Oral Answers to Questions

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I have mentioned the extra care and support that HMRC has put in place. I have mentioned the extremely careful approach that it has taken with people who may be facing the loan charge. As he will be aware, it has not initiated insolvency proceedings against any taxpayer for a loan charge debt and that in itself is emblematic of the care and attention that it is taking with this subject.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

It is not enough for the Minister to say that people had to take responsibility for their own tax affairs when the information that they were given by HMRC was that there was nothing wrong with these schemes initially, when HMRC passed and signed off tax years for people, and when the head of HMRC has admitted that, in recent months, he had repeatedly tried—this was the outcome of a freedom of information request—to obtain legal analysis to understand the strength of a claim with “very little success”. There is not even a legal standing for this. How then can the Minister say that it is right to pursue people for things that they were led into, and, indeed, for payments that HMRC was regularising by allowing contractors to use as a means of paying their employees?

[Jesse Norman]

The right hon. Gentleman raises a whole bunch of questions. Let me address them. There were some contractors working through agencies for HMRC. Where it was discovered that they had used disguised remuneration, those relationships were ended and strong measures have been put in place to prevent recurrence. That is an unfortunate feature of the extended way in which these contract arrangements sometimes work. I do not think that there is any evidence that HMRC has signed off or positively approved the use of any disguised remuneration scheme. If the right hon. Gentleman has an example, he is welcome to send it to me. The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that the chief executive of HMRC has specifically written to the loan charge and taxpayer fairness all-party parliamentary group to make it perfectly clear that it has taken those remarks out of context and that what he was doing—as every chief executive of a public agency should do—was putting his own officials under some pressure to provide the justification needed, and rightly so.