grudging apology what a
complete farce the system was. However, the important point is that a
Government system full of private information was so flawed as to
allow virtually anyone access to junior doctors’ personal
information, which is deeply worrying. “Channel 4 News”
looked into how that was
done—
Lord
Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury (Kevin Brennan):
This is ridiculous.
Mr.
Francois:
It was ridiculous of the Government to allow
that to happen in the first place. “Channel 4 News”
showed that it was possible to access the personal information of
junior doctors through the server by altering a few digits of the URL
code, or web address of pages on the site. How was it that the
Government could design a computer system that was so
insecure?
Unfortunately, MTAS is not the
only Government IT system to suffer those sorts of failures. To come
closer to home for the Financial Secretary’s benefit, I return
to the tax credits computer and a point about security of information.
The computer added to its woeful record in May, by sending out
thousands of letters containing personal details to the wrong
addresses. HMRC sent at least 8,000 letters containing bank account
numbers of individual claimants. The Yorkshire Post quotes one
victim of the error as
saying:
“Someone
could have walked into a bank, said they’d lost their card and
used my details to get a new
one.”
There
have been major problems with the PAYE computer, in particular the
accrual of penalties by up to 154,000 small businesses that filed their
returns online in the normal way, as the Treasury has encouraged, only
to find months later that they were to be stung for hundreds of pounds
in fines due to an HMRC computer glitch. In essence, this appears to
have occurred because after the information had been received
electronically, it was, in many cases, lost in the
system.
To
HMRC’s credit, it has apologised for the mistake, admitting that
when employers or their agents queried the penalties, internal
investigations that it carried out discovered that the
“overwhelming majority” were cases where a test
submission had been successfully filed but not the full valid return.
That was the experience of Joy Aymes, a director of Eldon Design, who
wrote to me saying that her company had been wrongfully fined
£900, at least in the first instance. She
said:
“If a
business waited 9 months to let a client know they had failed to make a
payment and added extra penalties to the money owing surely they would
be breaking the
law”.
5.45
pm
A similar
experience was had by Mr. Desmond Hickey, who wrote a letter
dated 2 April 2007 to my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet,
the shadow Chief Secretary, which he entitled:
“The essence of failed
government”.
He
complained that he, too, had received demands out of the blue for
£900. He concluded that HMRC’s attitude showed
“how ‘institutionally
business hostile’...Inland Revenue
is”.
Such cases underline
the need for security and reliability in all HMRC’s systems. The
examples from the real world paint a rather different picture from the
rosy one that the Financial Secretary gave the Committee a few minutes
ago. Lord
Carter’s report
stated:
“We
recommend that as part of their work to deliver robust, high-capacity
services HMRC should build in more rigorous testing. Each of the
services should be capacity tested at least a year before our
recommendations are implemented, and if any tests are not successful
the measures relating to that service should be
deferred.”
One must ask
what happened with regard to the PAYE
computer.
Julia
Goldsworthy:
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that in
addition to testing the systems once they are in place, we must do
something else? As we saw with the tax credits computer system, part of
the problem often stems from the fact that there is inexperience in the
procurement process. Although companies deliver what is asked, perhaps
the Government do not understand what they are asking for and then only
find out later. Does he agree that there needs to be intense scrutiny
at the procurement level to ensure that these inadvertent problems do
not
occur?
Mr.
Francois:
I thank the hon. Lady for that pertinent
intervention. I admit that this happened under Governments of a
different colour, but this particular Government have a particular
penchant for major IT programmes that go wrong. The Public Accounts
Committee has looked into these for many years and has very often
recommended that lessons must be learned from past mistakes. We have
now had 10 years of a Labour Government, and every year the PAC
produces more reports saying that more problems have occurred, more
taxpayers’ money has been wasted and more confusion has
resulted. One must wonder whether anyone on the Labour Benches is
listening, because if they are, why do the problems continue to
recur?
Page 115 of
the 2006 Red Book
said:
“Lord
Carter recommends that HMRC should continue to invest in its online
infrastructure and supporting systems to deliver robust, high capacity
services, which should be rigorously
tested.”
I believe that
the Financial Secretary referred to a similar statement. Why is it that
the Chartered Institute of Taxation continued to reflect those concerns
a year later? It has
stated:
“We
feel that to introduce this legislation in 2007 without an adequate
fallback position in the legislation, whilst there are still
significant e-filing problems, is contrary to ‘Carter
Principles.’”
