Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of businesses' ability to report to HM Revenue and Customs faults on the anti-money laundering supervision online system.

In May 2017, HMRC launched a new online registration system for anti-money laundering supervision. Payments for anti-money laundering supervision are made through the HMRC Online Payments Service.

The HMRC Online Payments Service has experienced issues on two occasions in the last 12 months: on 31st July during the Self-Assessment payments peak, and on 26th September following routine upgrade work to the Online Payment feature. This upgrade improved the user experience and offered the option of payment by BACS. The issues following this upgrade were resolved within two days, and customers were still able to pay by BACS during this time.

The Online Payments Service's processes are monitored on an ongoing basis to look for errors, and tested with users to ensure they meet their needs.

The anti-money laundering online system has a link entitled “Get help with this page” on each screen for any user experiencing difficulty. When the user follows this link they can send a message to the HMRC Digital Team who assess the problem and assign it for investigation. Customers are kept informed of progress throughout this process.