Speeches by Hatton.

“Building on what Nesil was saying, the NAO Report makes very clear that there is declining trust in HMRC among both businesses and individuals. Why we have touched upon this today is because this is probably one of the causes of that declining trust. If I may, I have one final, separate point to this. I would be really…”

“It would be useful to know if there are any targets in the future in terms of how often these powers are used and how many criminal investigations you hope to bring. If there are any more details on targets or strategies that you are able to provide to the Committee in a written form, that would be very helpful.”

“I have two quick last questions. You have mentioned this already today, but in the correspondence that you shared with us, you did mention that there is a range of powers that HMRC has to tackle tax avoidance and evasion. Could you provide a bit more detail on how frequently these powers are used by HMRC? If you are ab…”

“We also know—and this was touched upon in our letter and the correspondence that you provided us—that some nefarious and wealthy individuals use a web of trusts, often offshore, to avoid sanctions and tax. Could you go into a bit more detail about how you plan to tackle the specific challenges posed by the use of trust…”

“Also in the correspondence, you highlight that investigating offshore tax evasion poses significant challenges—and you have made that point again today—due to the complexity of structures that are used by these wealthy individuals. In the letter, you made a specific point about tackling the accountants and the lawyers …”

“I have a couple of questions, so I will keep them as brief as I can, if that is all right. It would be good if we could keep the answers succinct, just so that we can get through them all and then move on to the wider session. Thank you for the correspondence. It was a useful starting point as to where HMRC is when it …”

“Without the Office of Tax Simplification, is HMRC able to measure this and report progress? It is really important for this Committee to be able to see whether it is working.”

“I completely accept that, but you can understand why the public find it very frustrating. Would it be more accurate to have a different calculation for extremely wealthy individuals versus the majority of the country when it comes to how much time is spent on administering their tax, particularly considering that those…”

“If I could press a bit further there, we have touched on this previously when you have come before this Committee. In total, taxpayers spent 719 years on hold to HMRC in the past year, so you can understand why, if an individual watching this today sees that the internal figure that you use is three years out of date, …”

“If it is three years out of date, you can appreciate why an individual might think that the HMRC perhaps has a slightly distorted understanding of how much time people spend administering their tax.”

“You currently calculate that the cost of customer time is £18.66 per hour. That is three years out of date now, so can we expect that to be to be refreshed to reflect how much time it might cost an individual to administer their own tax?”

“Moving the conversation on slightly from businesses to individual taxpayers, this report picks up the fact that, as it stands, HMRC does not maintain a model that estimates the cost impact of tax changes on individuals. Why is it that HMRC gives so much less attention to the cost to individuals of administering their t…”

“Just taking a slight step back from that and looking again at that figure of £15.4 billion a year in terms of the administrative burden on businesses, I have a really simple question. Why is the cost to business of complying with our tax system that high?”

“Reading over the NAO Report, I was struck by the figure for the administrative burden on businesses of £15.4 billion a year, and the fact that this is likely an underestimate and a very conservative figure. I also find quite stark a figure that was produced via a PQ that I did quite recently, which is that HMRC’s large…”

“For your replacement as the chief executive, it would be really important to see that loophole closed to enable the HMRC to do its job effectively.”

“In the correspondence, you mentioned the use of data taken from the register of overseas entities to identify and investigate where tax might be owed by a wealthy individual, yet we know that individuals often hide their ownership of a property on this register by holding it via a trust, often offshore as well. Given t…”

“I thank all Members for a thoughtful and constructive debate. I thank the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for their particularly thoughtful contributions, my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan) for his powe…”

“I beg to move, That this House recognises that loopholes in regulation allow for opaque funding of political parties; expresses concern over the prevalence of substantial financial contributions from corrupt individuals and foreign governments, which render political parties susceptible to manipulation and undue influe…”

“If I could take a slight step back, this Committee is rightly spending a lot of time discussing Government or taxpayer support for Drax. It would be quite interesting to perhaps get a bit of an understanding from you all today about why the Government have not been more proactive in providing similar support for the sm…”

“I think that it was last year that Drax agreed to pay a £25 million fine because of inaccurate data. It would be quite helpful for me to understand in a bit more detail how we do not come back in a few years’ time as a Committee and I come with a fresh fine that is been paid by Drax. You will no doubt be aware of the r…”