Given
all those concerns about reliability and, in particular, security,
amendment No. 246 is designed to ensure that a thorough review of
HMRC’s IT security is carried out before the move to advanced
electronic filing dates in
2008.
Amendment No.
245 seeks to exempt those registered blind from the early-filing
provisions of the clause. I accept from the outset that the Financial
Secretary was attempting to deal sympathetically with the issue. I
acknowledge that fact. The amendment would ensure that blind people
were not disadvantaged by the Government’s proposal to encourage
online filing. The Royal National Institute for the Blind contacted my
office with its concerns. Helen Dearman, the RNIB’s campaigns
director, pointed out in an
e-mail on 1 June that for some blind people at least, submitting an
online tax return is not a practical option. As she put it: “For some blind and
partially sighted people there is a choice; they are computer literate
and have ‘access technology’ that allows them to access
the internet so are able to choose between the two options available.
For around 32 per cent. of blind and partially sighted people of
working age, submitting an on-line tax return is just not an option. It
seems unfair that some people will be denied the longer submission
deadline purely because they are unable to use computer
technology.”
The
Chartered Institute of Taxation reflected those concerns in its 2007
Budget submission when it expressed under the heading, “Disabled
Persons”, the following
view:
“Finally,
there are many people, e.g. those with mental health problems or
physical problems such as blindness, who may not be capable of
accessing computers. Accordingly, we believe that there should be
strong protection for individuals—whether in business or
not—to ensure that they are not penalised by their inability to
file
online.”
Given
that point, I should be grateful if the Financial Secretary could tell
the Committee what, if any, consultation with representatives of blind
organisations he has conducted concerning electronic filing, and
whether he will continue to consult them as the programme rolls out. I
should also be grateful if he could assure us that the online system is
compatible with common access technology that blind people use, such as
audio technology. He referred to it in fairness, but will he assure us
that it will be built into any subsequent upgrades?
Will all guidance notes be sent
in formats such as large print, audio or Braille for those that need
them? I should expect the Treasury to do so, but I should be grateful
if the Financial Secretary could confirm that point. Finally, will he
sympathetically consider cases in which technological failure means
that a blind taxpayer does not have access to the online system? I take
it that that point is covered by his assurance regarding the previous
amendment. Those are my cases for the three amendments that we have
tabled.
I turn to my
clause stand part remarks. Clause 87 essentially amends the dates for
the filing of paper personal tax returns. It introduces a new regime,
which means that from the tax year 2007-08 onwards, a taxpayer will
have to file their return on 31 October 2008 rather than on 31 January
2009 the following year, unless they choose to file their return
electronically. As the changes will have a substantive effect on
all 8.8 million self-assessment taxpayers in the country, I
shall detail some general concerns about bringing forward the deadlines
and some additional concerns about electronic filing and the way in
which it may operate in practice, including importantly, its likely
impact on staff at HMRC.
By bringing forward the filing
dates for a paper return, the Government seek to fulfil the aspiration
of Lord Carter, who wrote in his report, published in March 2006,
that
“we have set an
ambitious, but we think realistic, timetable for further measures to
increase the use of online services, to promote earlier filing and to
provide taxpayers with certainty
sooner.”
He made an
additional recommendation, which has not been mentioned so far. He
recommended that by 2012, HMRC should
“aim for universal electronic
delivery of individuals’ tax returns from IT literate
groups”.
Measures
to encourage electronic filing of tax returns have been introduced
before, notably to encourage businesses to file their PAYE returns
online, and I have already outlined the weaknesses in that. In that
case, the Government decided on a carrot rather than a stick, and
promised to pay each company a £250 incentive for
online filing.
In the
case before us, however, the Government have decided to wield the stick
by bringing forward the tax deadline for people who continue to file by
paper. The Government’s original intentions were set out in the
2006 Budget, in which 31 August was proposed as the date for
paper returns. The Sunday Times referred graphically to what
happened
next:
“Within
an hour of Brown sitting down, accountant's e-mails were beginning to
wing their ways across the ether, using phrases such as
‘bombshell’, ‘draconian’,
‘devastating’ ‘broken trust’ and
‘all talk, no action’. And this from a budget that was
rated one of Brown's duller
efforts.”
