Written questions by Duncan-Jordan.

Further to the answer of 16 December 2025 to Question 98338, whether she has reviewed the Bank Confidential report; and if she will establish a judge-led inquiry into its findings.

The Treasury is aware of the Bank Confidential report about former misconduct in SME banking by the NatWest Group. The Government also recognises the serious impact that historical issues of misconduct have had on small businesses, and we acknowledge the significant distress and hardship this has caused to many business owners. Successive Governments, as well as the Financial Conduct Authority, working with lenders, have taken steps that aimed to address these issues. This included helping to establish and support a range of compensation and redress schemes to enable those affected to seek appropriate compensation, with redress over interest rate hedging rate disputes alone paying out more than £2bn to affected customers. As I set out in my previous response, the Government keeps the financial services regulatory framework under ongoing review, working closely with the Financial Conduct Authority.

What assessment she has made of the net gain in revenue from pubs and social clubs, taking account of (a) increased rateable values, (b) removal of the 40% relief and (c) introduction of transitional relief, as a result of relevant announcements in the Autumn Budget 2025.

The amount of business rates paid on each property is based on the rateable value of the property, assessed by the Valuation Office Agency (VOA), and the multiplier values, which are set by the Government. Rateable values are re-assessed every three years. Revaluations ensure that the rateable values of properties (i.e. the tax base) remain in line with market changes, and that the tax rates adjust to reflect changes in the tax base. At the Budget, the VOA announced updated property values from the 2026 revaluation. This revaluation is the first since Covid, which has led to significant increases in rateable values for some properties as they recover from the pandemic. To support with bill increases, at the Budget, the Government announced a support package worth £4.3 billion over the next three years, including protection for ratepayers seeing their bills increase because of the revaluation. As a result, over half of ratepayers will see no bill increases, including 23% seeing their bills go down. This means most properties seeing increases will see them capped at 15% or less next year, or £800 for the smallest.Without our support, the pub sector as a whole would have faced a 45% increase in the total bills they pay next year. Because of the support we’ve put in place, this has fallen to just 4%. The new RHL tax rates replace the temporary RHL relief that has been winding down since Covid. Unlike RHL relief, the new rates are permanent, giving businesses certainty and stability, and there will be no cap, meaning all qualifying properties on high streets across England will benefit.The National Insurance Contributions (NICs) Employment Allowance has been more than doubled to £10,500, ensuring that over half of businesses with National Insurance liabilities, including those in the hospitality sector, will either gain or see no change this year. A Tax Information and Impact Note was published alongside changes to employer NICs.

Pursuant to the policy document entitled Motability Scheme: reforming tax reliefs’ policy, published on 26 November, if she will publish the calculations used for the conclusion that the proposed changes are not expected to have any macroeconomic impacts.

The information set out in the macroeconomic impacts section of all Tax Information and Impact Notes (TIINs) corresponds to the assessments contained in the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) Economic and Fiscal Outlook. The OBR, as the Government's official forecaster, is responsible for judging the impact of policy decisions on its forecasts, including any underlying calculations.

Whether religious-based properties will be exempt from the new tax announced in the Budget on properties valued at £2 million and over.

The High Value Council Tax Surcharge (HVCTS) is a new charge on owners of residential property in England worth £2 million or more in 2026, taking effect in April 2028. Owners, not residents, will pay the surcharge. The government will consult on potential exemptions and reliefs in the spring.

Whether Transitional Relief for pubs only applies to the portion of increase directly attributable to Rateable Value change after the effect of new multipliers.

The Government is introducing permanently lower business rates multipliers for eligible retail, hospitality and leisure (RHL) properties. These new tax rates are worth nearly £900 million per year and will benefit over 750,000 properties. To sustainably fund these lower RHL multipliers, the Government is also introducing a higher rate on the top one per cent of most expensive properties. To protect businesses from large bill increases at the 2026 revaluation the government has introduced a generous support package worth £4.3 billion over the next 3 years, including support to help ratepayers to transition to their new bill. For properties losing their RHL relief, the caps apply to their current bill, including the 40% relief, before changes in other reliefs and local supplements. This means that most properties seeing increases will see them capped at 15% or less next year, or £800 for the smallest. Without this support, the pub sector as a whole would have faced a 45% increase in the total bills they pay next year. Because of the support the Government has put in place this falls to just 4%.

Whether she is taking steps to ensure that people affected by interest rate hedging products are compensated.

