Up to 20,000 HMRC staff are expected to strike at some time tomorrow. The reason why they're doing so is simple: HMRC, in the face of damning criticism of its management, has decided to bring in private contractors at two sites to handle calls from the public about their tax affairs.
Wholly reasonably PCS staff are defending the taxpayer against this privatisation move which means that access to data on peoples' personal tax affairs will be handed over to private companies without any adequate protection in place.
And quite rightly PCS staff are also defending their jobs. They're hardly well paid now, but call centre operators are bound to create a profit margin in one of two ways. The first is a lower standard of training, meaning calls will be badly managed, and secondly by cutting pay. The combination is a disaster for the effective management of the UK tax system at a time when w know it has been badly managed and when we know the tax gap might be £120 billion a year.
The result is that I support the PCS workers striking tomorrow. It is they who are upholding the standards of public service in this country and the duty of the state to manage its tax system properly without risking the passing of data into the private sector. It's the management of HMRC who know little of tax and who think they're running a corporate entity who are failing the British public yet again. And I suspect any sensible person can see that.
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As someone who deals with HMRC on a day to day basis, let me tell you no one could do a worse job on routine queries about clients’ tax affairs than HMRC do at present.
Hell, a private contractor might just be available after 3 o’clock in the afternoon.
Respectfully, telling the truth always adds credibility to a comment
The call centre strategy is a source of massive frustration for ordinary HMRC workers. As is common with a Call Centre culture, staff are less well paid, receive less training, work in appalling conditions, and develop only a rudimentary knowledge of the subject area, and the level of staff turn over is inevitably high which exacerbates the whole problem. HMRC staff hate having to work in this way as they know the service is diminished. Of course, the situation got worse when HMRC decided to cut opening hours on cost grounds. But it beggars belief that HMRC managers believe taxpayers will somehow get a better service, from people with even less training, on even lower wages, with even less knowledge of or interets in tax matters. (leaving aside the data security issues).
If taxpayers and agents want a decent service, you need properly resourced local offices, with well-trained, motivated personnel. Unfortunately, that costs money, and that overrides everything. Another example of a Government Department knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
Well, when the new HMRC chief executive has form as 170k chief executive of Birmingham City Council when it was alleged she was complicit in serious electoral fraud in the city, and was happy to pick up 200k a year running the most shambolic and not fit for purpose arm of government at the Borders Agency, one is not holding one’s breath for things to get any better at HMRC.
Yet another civil servant who has risen well above her own level of incompetence and who has been paid an astonishing amount of money for, to be as charitable as possible here and not defamatory, utterly useless performance.
they should just farm the HMRC activity out to a big 4 firm and put them on a contingent fee arrangement linked to tax collected.
That has to be one of the most crass comments you’ve ever managed
Why not just say goodbye to democracy?