That
being the case, we welcome, as an improvement, the Government’s
new proposed date for paper returns of 31 October, as opposed to the
earlier proposal of the 31 August. In saying that, I am delighted to
have my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham sitting next to me, because,
one year ago, he engaged the Government in some detail on that matter,
as the Financial Secretary acknowledged. I am pleased that my hon.
Friend is here to see that, on this matter at least, the Government
seem to have taken some notice and moved back the deadline accordingly.
We will count that as a feather in his cap, rather than in
mine.
I have some
questions for the Financial Secretary about the likely cost to
taxpayers of those measures, including those highlighted in the
Government’s associated regulatory impact assessment. I have
noticed that RIAs are often a very useful source of detailed
information about Government proposals and, to be fair, some of the
Treasury ones are particularly detailed. Perhaps Treasury officials
could have a word with the Foreign Office and we can have an RIA on the
new European treaty, which I very much hope that the Chancellor would
read.
I shall turn to
the cost in both money and time to those who do not have internet
access. The RIA that accompanied the Carter report estimated that 1
million taxpayers could be affected by electronic filing at an
estimated total cost of about £10 million. The estimated
additional costs to individual taxpayers varied from zero for those who
use a tax agent and so, in a sense, are paying for a service anyway, to
£100 for those who do not use a tax agent and have no internet
access, which they would then have to find. The RIA
continues:
“Those without easy
access will need to obtain it, but there are various ways of doing that
and HMRC will be working with taxpayers to ensure that a range of
options are available, and that those options are as cost-effective as
possible.”
How will HMRC
alleviate the additional cost to taxpayers and, specifically, how will
it seek to make electronic filing easier in line with the commitment
given in the RIA?
In
an answer to my parliamentary questions on 12 January and 26
April, the Economic Secretary admitted that currently nearly 1.5
million people are
penalised to the total of some £40 million for the late return of
their tax returns to HMRC. Will the Financial Secretary reassure the
Committee that HMRC believes that the changes that he proposes to the
filing dates will not lead to a greater number of taxpayers being fined
for the late delivery of their tax returns? I appreciate that he is not
personally responsible for every taxpayer sending back their return,
but does the Treasury believe that, as a result of these changes, the
number of people filing late and being fined will go up, down or remain
roughly the same? In addition, I would be grateful if he could reassure
the Committee that there are no plans to change the proposed date by
which tax underpayments are due. I note that there is no provision in
the Bill to change the due date of 31 January for all tax
underpayments, but I would be grateful if he could put that reassurance
on the
record. Furthermore, I
have a number of practical concerns about electronic filing, on which I
would also welcome the Financial Secretary’s reassurance. First,
if we are to encourage taxpayers to file online, it must be possible
for all taxpayers to submit all their relevant information. For that to
happen, the software must be provided and be capable of taking in all
of the information currently submitted on a paper return. Of the
accountants who responded to the “Working Together
E-group” survey, to which I referred earlier, only 18 per cent.
said that they rely on the current free software provided by HMRC with
the remainder buying in third-party specialist
software.
Currently,
taxpayers with income that they are required to declare, such as
foreign or trust income, will have to pay a third party to buy the
software in order to submit their returns. That was confirmed to me in
a further parliamentary answer from the Paymaster General on 7 February
2007 in which she underlined the fact that some taxpayers will need to
purchase their own software, which is a disincentive to filing online
as the Government would wish. She put it like
this:
“Self
assessment tax returns can be filed online using either HM Revenue and
Customs (HMRC) full SA online service or proprietary software produced
by commercial software vendors. Most proprietary software purchased to
facilitate online filing of self assessment tax returns is bought by
tax agents and is typically part of a broader package embodying
accountancy and client management facilities. As such, no estimate of
these costs has been
made.
Most individual
taxpayers can file their self assessment tax returns online using
HMRC’s free online service which covers most circumstances.
Other individual taxpayers filed using proprietary software, the cost
of which varies.
Partners can also file their
own tax returns using HMRC’s free online service. But both the
partnership and trust return can only be filed using proprietary
software.”—[Official Report, 7 February
1007; Vol. 456, c.
1040W.]
