Clause 47 - E-conveyancing
Finance Bill
2:45 pm
Ivan Lewis (Economic Secretary, HM Treasury; Bury South, Labour)
I thank the hon. Member for Rayleigh for giving me advance notice of his contribution. We take these issues seriously and do not dismiss them as unreasonable concerns. However, more factors are involved than our systems not working to maximum effect. The hon. Gentleman is unaware, or chose not to mention, that the deputy chairman of the board of HMRC recently met with the president of the Law Society to discuss the problems. It was a very productive meeting.
Initially, there were problems with call centre waiting times—they were unacceptable. As I understand it, however, the average waiting time is now less than five minutes. If that figure is accurate, it represents pretty good going by any standard.
It is important that we are clear about the responsibilities that the professionals submitting the forms have to fulfil, as well as about our responsibility to put the systems right. Let me take a moment to explain why problems occur. In many cases, returned forms are rejected because they are incomplete or incorrect. The scanning technology that we use makes it important that forms completed by hand are accurate. It seems reasonable to expect them to be completed accurately, particularly as they are coming from reasonably well qualified and, I assume, reasonably well paid lawyers. However, as an alternative, I urge practitioners to use the online or CD-ROM versions of the return forms, because the rejection rate of those forms is very low. That is an important point. We also issue all practitioners with regular newsletters—more newsletters—that give guidance on completion of the forms, and there is comprehensive guidance on the HMRC website.
Issues have been raised and we intend to take them seriously—we are already doing so—but I hope that the profession will take account of the fact that we need it to fulfil its responsibilities in an appropriate way if some of the systems failures are not to continue. In recognising that, I bring my comments to a close.