Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what plans his Department has to review all tax credit cases taken back in-house from Concentrix to ensure that policy and procedures have been correctly applied.

As part of the normal tax credits process HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is reviewing cases where a claimant has made a request for a mandatory reconsideration in light of decisions made by Concentrix.

HMRC received 32,358 mandatory reconsiderations from Concentrix from 14th September 2016 to 15th November 2016. Ordinarily, the vast majority of mandatory reconsiderations are upheld in the claimant’s favour because new information has come to light during the mandatory reconsideration process. This includes cases where the additional information requested was not originally provided. Of the mandatory reconsiderations processed from Concentrix, 26,990 have been closed with 24,219 (89.7%) of these being upheld in the claimant’s favour. 2,475 of the original 32,358 were wrongly classified as mandatory reconsiderations. The average time taken by HMRC to process mandatory reconsiderations related to tax credits decisions from the point of the request to the final decision between 1st August 2016 and 31st October 2016 was 35.13 days. This includes the time taken to receive any additional information which was not originally provided. HMRC will consider whether a hardship payment is appropriate where one is requested dependent on the circumstances of the specific case. As announced on 7th October, the National Audit Office will be conducting an investigation into HMRC’s contract with Concentrix.