The Law
Society further emphasised this concern. It
said:
“It is
wrong to force
them”—
taxpayers—
“over
to a system which they can not use without involving them in extra
annual expenditure for commercial software; that might be for the
purpose of making just one single entry on a supplementary page that
HMRC do not
provide”.
Also,
with regard to being able to submit all the taxpayer’s
information electronically the Law Society has a particular concern
about the so-called “white
space notes”. Those are the panels on the form, Mr.
Illsley, where you are encouraged to include additional information if
you think it relevant. The Law Society fears that these panels are not
big enough on the electronic versions to fully explain some
individuals’ affairs. Could the Financial Secretary reassure us
that both additional documents and white space notes will be usable and
form part of the submitted returns that can be accessed promptly
without additional
cost? 6
pm
Finally, there is
the ability of HMRC to cope with major increases in electronic timing,
which will be partly determined by the commitment of HMRC staff to the
new process. However, recent survey data now casts doubt on whether
that will happen as effectively as Ministers might like to think. An
article in Accountancy Age of 17 May this year entitled
“Taxman in turmoil as morale plummets” stated:
“Staff morale at HMRC
has plummeted in the eighteen months following the creation of the
merged department in April 2005, according to a survey filed away
obscurely on the department’s
website.”
The article
goes on to say:
“Tax offices recently
went on strike on 31 January, when self-assessment returns are filed,
and there is a constant threat of more industrial
action.”
I have
located the survey on the website and it transpires that of those
18,000 staff who responded, which is a considerable number to respond
to a survey, 58 per cent. agreed with the statement that
“change is not well managed in the
department”,
while only
29 per cent. agreed that
“the quality of service to
customers was
improving”.
That is
potentially worrying if we are to see a major shift towards greater
reliance on electronic filing. I am sure that the staff will do their
best to cope with it, but it would appear from HMRC’s own
internal staff survey that its staff are not exactly jumping for joy at
the way in which the process is being
conducted.
The point
was further pursued in The S
unday Telegraph this weekend
in an article entitled “Tax staff encouraged to go MAD as morale
falls”. It
reads:
“The
survey also found that only a quarter of officials feel secure in their
jobs and only 1 per cent. ‘strongly believe’ that the
Department is running as well as it should. In response to this, HMRC
is sending its staff on make a difference or ‘MAD’
courses, in which staff are apparently encouraged to ‘speak the
future into existence’ through ‘learning
interventions’ and ‘one to one feedback
sessions’”.
Given
the morale problems which now appear to be extant at HMRC, can the
Financial Secretary “speak into existence” how HMRC
intends to bring about the shift towards greater electronic filing by a
work force which appears so unimpressed by the progress of the HMRC
merger? We were promised that there would be Gershon savings, and
electronic filings are obviously part of that. The Opposition have
supported the process in principle, but it seems that on the ground it
could be handled better than it has been to date.
To summarise, amendment No. 247
would provide some alleviation for taxpayers who are deemed to have
filed late because of technical problems at HMRC
rather than through any fault of their own. Amendment No. 245 calls for
a review of IT security and reliability before the proposed changes are
implemented. Amendment No. 246 asks for an extension of the filing
deadline for those who are registered blind. As well as addressing
those issues, with which, in fairness, the Financial Secretary dealt to
some extent in his opening remarks, I would be grateful if he could say
something about the wider issues that I have raised, including the
availability of specialist software and the ability of HMRC to cope
with the changes, given what appear to be some incidents of poor morale
in the organisation.
Julia
Goldsworthy:
It is a pleasure to welcome you to the Chair
this afternoon, Mr. Illsley, and it is always a pleasure to
follow the hon. Gentleman. There is a little nostalgia in that, as I
shall not be doing it for much longer. He was a feature of both my
experiences of the Finance Bill, so things will not be the same without
him. The question is: what changes will there be on the Government
Benches by the time next year’s Finance Bill comes
around?
It is
important that we debate these clauses in Committee and that they are
in primary legislation, because they involve significant changes to the
way in which our tax system works. As we have heard, they will
implement a great deal of Lord Carter of Coles’s recommendations
about how electronic returns should be phased in. There is an issue
about timing and how we will ensure that Departments, like businesses
and everyone else, keep up to date with the fast-changing world. The
key challenge is to ensure that the Government’s capacity runs
in parallel to individuals’ ability to take on new technology.
