Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
HM REVENUE AND
CUSTOMS
7 NOVEMBER 2007
Q40 Mr Mitchell: As well as bringing
them all under one umbrella.
Mr Gray: Yes.
Q41 Mr Mitchell: Is that the reason
why it has taken so long to revise your site?
Mr Gray: No. We think that is
a sensible thing to do because some of the more technical changes,
to which you referred earlier in your question, are things which
we are working on and I would not say one exercise is making the
other more complicated. Given the scale of our operation, we are
talking about very major investments here. We are currently investing
about £170 million in upgrading our online services generally,
following Lord Carter's Report on how we should make greater use
of online, and to make the sort of technical improvements to our
websites we are talking probably of about some tens of millions
of pounds of investment. I am obviously having to manage those
demands on resources against others, but it is a high priority
for us to make these improvements.
Q42 Mr Mitchell: For a high priority,
the review does seem to be going fairly slowly. Particular problems
have been emphasised. I have just looked at navigating around
the site. Why is it so slow to review this site?
Mr Gray: I am not sure that I
accept that it is so slow.
Q43 Mr Mitchell: The site has been
under review for some time and it is not finished yet.
Mr Gray: Web services are going
to be in a state of transformation for many years to come. We
have a certain amount of catching up to do to get up to best commercial
and overseas practice in our web services. We all know, given
the speed of technological change in this area, that when we have
made those changes there will be other changes to make, because
this is an area of very rapid technological change.
Q44 Mr Mitchell: One area where it
is not going to be particularly helpful, it seems to me, is in
the problems of pensioners. They even come to me, and I am a total
ignoramus about tax measures. It is complicated for people, particularly
those with two or three occupational pensions or those with national
savings or whatever, and pensioners are less likely to use the
websites, are they not? They much prefer the personal filling
in of a form. Is it possible to simplify the tax affairs of pensioners?
It seems to me that with some benefits tax is deducted and with
some it is not and therefore there is a very complicated balancing
act and in many cases a need to reclaim tax paid of things where
it is already taken out. Is this not the key to the problem of
pensioners?
Mr Gray: I am not sure it is the
key to the problem.
Q45 Mr Mitchell: It would simplify
matters.
Mr Gray: Like Mr Bacon, I think
you are almost asking me a policy question here about the design
of the tax system.
Q46 Mr Mitchell: Yes, I am. Are there
a lot of problems caused by the fact that at least in some cases
tax is deducted and in other cases it is not deducted? Would their
life not be easier if there was a common practice?
Mr Gray: I think our job is to
make as clear as we can to people what the treatment is, whether
it is gross or net, and to offer guidance and support that helps
people navigate their way around that. On the issue of pensioners
which you have mentioned, yes, it is true the data shows that
a smaller, although rapidly growing, proportion of pensioners
use these services. That is why in our channel strategy work we
are looking to be flexible about providing different types of
service to different customer groups and, although we certainly
do want to increase the proportion of online activity overall,
we are sensitive to exactly the point you are talking about.
Q47 Mr Mitchell: You do not think
it would be helped by a special pensioner form.
Mr Gray: In relation to some aspects
of pensions there are special forms where there are particular
tax arrangements, but for the generality of pensioners they are
part of the general income tax system and I think the better approach
is to make sure that within our overall forms we are making it
easier for all types of taxpayer to navigate their way through
them.
Q48 Mr Mitchell: Under self-assessment,
one-third of people underestimate their tax obligation. It says
in the Report that in only 10% of the cases is that by mistake.
How do you know?
Mr Gray: That statistic or that
estimate came from a special exercise we carried out and which
we are now going to carry out regularly at the request of NAO
as part of this study: where we identify in our random enquiry
programme that there are inaccuracies, to try to attribute, if
you like, intention to that inaccuracy. That 10% estimate represented
the view of our review team as they went through the cases, looked
at what had happened and reached a judgment, and, inevitably,
it was judgment about what motivation or lack of motivation lay
behind the inaccuracy. Where it is clear it is unintentional,
we are committed, through the redesign of our forms, through the
improvement of all our channels of service, to try to make it
more difficult for people to make unintentional errors and a lot
of the things we are redesigning are designed to do just that.
One of the big advantages of online services for pensioners as
well as for everybody else is that there are many more automatic
checks in the system. You cannot proceed through the website.
It stops you making mistakes in a way that a free-form handwritten
form does not build in those checks and balances.
Q49 Mr Mitchell: Looking at paragraph
4.12: "19 out of 24 callers who should have been transferred
to more expert staff members were not." Are there more expert
staff members in the same centre or does it have to be referred
outside to another centre if they need more expert advice?
Mr Gray: I will ask Nick to add
to this in a minute but I think it is a combination of the two.
As we have said in response to earlier questions, that proportion
of calls that ought to have been transferred to more technically
qualified staff is something we have been looking to address in
the light of this finding, but I think I am right in saying that
some of the technical advice will be available within the contact
centres and some of the even more technical advice may be to staff
who are located elsewhere. Nick do you want to add anything to
that?
Mr Lodge: We have technicians,
people who are more technically adept and more experienced, within
our contact centres, so that our frontline advisers can, if they
need to do so, refer calls to those technically knowledgeable
people. As Paul has said, we have taken very seriously the finding
in this report and we have already reminded all of our staff of
those occasions when they should be referring calls for more technical
advice, because obviously it is very important that they do so.
