PCS Responds to Statement on HMRC Investment

Andy Lord, Branch Secretary

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander announced at the Lib Dem conference in Birmingham over the weekend that "... an additional 2,250 HMRC staff will move into new anti-evasion and avoidance jobs. This month, over 1,000 of these jobs are being advertised.” Subsequent reports in the media state government plans to invest over £900 million in HMRC and to create over 2,000 new jobs."

Mr Alexander’s announcements are not, of course, new. PCS has previously welcomed this extra investment, which was agreed by the Treasury last year, of £917 million to recover £7 billion in revenue until 2015. We need to be clear, however, that HMRC’s funding will reduce by just over 15% year on year to 2015, meaning that the department overall will have £2.1 billion less funding with which to conduct its business, with the net result fundamentally meaning that around 10,000 further jobs will be lost from HMRC up to 2015.

The first tranche of about 1300 jobs in enforcement and compliance have now been advertised to existing HMRC staff, mainly at O and HO grades, and of course we welcome the fact that resources are finally being devoted to tackling tax evasion, as well as giving the opportunity for our members to apply for jobs on promotion in the department. PCS remain concerned, however, that temporary and fixed term (FTA’s) employees and overtime has been used to cover busy and peak times in areas of HMRC where there are too few staff to deliver a decent public service, and these quick fixes will continue to operate to back fill posts vacated by staff transferred to take on compliance work.

      Mr Alexander’s re-announcement about the ‘additional resource’ is also against a background of recent office closure announcements, which include the tax office in Wick – situated in his own backyard, with further closures expected to be announced in January. The 10,000 staff to be axed over the period of the Comprehensive Spending Review comes on top of the 30,000 jobs lost since the creation of HMRC in 2005.

PCS maintain that it is disingenuous to suggest that new jobs are being created in HMRC. Following the Treasury Select Committee report findings in August, which criticised HMRC heavily in its ability to deliver savings, PCS believes all cuts to jobs and office closures should be halted as a matter of urgency, additional permanent staff should be recruited to replace casual and temporary staff, money should be invested further to collect the massive £120 billion tax gap that exists through the use of tax havens and evasion and avoidance tactics by big corporations and the wealthy.

Today, HMRC released a new figure which estimated the tax gap at £35 billion. However, PCS are sceptical of this figure, believing the figure actually lost through tax evasion, avoidance and not being collected to be more than three times this amount.

These doubts are compounded by HMRC’s reluctance so far to share the model they use to estimate the tax gap.
PCS is asking members to write to their MPs to urge the government to put a stop to HMRC cuts while an independent review into their impact is carried out.

If you have any questions about any of this or need assistance in contacting your MP please do not hesitate to contact me.