Ian Lavery – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ian Lavery on 2014-04-10.

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the staffing levels at HM Revenue and Customs debt management collectors were in (a) debt management telephony centres, (b) field force, (c) debt collection intervention teams, (d) debt technical offices and (e) late stage intervention in each of the last three years.

Mr David Gauke

Staff numbers fluctuate throughout the year but the following numbers of staff were in post at 31 March for each of the last three years:

· HMRC uses an appropriate mix of interventions to recover outstanding debt based on assessments of previous behaviour, [credit] risk and likely ability to pay. The allocation of various activities to specific debts is not mutually exclusive – some debtors may experience multiple contacts if they do not respond to initial attempts at recovery.

· The table below shows the overall annual amounts of debts which HMRC has pursued and cleared in recent years.