Speeches by Murray.

“Next time you summon me, I will ask that question again and I hope we will see a metric of improvement on that.”

“It does not matter. You can check your PAYE. You can check how much is being downloaded month by month. You can check your national insurance number.”

“National insurance is a good example. On the app, you can check your national insurance number. You can download it into your Google Wallet so you have it there if you cannot remember it. It is a really good service. There should not be so many people calling up, taking up advisers’ time, trying to get their national i…”

“Any digital-first strategy has to be mindful of digital exclusion, because we are not like another company where someone can go to an alternative company. People have to interact with HMRC to pay their taxes. We are a public service. We have to make sure we are accessible. Having said that, while we need to make sure t…”

“People’s view of data, data privacy and data sharing changes over the years as more and more stuff is done online. We all know that our supermarket has a lot of information about us as well as the Government. It is one reason why making sure we are investing in the IT foundations of HMRC to protect against things such …”

“I do not have the number in front of me, Dame Harriett. I can write to you with that. There is the freeze in thresholds until April 2028, which will mean more people will pay tax. There are two parts to your question. If you disaggregate it, there are two sections to it. One is about the number of people paying tax and…”

“Can I just check so that I write to you with the right information? By number of customers, you mean number of people paying tax?”

“I will write to you with the information.”

“The metrics that we are currently working towards are ones that we inherited from the previous Government. We will be looking, as part of our work to improve and modernise the tax system, at what metrics are appropriate going forward. I think that we have the stats here. I might ask Dan to update you.”

“Sorry, can I just say, on that point around the metrics, that that was not exactly what I said? We will be looking at what metrics are appropriate. If we are going to be a digital-first organisation, we should consider metrics in that context.”

“You asked about pensioners, so I am responding to your question. There will be different people who feel comfortable with different things. It depends on how complicated people’s tax affairs are. Some of this comes round to, as I said earlier, the worried well and the element of reassurance to see whether we can get to…”

“I will speak to what I can say and I might ask Dan to come in because some of this was under the previous Administration. That decision that Ministers at the time oversaw to close the helpline then led to an urgent question being tabled by someone not a million miles from here. The decision was then reversed, which, as…”

“This is where I am going to bring Dan in, because I was not there.”

“In terms of customer service, there is a big role for AI to play and some of this relies on us modernising the IT infrastructure that HMRC has. One good opportunity that we could look at in the future is around, for instance, call summarisation, so having AI to give call summaries so that, when people call up and have …”

“It is one benefit of Making Tax Digital. If you look at the next milestone that we are heading to with MTD, which is for self‑assessment in April 2026 for income tax for small businesses, landlords and so on, that is really important in terms of not just helping people to serve themselves online and interact with HMRC,…”

“It is a really important part for me. As we have spoken about today, closing the tax gap is one of my three priorities. The April 2026 and April 2027 mandates for MTD have additional tax revenue associated with them because they are measures that will increase the tax collection.”

“Making sure people are paying the tax that they owe and discouraging and preventing fraud is a crucial part of not just Making Tax Digital but the wider agenda. One of the processes that I have been through over the last six months, in terms of talking with the people responsible for the Making Tax Digital programme, i…”

“The commitment we have from Sage is to launch the free product ahead of the April 2026 mandation.”

“It is £50,000 and then £30,000. There are two stages, yes.”

“The cost of software is relevant to the point we were just talking to around free software being available. One reason why we have chosen to start with a £50,000 mandate, then to go to £30,000, and not to set a date right now for £20,000 but to see where we are, is exactly so we can learn as we go along from this, as w…”