It might well be the case that new technologies are out there but not
everyone can take them up. It is important that the proposals are
sensitive to that.
The Financial Secretary
mentioned that concerns have been raised by organisations about the
capacity of HMRC in terms of online filing and the failure rate. He was
right to point out that the 10 per cent. failure rate that I flagged up
was for businesses, but I would appreciate his comments on the failure
rate for the filing of self-assessment tax returns, although, as I
said, the Chartered Institute of Taxation said that the online filing
capacity was “admirably met” by HMRC in 2007.
On
the Conservative amendments, I have a great deal of sympathy with the
points made by the hon. Member for Rayleigh, and it is clear what the
amendments seek to achieve. It is important for the public to have
confidence in the security of the systems that they use. We have seen
examples not only from Government but from national banks of how easy
it can be for confidential information to be compromised. It is
important that the Government and other organisations pay serious
attention to that. When they are going through the process of
procurement every effort should be made to ensure that systems are not
created that can be easily compromised. On that basis, I have a great
deal of sympathy with the amendments.
In relation to the amendments
on the non-electronic return for submissions by a registered blind
person, I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman’s narrow point. For
some people, regardless of whether they are registered blind or not,
there will be difficulties with
making online submissions. Lots of other people with disabilities might
find it difficult to register online, but it is worth making the point
that for many of those people filing on-paper returns will be equally
difficult and challenging. The key thing is to ensure that a variety of
options are available to people who might experience difficulties in
whatever manner, and that there is flexibility and sensitivity to those
needs, whether they have a physical disability, a visual impairment or
low literacy or numeracy skills, because such people might find
challenges in submitting a return on paper or on a computer. The
problem goes beyond the more traditional definitions of disability and
covers areas such as skills. I was reassured by the
Financial Secretary’s comments about what happens in the event
of HMRC failure. Will he expand on what would happen if a person who is
submitting their tax return experiences failure at their
end—either a power cut or a computer meltdown? Is there any
opportunity for discretion in that area?
I have a couple more issues to
raise. The first one was mentioned by the Institute of Chartered
Accountants. It expressed concern about the certainty of the date when
a return is received. Obviously, when deadlines are set, it is very
important that they are met. There have been disputes in a number of
cases about when the submission was received. The Institute of
Chartered Accountants notes:
“From this year, HMRC no
longer provides receipts when a tax return is delivered by hand or by
post.”
Will those who
file their returns online receive receipts so that they will be certain
that their return has been
received?
Finally, I
echo the point made by the hon. Member for Rayleigh. What happens if
the white space is not sufficient for people to make notes? Is there
the opportunity for flexibility to expand that space? Is HMRC
considering accepting an attachment so that a more full description can
be sent with the formal submission?
As I said when I intervened on
the hon. Gentleman, it is important that the Government move with the
world. There are important lessons to be learned, particularly in terms
of the procurement of very large IT projects. Although the Carter
recommendations go a long way towards reassuring people that we are
going to have a successful system, more could be done to explain
categorically and formally exactly how some of those recommendations
are
met.
Mr.
Dunne:
I share the general sense that the measure is
appropriate and that we should be trying to encourage electronic forms
of filing tax returns. I also share the concerns raised by my hon.
Friend the Member for Rayleigh and the hon. Member for Falmouth and
Camborne that the measures are being introduced with a degree of haste
and potentially without sufficient testing, which dents confidence in
the systems that are employed by HMRC, and that gives rise to genuine
concerns.
My hon.
Friend illustrated some of the problems experienced by one of his
constituents. If you will indulge me, Mr. Illsley, I would
like to give an example from one of my constituents. Mr.
Andrew Chapman
runs a small practice called STAFF Accounting in Church Stretton. He
wrote a letter to the chairman of HMRC on 15 December last year. On
that day, Mr. Chapman had spent several hours seeking to
access the HMRC website to make some self-assessment returns. Mr
Chapman told the
chairman: “The
HMRC website for filing self-assessment tax returns on-line has once
again been out of action for most of the afternoon. It is the busiest
time of the year when agents are under the most pressure. I today
telephoned the Online Helpdesk to find out when the website will again
be available and was told that they didn’t
know.”
