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The UK Revenue Service “tended to degrade” its helplines and was “willing to let them fail” in its bid to steer taxpayers to online services, an influential group of cross-party MPs has concluded.
HM Revenue and Customs was “too quick to restrict access to its telephone services before ensuring replacement digital services were fully in place”, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said on Wednesday.
“Everything from [HMRC’s] users have a legal obligation to pay tax, so it has a responsibility to work with them,” said Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. “If I were a teacher grading HMRC’s homework, I’d give it ‘could be better’ or ‘needs improvement’.”
The IRS began the transition to digital services in 2010 with the aim of providing online support to customers, freeing up phone lines for vulnerable individuals and those with complex needs.
But demand for its helplines remained high. AND report published by the National Audit Office’s watchdog last May, found that taxpayers collectively spent the equivalent of almost 800 years waiting with HMRC in 2022-23. — more than double compared to the period 2019-20.
Sir Jim Harra, chief executive of HMRC, said the committee’s claims were “totally unfounded”. The IRS cut call waiting time to about 11 minutes compared to about 28 minutes in April 2024.
He added: “We will always be there to answer the phone for those who need additional help. At the same time, more than 80 percent of users are satisfied with our digital services.”
The MPs said in their report that HMRC should “re-establish the target call waiting time as a key performance measure” and “ensure it provides customers with accurate estimates of call waiting times in real time”.
The report urged the IRS to end its policy of ending phone calls when a customer is on hold for 70 minutes. In 2023-24, HMRC intercepted more than 43,000 calls in this way, six times more than the previous year, according to the NAO.
In March 2024 HMRC aborted plans dramatically downsize its helplines with just two days’ notice after a strong backlash from professional bodies.
MPs also called on HMRC to take further steps to reduce the money owed to the agency. The Inland Revenue’s debt stock rose to £43.9bn in March 2023, up from around £15bn in the five years before the pandemic.
The government has announced £303m of extra funding in 2023-24. to help HMRC manage tax debts, but the balance has fallen by just 2 per cent — or £900 million — by March 2024.
