Ian Lavery – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ian Lavery on 2014-04-29.

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much has been spent by HM Revenue and Customs on preparatory work for the outsourcing of Tax Credit Error and Fraud Adding Capacity to date.

Nicky Morgan

From April to July 2013, HMRC carried out a trial to test whether it would be feasible to increase the number of compliance checks on tax credits claims, through the use of private sector resource. HMRC will publish the evaluation of the trial and the customer research report in due course.

It is not appropriate to place the business case in the public domain given the commercial sensitivities and the risk of prejudice to HMRC’s ability to tackle tax credits error and fraud.

In terms of the external costs of the trial, I refer the Hon Member to the Thirty-Fourth Report of the Committee of Public Accounts [2013/14] into HMRC Tax Collection: Annual Report & Accounts 2012–13, which may be found at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmpubacc/666/66602.htm. All internal HMRC operating costs are published annually in the HMRC Annual Report and Accounts.

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