The
chairman replied to Mr. Chapman and indicated that from
HMRC’s online service availability records, the self-assessment
online service was apparently available “throughout the
day” on 15 December. Quite clearly, something is at
fault—either Mr. Chapman’s access to the
website or HMRC’s records of its own website availability. One
of the interesting things that emerged from Mr.
Gray’s letter to Mr. Chapman, which gives an
indication of the concerns that we have about HMRC’s procedure,
is to do with how it can assess the veracity of the points being made
by people issuing complaints.
Having failed to get through on
the website, Mr. Chapman made a telephone call, as I have
just described. In his letter back to Mr. Chapman,
Mr. Gray
says:
“Unfortunately
we cannot find any trace of Mr Chapman’s call within our
systems. This may have been because of a recording error at the time of
the call, or that Mr Chapman called via a switchboard. Unfortunately,
due to the complexities involved our recording systems cannot identify
calls that enter our network via a switchboard as the switchboard masks
the caller’s
number.”
This may seem an
insignificant and trivial point, but I am raising it because it
illustrates the difficulty that the Opposition have in accepting the
Financial Secretary’s statements that the procedures within HMRC
are robust if HMRC cannot even identify from within its own computer
systems the telephone calls that are coming in—it acknowledges
that the calls are being received within its offices—because the
technology is not up to it. The example illustrates our concerns about
whether the technology will cope with the proposed electronic
filing.
6.15
pm
The hon. Member
for Falmouth and Camborne raised a question about whether or not the
officers in HMRC will have any discretion if errors are made. I
appreciate that we are discussing the legislation rather than current
practice, but currently errors that are made by HMRC are subject to
individual appeal. They must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis and
there is no discretion to deal with problems such as that experienced
by Mr. Chapman. If such problems are going to become more
widespread, as I fear they may, the Financial Secretary needs to
address them with HMRC if the Bill is passed.
Another reason for making that
observation about HMRC is that the National Audit Office has recently
produced a report entitled “Helping Individuals Understand and
Complete Their Tax Forms”. I am looking forward greatly to that
report coming before the Public Accounts Committee, because my
contributions to that Committee will be informed by
this debate. However, the thrust of the report is that HMRC could be
doing considerably more to orientate its services around the needs of
the taxpayer, in particular online—the NAO focused on that. It
said that the systems are causing individuals to pay the wrong amount
of tax and calculated that “unintentional errors by taxpayers
in completing forms result in over £300 million in underpaid
tax.”
It is perhaps not
surprising that HMRC chooses not to calculate how much tax has been
overpaid as a result of the complexity of its systems; it is just bad
luck for the taxpayer unless they happen to spot the
error.
Errors occur,
whether online or offline. The opportunity for appealing the decisions
is not automatic; it is complex. We are being urged, through these
proposals, to encourage an acceleration of online filing without there
being adequate safeguards in place to ensure that the systems can
cope.
John
Healey:
As the hon. Gentleman said, we are indeed looking
to encourage greater use of online filing for self-assessment. It will
remain voluntary—I stress that. However, the way that we are
designing the new service and the system set out in these clauses means
that increasingly there will be a greater incentive to file online,
which will help to reinforce the trend that we have seen—a trend
that we welcome—in the past few years of more people choosing to
file returns in that way. Online filing is welcome, because it brings
benefits both to HMRC and to the taxpayer. It is more efficient, it is
generally more secure, and it is a better way of doing such
business.
The hon.
Member for Falmouth and Camborne mentioned three specific issues beyond
her general concern about the position of blind and disabled people in
dealing with HMRC. I will come back to that general concern. First, on
the question of receipts for filing online, all taxpayers who file
online now receive an automatic confirmation by HMRC as soon as their
return has been accepted by HMRC’s systems. That should now be
dealing with the problems that she mentioned.
Secondly, the hon.
Lady’s concern about the failures of self-assessment filing has
been raised with us by the Chartered Institute of Taxation, largely on
behalf of agents who have found that commercially purchased software
seems not to be performing as well as promised or as well as it needs
to. Post-Carter, HMRC is working on developing earlier and faster
services for software developers and vendors, to ensure that their
software is compatible and fully operational, and on providing
validation rules in code format for such vendors. We are working with
tax practitioners and vendors to try to identify consistent or common
causes of failure so that we can deal with
them.
