Freedom of Information Team
S1715
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Dot Menzies Holden
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE98 1ZZ
By email: request-552674-
xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx
Email
xxx.xxxxxxx@xxxx.xxx.xxx.xx
Web
www.gov.uk
Date: 14 March 2019
Our ref:
FOI2019/00424
Dear Dot Menzies Holden
Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA)
Thank you for your request, which was received on 14 February, for the following
information:
“I am writing under the terms of the FOI Act to request copies of all blogs written by Jon
Thompson between January 2018 to the date of this request.”
I can confirm that since January 2018 there have been five blog entries by Sir Jonathan
Thompson on HMRC’s internal intranet. This information is provided as an annex to this
response.
Certain information within the blog ‘Transformation and Reprioritising’ has been redacted
pursuant to section 44(1)(a) FOIA, which applies when the information is prohibited from
disclosure by another piece of legislation.
In this instance, the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005 (CRCA) section 18
specifies how the department must treat information as confidential and when it may be
released. To determine whether the exemption applies, we are required to consider two
questions at section 23(1) of the CRCA:
is the requested information held in connection with a function of HMRC? and
does the information relate to a "person" who is identified, or who could be identified
from the information requested?
If, as in this case, the answers to both questions is "Yes", then the statutory duty of
confidentiality (at section 18(1) of the CRCA) means the information is exempt under the
FOIA. It also removes any possibility of disclosure under the FOIA on a discretionary basis.
The term "person" includes legal entities such as companies, trusts and charities, as well
living individuals. (See Schedule 1 of the Interpretation Act 1978.)
If you are not satisfied with this reply you may request a review within two months by
emailing
xxx.xxxxxx@xxxx.xxx.xxx.xx, or by writing to the address at the top right-hand side
of this letter.
Information is available in large print, audio and Braille formats.
Text Relay service prefix number – 18001
If you are not content with the outcome of an internal review you can
complain to the
Information Commissioner’s Office
Yours sincerely,
Freedom of Information Team
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Jon's blog: Transformation and Reprioritising – 12 February 2018
I’ve manged to visit a number of colleagues this year in Leicester, Nottingham, Belfast and
Lawress Hall in Lincoln. You can see what I got up to on this visit, and my other recent
activity, on the Permanent Secretary Intranet page. One of the common questions I get on
these visits is whether Brexit means we can deliver all the change we set out in the
transformation programme. I’ve also been asked this by MPs in several Select
Committees. The answer, as I have said publically, simply is no and for the last three
months a number of colleagues have been working on reprioritising what we can do to
deliver Brexit, the outcome of the Autumn Budget 2017, meet all the current performance
targets we have and continue with as much of our change programme as possible.
You all know that I have never been quiet about the scope and ambition of our
transformation project. I remain ambitious for our organisation to build the world class
organisation the majority of you advocated for in early 2017. To do so involves large scale
change in the tax system and throughout HMRC while delivering against our existing stretch
targets.
I know some of what we are doing has not been easy. Since 2015 you have continued to
deliver excellent results, achieved record tax receipts, record compliance yield and met
customer service performance targets. We’ve won some spectacular legal cases, like
in the
case and its followers, begun the long journey of changing outdated
IT (I know about the network!), introduced new legislation and set out a Vision and new
Values. The Personal and Business Tax Accounts have been taken up in their millions.
Pilots for new services, like Making Tax Digital are out in the market to test more radical
changes about how customers work with us. We are close to publishing a new Performance
Management system that many thousands of you will have contributed to over the past few
months.
Reality is that we have to continue to deliver against our targets and the change programme
and we are now ensuring we have enough capacity and capability for Brexit. Thanks to a lot
of hard graft and time from colleagues, over the last three months, we have produced a
strong set of proposals that we’ve been discussing with Treasury Ministers as it’s important
for us to be proactive with these plans - and we’ll share that with you as soon as we can.
We believe these changes are affordable, deliverable and reduce risk in delivery. But we
are making a number of assumptions that the Treasury and others will want to test about
service targets, change and Brexit. And rightly so, because we are clearly seeking to change
some of the original agreement in the Spending Review of 2015 about the overall scale and
pace of change.
I know that you wil probably now be thinking ‘Can I see the lists and the numbers?’ Well,
not yet, sorry. Because we have to test, and agree, some of this with the Treasury we can’t
yet announce what the result is. But I have committed that we would complete this process
by the end of March, and when we do, we will be transparent with you about what it all
means.
