Senior politicians heap scorn on suggestion that HMRC customers seeking tax advice could contact them through Twitter

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Senior politicians have reacted with anger after HM Revenue & Customs suggested that customers seeking tax advice could contact them through Twitter.

Margaret Hodge, Labour chair of the public accounts committee, and Mark Garnier, a Tory member of the Treasury committee, poured scorn on the suggestion after it emerged that callers to government tax and benefit helplines are waiting twice as long to get through as last year.

Advising the use of Twitter excluded millions of people and might lead to confidential information leaking into the public domain, the MPs said.

An HMRC spokesman had suggested using Twitter after being asked to explain why the tax department’s helplines were getting worse, despite promises of improvements from senior tax officials.

The spokesman said: “This year we are introducing new technology to help us answer more calls quicker at busy times, and we are improving the digital services we offer so that more customers can find all they need online. Customers can get help with general self-assessment queries by tweeting us.”

Hodge said the idea was laughable. “No customer-based service should tolerate such a poor service and both ministers and senior management should simply sort this out,” she added.

Garnier told the Mail Online: “Only a small proportion of the country uses Twitter. I cannot think of even a simple tax problem that can be summed up in 140 characters. It is just rubbish, naive, stupid and facile comment.”

Shadow Treasury minister Shabana Mahmood said: “It beggars belief that the government’s response to taxpayers who can’t get through on their helpline is to urge them to publicly tweet about their tax affairs.”

Tens of thousands of Britons will seek advice over their tax affairs in the coming weeks to complete their self-assessment tax returns before the 31 January deadline.

Lin Homer, HMRC chief executive, has claimed it has been improving its phone services. But the latest records show that the average waiting times for HMRC contact centre telephone queues reached 10 minutes and 53 seconds in September, more than double the five minutes 21 seconds registered at the same point in 2013.

Just over a third of calls were cut off, significantly up from the one in five recorded last year, while the number answered in under two minutes dropped from half to a quarter, according to the HMRC figures.

Waiting times for callers to tax inquiry lines went up from four minutes 42 seconds to 11 minutes 51 seconds, while tax credit queues rose from seven minutes 13 seconds to 14 minutes 28 seconds.

Callers seeking child benefit help waited an average of nine minutes nine seconds compared with five minutes 48 seconds in September 2013.

HMRC was also criticised in the July meeting for costing callers £136m a year by not answering telephone inquiries, despite investing £900m in customer service following criticism lodged in 2012.

Jonathan Isaby, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “These delays are an unfair additional imposition on taxpayers already frustrated with having to navigate the hideously complicated tax and benefits systems.

“Sadly, when we are dealing with a tax code that is over 17,000 pages long, it’s little wonder that people need to call for assistance in sorting out their tax affairs.

“If the government would only embark on the wholesale tax simplification we need in this country, the problem of hanging on the phone to the HMRC helplines need never arise.”