Publication of the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Bill

Improved customer service for businesses and individual tax payers will be delivered through the new HM Revenue and Customs government department (HMRC), introduced in a Bill published by Paymaster General Dawn Primarolo today.

The Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Bill will integrate Inland Revenue and HM Customs & Excise into the new single department, created as a result of the O’Donnell review of revenue administration, published alongside Budget 2004. The new department will bring significant benefits including:

delivering improvements for customers, through more effective, joined-up services;
improving fairness by making better use of information across HMRC which will help target compliance activities, thereby reducing the burden on honest taxpayers; and cracking down on those trying to abuse the system; and
delivering efficiency improvements, with integration contributing 3,000 posts towards total savings in HMRC of 16,000 posts by the end of 2007/08, as set out in the Spending Review earlier this year.

The Bill also creates a new independent prosecutions office - the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office (RCPO) - to prosecute HMRC cases in England and Wales, implementing a key recommendation of the Butterfield Review. The creation of RCPO will:

demonstrate the full independence of the prosecutors and ensure that the public can have confidence in their credibility and integrity.
introduce external scrutiny of criminal investigation work,
improve standards and effectiveness; and
make the staff of the office, through the Director, accountable to the Attorney General.

Introducing the Bill, the Paymaster General Dawn Primarolo said:

“We are committed to ensuring that our tax administration is best placed to deliver the best possible service to taxpayers. The establishment of HMRC, integrating the work of Customs and the Revenue, represents a major contribution to the Government’s public service reform agenda, aimed at delivering real service improvements for people and businesses throughout Britain.”

The Attorney General Lord Goldsmith said:

“Public confidence in the criminal justice system is crucial. The establishment of RCPO, responsible for the prosecution of all Revenue and Customs cases in England and Wales and accountable to me, is an important step to ensure there is an effective and fully independent prosecuting authority dealing with many of the most difficult and complex cases in the criminal justice system.”

Notes for Editors

1. On 17 March 2004 at the time of the Budget, the Chancellor announced that HM Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue were to be integrated to form a single department. Subsequently, on 13 May 2004, the Chancellor announced that the new department would be called Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

2. On 12 October 2004, the Attorney General announced the decision to create a single prosecuting authority – accountable to the Attorney General, and to be known as the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office (RCPO) - to deal with Revenue and Customs prosecutions work in England and Wales.

3. Explanatory Notes have been prepared by the Treasury in order to assist the reader of the Bill and to help inform debate on it. They do not form part of the Bill and have not been endorsed by Parliament.

4. The Bill and Explanatory Notes are published by the Stationery Office. An electronic version is available from the Parliamentary website and paper versions are available from Stationery Office bookshops.

5. The Regulatory Impact Assessment is available from the HM Treasury website.

6. HMRC media enquiries should be addressed to John Kimber at the Treasury press office on 020 7270 4457 and RCPO media enquiries should be directed to the Attorney General's Press Office: 020 7271 2465

7. Non-media enquiries should be addressed to the Treasury Correspondence and Enquiry Unit on 020 7270 4558 or by e-mail to public.enquiries@hm-treasury.gov.uk.

8. This press release and other Treasury publications and information are available on the Treasury website at www.hm-treasury.gov.uk. If you would like Treasury press releases to be sent to you automatically by e-mail you can subscribe to this service from the press release site on the website.