Tax Credits

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 5:27 pm on 22 June 2005.

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Photo of The Earl of Northesk The Earl of Northesk Conservative 5:27, 22 June 2005

My Lords, is it not the case that Ministers were somewhat selective in their presentation of the November 2002 Gateway Review of the tax credits IT system, highlighting such comments as the project being,

"an exemplar of good programme management"?

But is it not also the case that the Gateway Review emphasised that the project was high risk? To what extent at the time did Ministers factor that into its development? Is it not also the case that by November 2003, Nick Montague, then chairman of the Inland Revenue, in evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, blamed the tax credits fiasco on a failure of the systems? Is it not surprising that, in a year, what the Government had chosen to describe as,

"an exemplar of good programme management", had become the villain of the piece?

Moreover, the Statement implies that this sorry mess is just a little local difficulty that can be ironed out with a bit of tinkering round the edges. But are not the problems very much deeper and wider than that? For example, is it not the case, as revealed by Steve Lamey, chief information officer and a board director at HMRC, that the department sends about 30 million letters to wrong addresses each year, or that each of 72 tax offices process self-assessment forms in different ways? Even on separate floors within a single tax office there are sometimes different processes.

Against that background, should not Ministers be a little less complacent and face the fact that, as Computer Weekly put it, the Revenue is riddled with "systemic failures"? Is it not time for a little humble pie—perhaps, even, as my noble friend Lady Noakes has suggested, an apology or two?