Speeches by Glen.

“ How do we account for this discussion about working farms? From your perspective, there is no actual definition of a working farm.”

“ Okay. To return to the Chair’s line of questioning, the key debate that we have seen over recent weeks is how this change in inheritance tax relief will affect people and who it will affect. What I think I am hearing from you is that you do not really have definitions of those different classifications of farm; y…”

“ It would be helpful for the Committee to receive a letter from you or your colleagues setting out how roll-over relief works at the moment, and what you think it constitutes as a saving from CGT.”

“ May I ask you about the incidence, value and revenues of business roll-over relief, where individuals sell a business asset, buy land and defer CGT? That is commonly seen as how wealthy non-farmers have created the mechanism to avoid tax. Essentially, there is revenue forgone consequential on that activity. Surel…”

“ Could we turn to AI and machine learning? Could you set out for the Committee what role you see that as playing in HMRC and how it facilitates, presumably, additional tax being obtained through those methods?”

“ Ministers did.”

“ What I am trying to get at is that your professional judgment was to curtail those activities. Like all fraud, you are never going to say, “No, never,” but no resources have been allocated to it. That was based on your judgment of the likelihood of diminishing returns.”

“ We now have a Covid fraud commissioner. In essence, that runs counter to that professional judgment around shutting it down, because there was a law of diminishing returns. That is why we stopped doing it in the previous Government.”

“ I think there is some sort of misunderstanding because it was my recollection that after Covid, additional resources were made available—£100 million—so that you could pursue fraud cases. You then have the £1.16 billion out of the circa £5 billion you estimated that was fraud. You will obviously—as you dutifully …”

“ A guest appearance for you, Jim!”

“ On Monday, Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, made a speech about the risks around cyber-attacks. We have seen Transport for London, for example, have some challenges. Given the growing emphasis that you are placing on digitalisation of services, how well equipped do you think HMRC is to deal…”

“ So do I.”

“ And then they have to backtrack.”

“ So you have a community of interest in this area?”

“ I have a final question. I know you are slightly different, but do you have any conversation with other customer-facing organisations across Whitehall to examine whether you are using AI in similar and best practice ways? I was in the Cabinet Office before the election, and there was always a challenge to ensure …”

“ I see. I will ask one more question, to Ms Lloyd, around the customer service side of things. There is typically a degree of apprehensiveness when people encounter HMRC. Sometimes, that is totally without foundation. How do you see AI enhancing the experience of customers with respect to their interactions with y…”

“ As Chief Secretary, I found that AI was used in a ubiquitous fashion in all Ministries, basically to justify investment to make things more efficient, but what about the quantification of the net effect of AI? I recognise from the use cases that you described, Sir Jim, that there is a meaningful chance that that …”

“ Would you be able to quantify the value of AI in terms of reconditioning processes and saving time, or indeed in terms of the additional tax that you might be able to raise as a consequence of the greater productivity of your staff?”

“ To play that back to you, AI is essentially a tool for increasing the efficiency of the way your staff work, rather than a customer-facing mechanism or product.”

“You think there could be more.”