Q50 Mr Mitchell: The first category
could be dealt with in the same call: it can still be transferred
to somebody more expert in the same centre. The second category
presumably would have to result in another call.
Mr Lodge: It varies. Sometimes,
even if the call could be transferred within the contact centre
location, there may not be a technician available, so the person
calling may have to be called back. Sometimes, if the call has
to be referred outside the immediate contact centre environment
there is somebody available; more often than not, you are quite
right, in that case the customer would need to be called back,
yes.
Q51 Mr Mitchell: You cannot say what
proportion those are. It is just infuriating to have to make another
call, that is all.
Mr Lodge: We recognise that it
would be far better on every occasion if somebody had their issue
dealt with there and then. We are in fact reviewing the technical
support that is available as part of responding to the point that
has arisen which you have mentioned—the 19 out of 24 not
being referred—to make sure that we have the resourcing
right, so that more often than not, or more often than happens
now at least, we can make sure the call is dealt with there and
then. But that is not necessarily the case at the moment.
Q52 Dr Pugh: Can I start on a slightly
technical question. In order to access the website, you need to
use obviously a web browser. There is a range of web browsers
on the market and one of the more popular ones and certainly one
of the cheaper ones and one of the more secure ones is a web browser
called Firefox, an open source browser. I am told it does not
have full functionality on your website. Is that correct?
Mr Gray: I am afraid I am not
in a position to give you a technical answer to that.[1]
Q53 Dr Pugh: Could you look into it?
Mr Gray: Can we take that one
away?
Q54 Dr Pugh: You would probably accept,
would you not, that if you have to use a particular web browser
you are limiting the functionality of the website as well as advantaging
the company that produces that particular web browser?
Mr Gray: And, in general, we are
extremely keen to encourage the use of open source software, so,
yes, I accept your suggestion.
Q55 Dr Pugh: According to the Report,
95% of people are answered on the day they phone, 5% are not.
I looked at that statistic and I thought it was really quite impressive,
in a way, because there must be some people who phone up at 4.50
pm on a Friday and things like that who cannot really expect to
get through and that would also apply to certain times of the
year: September 30 was when the world and his wife were probably
phoning the tax office. Could it realistically come up above 95%?
Is that simply what you must accept in any circumstance, big enough
as it is?
Mr Gray: Realistically it could
because it is not 95% every day, sadly. There certainly are some
days—deadline days on particular exercises—
Q56 Dr Pugh: There is always going
to be some percentage of people who phone too late in the day
and cannot rationally expect a call.
Mr Gray: That is true. There is
basically a kind of balance of cost against service here. Realistically
we could get it up above that level. We could get it near to as
close as 100% but it would be at very considerable cost because
we would be having to gear up to make sure we were covering all
peak points during the day and, particularly, your end of year
point.
Q57 Dr Pugh: It sounds very damning
does it not: "I couldn't get through all day" or something
like. People do say things like that to be highly critical. The
NAO says in paragraph 12a of the recommendations: "More of
the helplines should make use of a recorded message telling callers
that information can be obtained from the website." Normally
when I phone up and I get a recorded message recommending the
website, I am inclined to take that as almost an insult, because
I would have gone to the website in the first place if I had thought
it would have the answer. Are you on board with that advice or
do you think the NAO should put forward a solution which, although
it might be economically rational, would frustrate many of your
customers?
Mr Gray: As a general proposition
I was happy to accept the recommendation, but, as on many of these
things, you need to get the balance right. I rather share your
personal instinct that getting an excess of recorded messages
when one is trying to get through to a real person to talk to
can be frustrating. However, there does seem to be evidence that
we get a significant number of callers who could have had their
needs reasonably satisfied via the website and, as part of, if
you like, a relatively gentle channel-switching activity on our
part, I think it is a reasonable suggestion for us to take on
board.
Q58 Dr Pugh: By phoning up, people
are expressing a preference, in a sense, for dealing with the
matter by phone.
Mr Gray: Indeed, they are. That
is the challenge in channel management, where there are cost and
effectiveness advantages in encouraging people to move channels.
We are up for encouragement, but I think it is quite easy to take
that too far, where it becomes over-restriction of choice.
Q59 Dr Pugh: In terms of reducing
the number of phone calls you have, I recently filled in my self-employed
tax form, like a lot of MPs—very late in the day, I have
to say—submitted it and then received a very sparse little
note saying that I owed you more tax than I thought I did. My
response to that was "You know what you're doing." I
am afraid Mrs Pugh's response was slightly different on this issue
and assumed I had not filled in my forms properly. I was on the
verge of looking into it but I noticed on the form there was very,
very little information telling me why I owed this tax. I left
it a few days and received another piece of paper from you which
said I owed you absolutely nothing—so I did very well with
it—but, had there been more information on the original
documentation explaining why I owed more tax, I would not have
phoned up at all because I would have known you were right or
I would have known it was contestable and phoned up. Why in these
circumstances is there so little information which means much
to the punter?
Mr Gray: I am not sure I can give
you a precise answer to that one without looking at the forms.
1 Note by witness: Although it is primarily
for individual website users to choose browser software which
best meets their needs and the functionality of the web services
they intend to use, the Department is taking steps to ensure that
its online services are accessible to a wide range of internet
users, and aims to provide services that are usable through their
browser of choice in the vast majority of cases. Back
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