Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much is owed in uncollected taxes from businesses that liquidated when their owed taxes were attempted to be recovered in 2025.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
HMRC publishes quarterly updates that report on the total debt balance at the end of each quarter. The most recent update was published on 8 January 2026 and can be found at www.gov.uk/government/collections/hmrc-quarterly-performance-updates.
HMRC publishes data on individual tax heads but does not publish an aggregated dataset on business taxes.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what data her Department has regarding the amount of unpaid taxes by businesses that is awaiting recovery.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
HMRC publishes quarterly updates that report on the total debt balance at the end of each quarter. The most recent update was published on 8 January 2026 and can be found at www.gov.uk/government/collections/hmrc-quarterly-performance-updates.
HMRC publishes data on individual tax heads but does not publish an aggregated dataset on business taxes.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if she will take steps to remove business rates for early years providers.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
Business rates are a broad-based tax on the value of non-domestic properties, including nurseries.
To protect small businesses, the Government has frozen the small business multiplier for 2025-26. Taken together with Small Business Rates Relief, this intervention ensures that over a million properties will be protected from inflationary increases.
More broadly, in 2026-27, we expect to provide over £9.5 billion for the early years entitlements. We are investing over £1 billion more in the early years entitlements this year compared to 2025-26, to deliver a full year of the expanded entitlements, and an above inflation increase to entitlements funding rates.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what is the total cost to the public purse of money owed to HMRC in the form of unpaid (a) VAT and (b) corporation tax accrued since July 2024.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
Our debt management workforce is deployed flexibly across all taxes to ensure efficient collection of debts owed and are not allocated to specific taxes. It is therefore not possible to provide a separate figure for staff working solely on VAT or corporation tax recovery.
HMRC publishes information on VAT and corporation tax losses in its Annual Report and Accounts, of which the most recent can be found here: HMRC Annual Report and Accounts 2024-25.
HMRC does not hold a separate breakdown of companies dissolved with unpaid VAT or corporation tax.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many companies owing unpaid (a) VAT and (b) corporation tax have been dissolved since July 2024.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
Our debt management workforce is deployed flexibly across all taxes to ensure efficient collection of debts owed and are not allocated to specific taxes. It is therefore not possible to provide a separate figure for staff working solely on VAT or corporation tax recovery.
HMRC publishes information on VAT and corporation tax losses in its Annual Report and Accounts, of which the most recent can be found here: HMRC Annual Report and Accounts 2024-25.
HMRC does not hold a separate breakdown of companies dissolved with unpaid VAT or corporation tax.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many full time equivalent HMRC staff are working on unpaid (a) VAT and (b) corporation tax recovery.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
Our debt management workforce is deployed flexibly across all taxes to ensure efficient collection of debts owed and are not allocated to specific taxes. It is therefore not possible to provide a separate figure for staff working solely on VAT or corporation tax recovery.
HMRC publishes information on VAT and corporation tax losses in its Annual Report and Accounts, of which the most recent can be found here: HMRC Annual Report and Accounts 2024-25.
HMRC does not hold a separate breakdown of companies dissolved with unpaid VAT or corporation tax.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many full-time equivalent staff in her Department have been employed for the purpose of making social media content in each of the past three years.
Answered by Lucy Rigby - Economic Secretary (HM Treasury)
Due to the difficulty of disaggregating the number of staff who are employed to produce social media content from staff who are employed to work on broader digital communications, it is not possible to report exact figures in response to this question.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many and what proportion of civil servants in her Department are (a) on temporary contract and (b) consultants.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
Information on the number of staff in HM Treasury that are (a) on temporary contracts and (b) consultants, is published annually through the HM Treasury annual report and accounts at the following web address: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hm-treasury-annual-report-and-accounts-2024-to-2025 on pages 95 and 103, respectively.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many (1) individuals and (2) organisations have been (a) investigated and (b) prosecuted for fraud in relation to COVID-19 funds since 2020.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
HMRC have interpreted ‘COVID-19 funds’ as the ‘HMRC administered COVID-19 support schemes’, including Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), Eat Out to Help Out (EOHO), the Self Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS), and the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) (previously the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy until 2023) administered Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS), Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), and Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS).
Although you have requested the data be broken down into individuals and organisations, HMRC do not hold the data at that level of detail. SEISS claims relate to individuals, whereas CJRS involves payroll, however, CJRS may also fall within the Income Tax (IT) or Corporation Tax (CT) regime. To add complexity, all charges for recovery of overpayments on the HMRC schemes are raised under IT legislation.
By the end of March 2025, HMRC had opened 53 criminal investigations into suspected fraud within the schemes and made a total of 99 arrests. There have been 4 convictions so far. Further ongoing criminal investigation activity has yet to be concluded within the criminal justice system and is subject to those timescales.
In this timeframe, HMRC also carried out more than 47,000 compliance checks using civil powers, where the amount claimed was out of step with other information. The risk that the claim was incorrect may have been due to a range of reasons from an honest mistake through to fraud.
DBT has worked with enforcement partners to tackle fraud linked to COVID-19 loan schemes. This includes the National Investigation Service (NATIS) and the Insolvency Service (INSS). To date, the Insolvency Service has obtained disqualifications against 2,595 directors, bankruptcy restrictions against 381 individuals and 82 successful criminal convictions in respect of COVID-19 financial support scheme misconduct. The Agency has also helped to secure more than £6 million in compensation related to COVID-19 financial support scheme abuse. Since 2020, NATIS has opened a total of 254 investigations covering both individuals and organisations. NATIS has secured 14 convictions up to November 2025.