Transfer of Tribunal Functions and Revenue and Customs Appeals Order 2009

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken, including those on the Front Bench, and for their general support for the order. I hope to answer some of their questions in a moment or two. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree, who brings with him huge experience and wisdom in this field. His support for this order is very important to the Government because of his constant work in this field. He has put better than I can the real arguments for this important change. Some very good questions have been asked, and I shall do my best to deal with some of them. First, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, expressed her personal view that she was sorry to see the end of the general commissioners. Lots of people will echo what she said, because, for a very long time, they have done an extremely valuable job of work. It should not be forgotten that they were not paid for doing that work; it was voluntary work. Their good work was recognised by Sir Andrew Leggatt himself in his report. I am happy to be able to say that a number of general commissioners have applied to sit as members of the new tribunal and have gone through the independent judicial appointment commission selection process. It is our hope that a number will be appointed and will bring their undoubted experience of dealing with tax matters to the new system. There is a consensus in the House and outside that a modern, unified tax appeal system for this century, with administrative support from a modern tribunal service, is a better system than that which we have enjoyed so far. The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, made the point about the number of venues. Undoubtedly, there will be fewer venues—I think 400 is the potential at present. However, there will still be around 130 venues around the country, and I shall make sure that noble Lords have copies of the list that I have in front of me of where those venues are hoped to be. Being that many, they cover a very large number of places. We hope that very few people will have extra difficulty in getting to a venue, particularly as video conferencing becomes something that can be used more easily. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, made a point about the impact of departure from various venues and asked whether there were any plans to review that to ensure the needs of small businesses were met. That point was very much echoed by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. The answer is yes—the system will be reviewed for its impact after one year of operation. That is indicated in passing in the Explanatory Memorandum. As for the reviews themselves, I was asked how the system was due to work and about its advantages. First, the advantages are that it is much better if parties and claimants on the HMRC can come to agreement by discussion. If that is not possible, there is the review system, which will be not external but internal and will be carried out by someone different from the person who made the initial decision. The internal review is an attempt to keep matters out of the tribunal, if possible, because it is always better if things can be done in that way. But the essential point to remember is that it is always open to the claimant to go to tribunal if they are not satisfied. They do not have to agree to the review, which is optional; the consultation argued strongly in favour of an optional rather than compulsory review. The claimant can always go to the tribunal if they are not satisfied by the review decision. As for how the review will work, if a taxpayer accepts the offer of the review, the case will be passed to a review officer not party to the original decision. The taxpayer will be expected to say why they disagreed with the decision and will have the opportunity to provide some additional information or argument to the reviewer. At the conclusion, the taxpayer will be notified of the review officer’s conclusion and reasoning and whether the original decision should be upheld, withdrawn or varied in some way. The notification will also explain, as it should, how the taxpayer can take their case to tribunal if they disagree. Importantly, HMRC is developing the central quality assurance process to assure consistency of quality across all HMRC business. In addition, HMRC aims to publish relevant statistics, so that everyone can see how the review is working. Clearly, we will have to see how that functions in practice, but the principle behind it is supported pretty widely, not least of course by the—