Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he has had recent discussions with HMRC on technical problems affecting the availability of public helplines for self-assessments.

HMRC have introduced a ‘Period of Restricted Change’ to protect live service by reducing the volume of changes made to our IT / Telephony service. This vastly reduces the risk of IT and Telephony outages.

Every January, HMRC introduce a Key Business Event wrap-around support for ‘Self-Assessment’ which in essence, provides protective guardrails across the end-to-end service, including the Online customer services and Telephony lines, but also the underpinning infrastructure, at this crucial business peak for HMRC.’