Speeches by Caliskan.

“You have spent an additional £100 million on staffing. Is that what those staff members are doing? Are they dealing with the upstream compliance or are they dealing with downstream compliance?”

“I wanted to ask about that because productivity has been a challenge. You have provided an answer in part around the delay of seeing the returns on the investment in compliance officers. I think that is how you referred to the work. Understanding whether you are getting value for money on the additional spend on staff …”

“No, the point I am trying to make is, if you spent that money upstream as opposed to downstream, there is no question about value for money. The amount of money that is spent by HMRC is always less than the amount of return; therefore, there is always value for money. Would you be able to get even more if that £100 mil…”

“It is not that 20% of the overall cost is spent on consultants giving you advice on how to deliver a digital service, for example. I ask this because there have been lots of examples in the past— perhaps not at HMRC but throughout public sector—where, when you dig deeper, you see that it is not all spent on infrastruct…”

“I would just like to ask about grade mix. The increase in seniority in HMRC’s workforce exceeded the increase in, for instance, the DWP’s workforce and the civil service as a whole. HMRC’s staff mix is 54% in the senior grades. That is much higher than, for instance, DWP’s, which is at 20%, and more than the civil serv…”

“Given that staffing costs have gone up and productivity has gone down, how can you reassure the Committee that you are delivering value for money when your important comparators, i.e. other Government Departments, are spending less on senior staff?”

“You do not feel that the organisation is too top-heavy.”

“I note all the responses. The only thing I would say is, at a time when resources are scarce and the public is looking for more value for money, Government as a whole need to be doing more with less. I come from a local government background where, for a long time, senior officers have had to do more with less. It is h…”

“I want to ask a little more about the overall cost of the digital systems and why the higher spend has not lowered the overall cost of collecting taxes.”

“About £785 million is spent on what the report refers to as the digital business group. That has increased by 18%. It is £122 million additional cost. I just want to get a sense of this. Is that cost on digital infrastructure spend or is some of that money spent on consultants, for example?”

“Is it on technology? That is what I am asking for reassurance on.”

“That is a really interesting answer. Just to slightly go back to my earlier questions around the £100 million spent on staff, a lot of the additional cost around compliance was spent on higher-paid staff. Compare that to the response you have just given, Sir Jim, around contact with the organisation, which is also a co…”

“In your view, the additional spend on digital infrastructure, for example, will allow the organisation to reduce the number of lower-paid staff to allow people to have contact via a digital service.”

“I have a final question on risk, which you mentioned earlier. I just want to understand this a bit better. When you talk about the risk that exists in the organisation in terms of digital capacity and capability, is that cyber-risk or is there a risk to the business, so to speak, in terms of not being able to collect t…”

“There have been comparable incidents in local authorities over the past few years, have there not? Cyber-attacks have meant that whole council tax systems have been wiped out and local authorities have been unable to collect council tax for years in some cases. I guess I am looking for some reassurance. I am sure there…”

“I am very pleased to have accepted my hon. Friend’s intervention and I entirely agree with her. If we want to see an improvement in the estate of the NHS, we need to have money allocated to it. When the NHS was at breaking point, my constituents had to feel the pain of not being able to get appointments for their sickn…”

“I do not disagree with that, which is why the Government commitment around reform will be so critical. I sit on the Public Accounts Committee that produced the report that highlighted some of those gaps. As a Committee, we will be looking closely at the reforms that have come forward from the Government, and I would we…”

“My hon. Friend makes an important point, because health inequalities are determined by a multitude of factors and the work that local authorities do on public health is crucial too. Compare the point I made about local authorities not being able to set deficit budgets with the situation in the NHS, where every year win…”

“I will not take any interventions at this point—actually, I will.”

“On the point about the inability of ICBs sometimes to get things going, in my constituency it has taken the ICB nine months to procure something very similar. Does the hon. Lady agree that it is about not just their ability to pay, but their procurement processes?”