Thu, 1 Sep 2011

Low staff morale among HMRC’s biggest challenges

HM Revenue & Customs must face an inquiry, a senior MP has said, following the publication of a report by the Commons Treasury Select Committee, which raised serious concerns over low employee morale at HMRC.

Ian Liddell-Grainger, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Taxation, said: ‘I urge the Select Committee chair [Andrew Tyrie MP] to give this six months and then carry out a short inquiry… and then continue with rolling short bursts of “where have we got to updates”.’

The Conservative MP for Bridgwater, Minehead and Exmoor criticised the organisation’s failure to improve staff morale, despite senior management being aware of the problem and making efforts to improve low-level engagement. The report said there was ‘little evidence of any positive impact to date’.

Saying HMRC is ‘woefully behind on so many of its projects’, Liddell-Grainger said the government department was ‘rather like an alcoholic – they need to accept there is a problem before they can do something about it’.

The report did find, however, that HMRC had been operating under significant pressures while implementing complex legislation, but the committee was concerned that ‘performance may deteriorate further if resource reductions are badly managed’.

A spokesperson for HMRC said: ‘Staff morale is one of the biggest challenges facing the department. The changes we needed to make to streamline the department and deliver better services have inevitably had an impact on staff. We are determined to address this and have instigated a range of measures to deliver better staff engagement.’