Lord Londesborough
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Unpaid Tax
Lord Londesborough Excerpts(2 days ago)
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Lord Londesborough (CB)
My Lords, back in February the Public Accounts Committee accused HMRC of not being
“sufficiently curious about the true scale of tax evasion”
in this country, suggesting that the tax authority’s estimate of £5.5 billion a year may be a significant underestimate. Does the Minister share the committee’s concern?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
After the measures we took in the Budget and the Spring Statement, no one could possibly say that we are not sufficiently resourcing the fight against the tax gap. As I said in my original Answer to my noble friend, the National Audit Office recognises in its report that this Government are scaling up compliance activity to tackle serious offshore non-compliance and have committed further funding to do so. It also recognises many of the measures we are taking, including, as I said earlier, significant additional investment in compliance officers by the end of the Parliament. The noble Lord will recognise that this is the most ambitious package to close the tax gap ever; we have committed an additional £660 million each year for measures to do so and by the end of the Parliament we will raise an additional £7.5 billion a year.