The Government recognises the impact that the historic mis‑selling of interest rate hedging products (IRHPs) has had on many SMEs, and we acknowledge the distress this caused.Responsibility for regulating the sale of these products, and for ensuring appropriate redress, rests with the independent Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The FCA required the major banks to carry out a comprehensive review of past IRHP sales. This led to around 14,000 businesses receiving a total of £2.2 billion in redress.The Government believes this industry‑wide redress scheme broadly met its objectives in delivering compensation to businesses that were mis‑sold these products. The Government has always been clear that mis‑selling of financial products is completely unacceptable. That is why we supported both the FCA’s redress scheme and its decision to commission an independent ‘lessons‑learned’ review of its supervisory interventions in relation to IRHPs. The FCA accepted the majority of the recommendations from that review, and, in light of the review’s findings, it also carefully considered whether further steps should be taken to facilitate access to redress for customers who had initially been excluded.More generally, the Government continues to keep the financial services regulatory framework under review, working closely with the FCA to help ensure that consumers and businesses are protected and have clear, effective routes to compensation where misconduct occurs.

If she will set out the difference between (a) recovered unpaid taxes and (b) outstanding unpaid taxes in the period since July 2024 to date.

HMRC is committed to making sure that individuals and businesses who can pay, do so on time. Since Autumn Budget 2024, HMRC has received £782 million of investment in its debt collection activities, which will help it to collect over £12 billion more debt by the end of 2030-31. HMRC published an update to its tax debt strategy at Budget 2025, outlining how the recent investment is helping to close the tax gap and reduce tax debt year-on-year as a percentage of receipts. The tax debt balance as a percentage of receipts fell from 5.2% in 2023-24 to 5% in 2024-25, and HMRC is aiming for this to decrease to between 3% and 4% by 2029-30. HMRC has effective processes in place to collect debt including telephone and letter campaigns, strategic partnerships with private sector debt collection agencies, and where necessary, enforcement action. For customers who need financial support, it offers flexible Time to Pay payment plans which collect debt in affordable and sustainable instalments. HMRC publishes quarterly performance updates on GOV.UK. You can find this here:

What assessment her Department has made of HMRC's ability to collect unpaid taxes.

HMRC is committed to making sure that individuals and businesses who can pay, do so on time. Since Autumn Budget 2024, HMRC has received £782 million of investment in its debt collection activities, which will help it to collect over £12 billion more debt by the end of 2030-31. HMRC published an update to its tax debt strategy at Budget 2025, outlining how the recent investment is helping to close the tax gap and reduce tax debt year-on-year as a percentage of receipts. The tax debt balance as a percentage of receipts fell from 5.2% in 2023-24 to 5% in 2024-25, and HMRC is aiming for this to decrease to between 3% and 4% by 2029-30. HMRC has effective processes in place to collect debt including telephone and letter campaigns, strategic partnerships with private sector debt collection agencies, and where necessary, enforcement action. For customers who need financial support, it offers flexible Time to Pay payment plans which collect debt in affordable and sustainable instalments. HMRC publishes quarterly performance updates on GOV.UK. You can find this here:

With reference to the Budget Statement on 26 November 2025, what estimate her Department has made of how many retail, hospitality and leisure businesses in Poole will benefit from lower business rates.

The Government is delivering a long overdue reform to rebalance the business rates system and support the high street, as promised in our manifesto. The Government is doing this by introducing new permanently lower tax rates for eligible retail, hospitality and leisure properties. These new tax rates are worth nearly £900 million per year, and will benefit over 750,000 properties, including around 104,600 in the South West of England.

What steps the Government is taking to reduce inflation in the prices of food.

The Government has announced a Food Inflation Gateway to assess and monitor regulation that could add to food prices. This will improve coordination and give food businesses a clear line of sight on upcoming regulatory changes, helping to keep costs downThe Government is also negotiating an agri-food agreement with the EU to reduce trade frictions, which is expected to save businesses up to £200 per fresh food shipment, helping to limit cost pressures across supply chains.In addition, supermarkets will see a reduction in their total business rates bills in 2026/27 compared with 2025/26, and this will be kept under review at the next revaluation. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) does not expect changes in business rates to have a material impact on food inflation.Overall, the OBR’s forecast shows government policy will reduce CPI inflation by 0.4 percentage points in 2026/27. This is the biggest near-term reduction in inflation due to government policy ever forecast by the OBR at a single fiscal event, outside of a crisis.

