Thirty-sixth report of session 2010-12
Thirty-sixth report of session 2010-12

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: European Scrutiny Committee

Publisher: The Stationery Office

Published: 2011-07-14

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 9780215560629

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Thirty-sixth report of Session 2010-12 : Documents considered by the Committee on 6 July 2011, including the following recommendations for debate, preparation of the 2012 EU Budget; financial assistance to Member States: Ireland; economic governance: the

HMRC
HMRC

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher: The Stationery Office

Published: 2013-03-18

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13: 9780215055231

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In 2011-12, 20 million phone calls to HMRC were not answered. It cost the callers £136 million while they waited to speak to an adviser. And, against its target of responding to 80% of letters within 15 days, the department managed to reply to just 66%. Officials are beginning to realize that good customer service lies at the heart of any strategy to maximize revenues while cutting costs. Callers will no longer be forced to use the more expensive 0845 numbers. Other planned changes include the resolution of more queries first time and a call-back service where this is not possible. However, HMRC's new target of answering 80% of calls within five minutes is still woefully short of the industry standard of answering 80% of calls within 20 seconds. Just how the department is going to improve standards of customer service, given the prospect of its having fewer staff and receiving a higher volume of calls, is open to question. HMRC plans to cut the number of customer-facing staff by a third by 2015. At the same time, the stresses associated with introducing the Real Time Information System, Universal Credit and changes to child benefit are likely to drive up the number of phone calls to the department. HMRC is also to close all of its 281 enquiry centres which give face-to-face advice to customers. HMRC considers that it will be able to improve service standards by using its staff more flexibly. It may need to put in additional resources, though, to avoid the kind of plummeting performance we have seen in the past

HC 974 - Improving Tax Collection
HC 974 - Improving Tax Collection

Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher: The Stationery Office

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 29

ISBN-13: 0215085574

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The Committee have made taxation a key area of focus during this Parliament and have published 20 reports on taxation and made over 100 recommendations to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and HM Treasury aimed at improving HMRC's performance and strengthening confidence in the tax system. The Committee believe they have influenced the debate about multinational companies paying the appropriate amount of tax due, based on their transactions conducted within the UK; exposed serious problems with how the tax planning industry pushes aggressive tax avoidance schemes to businesses and wealthy individuals; helped to reform how HMRC tackles marketed tax avoidance schemes and settles tax disputes with large corporates; and challenged HMRC to provide a better and more even-handed service to customers. The Committee welcome the action that HMRC has taken in response to the recommendations and the progress that has been made. But much remains to be done; for example, HMRC must urgently transform its currently unacceptable levels of customer service. The Committee further welcomes the lead the UK Government has taken in this area on the international stage and call on the next government to continue this work and undertake to tackle both the industry and culture that surrounds and supports tax evasion and aggressive avoidance.

HC 941 - Establishing Free Schools
HC 941 - Establishing Free Schools

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher: The Stationery Office

Published: 2014-05-09

Total Pages: 64

ISBN-13: 0215071921

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Recent high-profile failures demonstrate that the Department for Education and the Education Funding Agency's oversight arrangements for free schools are not yet working effectively. The Department and Agency have set up an approach to oversight which emphasises schools' autonomy, but standards of financial management and governance in some free schools are clearly not up to scratch. The Agency relies on high levels of compliance by schools, yet fewer than half of free schools submitted their required financial returns for 2011-12 to the Agency on time. Whistleblowers played a major role in uncovering recent scandals when problems should have been identified through the Agency's monitoring processes. There is also concern that applications for new free schools are not emerging from areas of greatest forecast need for more and better school places. The Department needs to set out how, and by when, it will encourage applications from areas with a high or severe forecast need for extra schools places, working with local authorities where appropriate. The Department should also be more open about the reasons for making decisions. Capital costs of the free school programme are escalating. The most recent round of approved free schools had a greater proportion of more expensive types, such as secondaries, special and alternative provision, located in more expensive regions such as London, the South East and South West. If this mix of approved free schools continues, there is a risk of costs exceeding available funding.

National Human Rights Action Planning
National Human Rights Action Planning

Author: Azadeh Chalabi

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-07-19

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0192555596

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This book deals with human rights action planning, as a largely under-researched area, from theoretical, doctrinal, empirical, and practical perspectives, and as such, provides the most comprehensive studies of human rights planning to date. At the theoretical level, by advancing a novel general theory of human rights planning, it offers an alternative to the traditional state-centric model of planning. This new theory contains four sub-theories: contextual, substantive, procedural, and analytical ones. At the doctrinal level, by conducting a textual analysis of core human rights conventions, it reveals the scope and nature of the states' obligation to adopt a plan of action for implementing human rights. At the empirical level, a cross-case analysis of national human rights action plans of 53 countries is conducted exploring the major problems of these plans in different phases of planning and uncovering the underlying causes of these problems. At the practical level, this volume sets out how these plans should be developed and implemented, how they can be best monitored by international human rights bodies, and how to maximize their effectiveness. With discussions bridging human rights theory and practice and development discourse, this book will be a useful resource for a wide range of audiences, from academics of different disciplines (law, human rights, social policy, political science, political philosophy, legal philosophy, development studies, planning studies, socio-legal studies) to governments, human rights practitioners, and the UN human rights bodies.