Finally, the
hon. Lady mentioned white space, which the hon. Member for Rayleigh is
also concerned about. In November last year, HMRC developed and
incorporated into the system the facility to take
attachments—she asked about that and therefore perhaps was not
aware of it. The system now provides for some 30,000 characters to be
inserted in white space. That is a not insubstantial essay-length
capacity, and I expect that in most cases it would be sufficient for a
self-assessment tax form.
I said that we will miss the hon. Member
for Rayleigh, and we will. I understand his desire to have a last
hurrah. He treated us to a tour d’horizon that covered almost
everything that he has dealt with in his two and a half years on the
shadow Treasury Front Bench. Let me deal with his points about the
clause.
I have
explained that blind people will be treated sympathetically if there
are good reasons for their not being able to file on time. To keep the
matter in perspective, more than 9 million people file self-assessment
returns. Last year, some 8,600 registered blind people filed
self-assessment returns. Clearly, they represent an important but
relatively small proportion of the self-assessment filing
population.
The hon.
Gentleman asked other specific questions. On consultation with groups
that represent blind people, HMRC goes out of its way regularly to
discuss issues across the range of its services and the operation of
the tax system with groups that represent blind people and those with
other disabilities. In large measure, that is why the redesigned web
portal that I mentioned will be in place when the reforms come into
being. It adopts WC3AA, which is the new industry standard for access.
The standard has been developed in consultation with disability groups.
I confirm that audio, large print and Braille copies of the guidance
that HMRC produces are all available on
demand.
Will late
penalties increase revenue to the Treasury? No, we do not expect that.
There is no reason why a self-assessment taxpayer should file later as
a result of the changes and incur a penalty. The Red Book confirmed at
the Budget that there is no expected increase to the
Exchequer.
How will
extra costs to the taxpayer be alleviated? Lord Carter has always been
very clear on that. He identified benefits for taxpayers as well as
HMRC in adopting online filing. It allows taxpayers to fulfil their
legal obligations more accurately, more quickly and with greater
certainty, and, clearly, there are benefits on the other side for HMRC
as well. Any taxpayers to whom repayments are due are also likely to
receive them more speedily and
efficiently.
On
payment dates, the due date for all payments remains 31 January and is
unchanged by the arrangements. That applies for everyone who files on
time before that date. Must individuals purchase software? HMRC already
provides free software for nine out of 10 individuals, and the
Government will introduce supplementary pages and improvements to that
situation so that by the time of the reforms the free software will be
available to 19 out of every 20 individuals who might be
involved in self-assessment.
In summary, we have consulted
widely and thoroughly on the changes. They have been refined in
response to the further work of Lord Carter and to the consultation
responses, and they are broadly supported across the piece. Let us keep
a sense of perspective. For those filing on paper, the available time
period will still be seven months, while for those filing online it
will be 10 months. In Germany, the time period is five months, in
Canada it is four months, and for individuals in France it is two
months. Given that, I believe that we have a right and reasonable
balance that will bring
benefits to taxpayers who use the self-assessment system and will lead
to an increase in online filing. It will also bring benefits to HMRC
and its ability to manage the system effectively in the
future.
Mr.
Francois:
We have indeed had a good debate on the
Government’s e-filing proposals. The Financial Secretary has
answered many of my questions very directly, and I am grateful for
that. The amendment groupings gave us quite a large pitch, so I decided
to plough across most of it, but I thank him for meeting me on each bit
of the pitch that I covered.
I shall therefore concentrate
on the Opposition’s three amendments. On amendment No. 247, I am
grateful for the Financial Secretary’s reassurance that no
taxpayer will be penalised for a late return if the reason for late
submission of the return is an IT systems failure at HMRC. He was clear
about that principle and I appreciate that clarity.
On the amendment concerning IT
security and reliability, our concerns are genuine. It is fair to
remind the Financial Secretary that if we want people to file personal,
confidential details online, it is critical that the system be secure,
otherwise they will not have the confidence to use it. The security
issue is important, and I hope that the Government will continue to
bear that in mind as they take matters forward, as Lord Carter
encouraged them to
do.
The Financial
Secretary dealt very appropriately with the amendment relating to blind
people. He gave a commitment that HMRC would look sympathetically on
any particularly hard cases involving blind people, and that it would
continue to consult relevant
organisations.
Question
put and agreed
to.
Clause 87
ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clauses
88 and 89 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
| 