Whether she plans to remove the VAT exemption for vehicles adapted for use by disabled people.

The government has no plans to remove the VAT relief for vehicles designed for, or substantially and permanently adapted for, wheelchair or stretcher users. At Budget 2025 the government announced tax changes to the Motability scheme. These changes will only impact new leases, and VAT reliefs within the scheme for weekly lease costs and vehicle resale will remain in place.

Pursuant to Budget reference 4.167 on State Pension and Simple Assessment, whether the Government conducted an impact assessment of delivering the measure on an opt-in basis rather than through universal provision.

The State Pension is taxable income along with other pension income. The Budget confirmed that the basic and new State Pension will be uprated by 4.8% in 2026-27, in line with our commitment to the Triple Lock. This means pensioners whose sole income is the basic or new State Pension without any increments will not pay income tax in 2026-27. The Budget announced that the Government will ease the administrative burden for pensioners whose sole income is the basic or new State Pension without any increments so that they do not have to pay small amounts of tax via Simple Assessment from 2027-28. The Government will set out more detail next year.

What assessment she has made of the potential merits of (a) reducing or (b) removing the interest paid to commercial banks on the reserves those banks hold with the Bank of England.

Monetary policy, including quantitative easing, is the responsibility of the independent Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of England. The separation of fiscal and monetary policy is a key feature of the UK’s economic framework, and essential for the effective delivery of monetary policy, so the government does not comment on the conduct or effectiveness of monetary policy. Paying interest on reserves is an important part of the transmission of monetary policy to the real economy. There are no plans to change the way reserves are remunerated at the Bank of England. The government is providing the stability required for the independent Monetary Policy Committee to bring inflation to target, by managing the public finances responsibly.

What estimate she has made of the number of people who have been mistakenly recorded as having left the UK and subsequently had their child benefit stopped by HMRC in the last 12 months.

As part of its ongoing efforts to reduce error and fraud in the Child Benefit system, HMRC undertook a pilot last year using international travel data. This pilot saw thousands of people who had left the UK but carried on claiming Child Benefit removed from the system, preventing around £17m in incorrect payments. This led to the expansion of the measure and investment in an additional 180 counter-fraud staff, announced at the Autumn Budget 2024, and is expected to save around £350 million over the next five years. In expanding the process over the past few months, a check of HMRC PAYE systems to look for continuing UK employment was excluded on around 23,500 enquiries in order to streamline the process, with a view to employment status being tested as part of any subsequent customer enquiry.   We have apologised for this. Following concerns being raised, swift action was taken to improve the processes. A decision was made on 29 October to reinstate the employment check for all cases with immediate effect, meaning that HMRC’s risking has a higher success rate for identifying ineligible claims. HMRC reviewed all compliance cases already opened and conducted a PAYE check. These checks were completed on 14 November. As of 31 October 2025, 3,673 out of 23,794 customers who have had a compliance enquiry opened following the expansion of the pilot have had their eligibility subsequently confirmed. Where there was evidence that customers had continued UK employment, HMRC reinstated payments automatically without any need for customer contact and those payments have been backdated. By the end of November, HMRC will have written to all customers who have not yet contacted them to provide a further 4 weeks to make contact. HMRC has also responded to the Treasury Select Committee to outline the steps it has taken in relation to this issue.

What she is taking to ensure that UK residents are not mistakenly recorded as having left the UK and subsequently have their child benefit stopped by HMRC.

As part of its ongoing efforts to reduce error and fraud in the Child Benefit system, HMRC undertook a pilot last year using international travel data. This pilot saw thousands of people who had left the UK but carried on claiming Child Benefit removed from the system, preventing around £17m in incorrect payments. This led to the expansion of the measure and investment in an additional 180 counter-fraud staff, announced at the Autumn Budget 2024, and is expected to save around £350 million over the next five years. In expanding the process over the past few months, a check of HMRC PAYE systems to look for continuing UK employment was excluded on around 23,500 enquiries in order to streamline the process, with a view to employment status being tested as part of any subsequent customer enquiry. We have apologised for this. Following concerns being raised, swift action was taken to improve the processes. A decision was made on 29 October to reinstate the employment check for all cases with immediate effect, meaning that HMRC’s risking has a higher success rate for identifying ineligible claims. HMRC reviewed all compliance cases already opened and conducted a PAYE check. These checks were completed for all customers on 14 November. Where there was evidence that customers had continued UK employment, HMRC reinstated payments automatically without any need for customer contact and those payments have been backdated. By the end of November, HMRC will have written to all customers who have not yet contacted them to provide a further 4 weeks to make contact.

