Secondees welcome

I am writing… regarding secondees from the accountancy profession to HMT/HMRC. We welcome the opportunity to engage in this debate as part of the very healthy public scrutiny and debate which as a tax administration we want to be part of.

HMRC is committed to better policy making greater transparency and further simplification which all means closer working with outside professionals.

External experts have a valuable role to play in tax policy development whether through formal or informal consultation mechanisms or through the secondment of experts to specific programmes and policies.

While our openness to private sector secondees raises legitimate questions about the basis on which such secondees work I believe concern that secondments might act as a “Trojan horse” to weaken our effectiveness to be entirely misplaced.

Indeed the opposite is true: these secondments strengthen our organisation and our ability to understand and...