What assessment she has made of the potential reasons for recent trends in the levels of people that have been mistakenly recorded as having left the UK and subsequently had their child benefit stopped by HMRC.

As part of its ongoing efforts to reduce error and fraud in the Child Benefit system, HMRC undertook a pilot last year using international travel data. This pilot saw thousands of people who had left the UK but carried on claiming Child Benefit removed from the system, preventing around £17m in incorrect payments. This led to the expansion of the measure and investment in an additional 180 counter-fraud staff, announced at the Autumn Budget 2024, and is expected to save around £350 million over the next five years. In expanding the process over the past few months, a check of HMRC PAYE systems to look for continuing UK employment was excluded on around 23,500 enquiries in order to streamline the process, with a view to employment status being tested as part of any subsequent customer enquiry.   We have apologised for this. Following concerns being raised, swift action was taken to improve the processes. A decision was made on 29 October to reinstate the employment check for all cases with immediate effect, meaning that HMRC’s risking has a higher success rate for identifying ineligible claims. HMRC reviewed all compliance cases already opened and conducted a PAYE check. These checks were completed on 14 November. As of 31 October 2025, 3,673 out of 23,794 customers who have had a compliance enquiry opened following the expansion of the pilot have had their eligibility subsequently confirmed. Where there was evidence that customers had continued UK employment, HMRC reinstated payments automatically without any need for customer contact and those payments have been backdated. By the end of November, HMRC will have written to all customers who have not yet contacted them to provide a further 4 weeks to make contact. HMRC has also responded to the Treasury Select Committee to outline the steps it has taken in relation to this issue.

What assessment she has made as to the potential merits of Transitional Tax-Free Amount Certificates.

A Transitional Tax-Free Amount Certificate (TTFAC) is an official document issued by a pension scheme provider or insurer. It confirms the actual amount of tax-free lump sums an individual received before 6 April 2024, when the Lifetime Allowance was abolished. Since the Lifetime Allowance was abolished, a standard calculation is used to establish an individual’s remaining tax-free allowances, unless an application for a TTFAC has been made. The standard calculation assumes that 25% of all benefits taken before April 2024 were tax-free.This assumption can disadvantage individuals who:• Took less than 25% tax-free cash,• Waived their tax-free lump sum entitlement, or• Had complex arrangements or protections.The TTFAC allows individuals who are disadvantaged by the standard calculation to evidence the actual tax-free amount they took, potentially increasing their remaining tax-free allowances to better reflect the position they were in prior to the abolition of the Lifetime Allowance.

If she will make an estimate of the value of uncollected tax in each of the last five financial years.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) estimates the size of the tax gap, which is the difference between the amount of tax that should, in theory, be paid to HMRC, and what is actually paid. The tax gap statistics and details of the estimate methodologies are published annually and are available at: Measuring tax gaps 2025 edition: tax gap estimates for 2023 to 2024 - GOV.UK. Table 1.3 of the online tables shows the tax gap time series between tax years 2005 to 2006 and 2023 to 2024 in percentage and absolute value terms. In the tax year 2023 to 2024, the tax gap was 5.3% of total theoretical tax liabilities, or £46.8 billion in absolute terms. The tax gap was 5.6% (£46.4 billion) in 2022 to 2023, 5.6% (£41.8 billion) in 2021 to 2022, 5.3% (£34.2 billion) in 2020 to 2021, and 5.8% (£38.5 billion) in 2019 to 2020. The online tables are available at: Measuring tax gaps tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

Whether she has considered the potential merits of requiring businesses to pay a tax equivalent to employer National Insurance contributions for each AI agent that performs tasks previously done by people.

Employer National Insurance Contributions (NICs) are charged based on employee earnings. As AI agents do not receive earnings, it is not clear on what basis employer NICs would be levied.

What assessment she has made of the potential merits of removing VAT from children’s bicycles.

VAT is a broad-based tax on consumption and the 20 per cent standard rate applies to most goods and services. Taxation is a vital source of revenue that helps to fund vital public services. Evidence suggests that businesses only partially pass on any savings from lower VAT rates. In some cases, reliefs do not represent good value for money, as there is no guarantee that savings will be passed on to consumers.