I hope you appreciate that I’m trying to tell you as much as I can at this stage and that I
know you will have further questions that I hope to be able to answer soon
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Jon's blog: ExCom Visibility – 21 February 2018
This week we launched an i-Poll to find out how everyone in HMRC feels about how we in
the ExCom team are communicating with you.
I believe that as the senior leadership team, we should make sure that we’re out and about,
meeting people, listening and talking about issues you want to talk about. I always find this
interesting, fantastic, informative, and a good reality check – it’s good to see enthusiasm and
wil ingness to talk to me about the things that you’re proud of, or that are causing concern
and frustration. I know everyone else in ExCom and the wider senior leadership team feel
the same. You can have a look at what Jim and I get up to on our visits and meetings on the
Permanent Secretary Intranet page.
We want to try and be transparent with you. To make sure we’re giving you the big picture
about what’s going on in the department, what we think about it, and your role in it. And we
want to celebrate all the great things you do.
Having seen how many of you enjoyed engaging with changing the PMR I know that co-
creating with many of you leads to better outcomes. Understanding what you think about the
way we communicate is essential, so we’re asking if you would complete this pol about
where we can make improvements. All your feedback will inform what we do, and how we
prioritise where we spend our time, over the next year and beyond.
I’m looking forward to catching up with more of you over the course of the coming year as I,
and ExCom members, get out and about across the department.
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Jon's blog: The Operational Delivery Profession - 11 April 2018
I hope you all had a good Easter Break and took some time to relax. Before the holiday, I
announced some big news – I have been appointed as the head of the Operational Delivery
Profession. I’m very proud to be leading the profession, and not just because there are lots
of ODP members here in HMRC! They are the civil service colleagues delivering vital public
services across government daily to citizens and businesses across the UK.
But, this is a big commitment as it’s the largest profession in the Civil Service and I have
stepped back from my other cross government roles so I can give it the attention it needs. I
will miss being as actively involved in these areas, but I am looking forward to the challenge
of leading the Operational Delivery Profession.
I have already been busy working with the great team that does all the work. They are here
in HMRC and lead on areas like the career mapper and qualifications offer amongst other
many things. From my discussions with other Heads of Professions, the ODP is already in
good hands. Obviously there is always more for us to do, and I’m interested in your views
about whether the professional offer suits your needs.
I’ve spoken at a celebration event, where I was able to introduce myself and see some great
examples of the work that gets done for customers across the Civil Service. It was a nice
way to be reminded that the team that won the ‘Dame Lesley Strathie Award’ for Operational
Excellence, at the Civil Service Awards, was the Automation Delivery Centre, based here in
HMRC. The passion that was shown by the different speakers and teams across the whole
civil service was really inspiring and I hope to harness that here and across government. I
visited some ODP colleagues in HMRC at our Preston site and I saw the great work they’re
doing. I’m looking forward to getting out and visiting other operational delivery teams from
different departments, on top of the HMRC site visits, to learn more about the work they do
and understand how we can do the best for all our customers.
I have also been speaking to, and writing for, an external audience over the last couple of
months, to get the story of HMRC’s work out to our customers and anyone else who’s
interested! I had a blog published as part of the ‘Civil Service Leaders’ series on Leading
Through Change. It’s transparent about the reprioritisation chal enges we face as a
Department, but, it also sets out our continuing ambition to be a world class, digital tax
administration. I talked on a similar subject to the Whitehall Industry Group, a few weeks
ago, with other civil servants and people from the private sector in the audience. I focussed
on how HMRC has been performing while transforming, and how important that is for an
organisation. Questions touched on the impact of Brexit, but interestingly most of them
focussed on HMRC’s digital progress and the way we work with our customers.
From a purely departmental perspective it’s pretty clear that we are delivering real y
well. When we finalise the results for 2017/18 in the Annual Report it will show tremendous
results across the whole of HMRC, from customer services through customer compliance,
covering tax and welfare, fraud and risk. Those results are due to the operational delivery
and tax professionals across the organisation working well together and with other
professionals across the Department. We plan to be transparent with you on all those results
when the numbers are finalised. And, looking forward, I need to say something soon about
the Business Plan for 2018/19, the prioritisation process, Brexit and operational targets for
this year – watch this space!
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Jon's blog: Looking ahead as we deliver through our change – 4 October 2018
It’s been a while since I last blogged, with my schedule happily interrupted by a summer
break. I hope lots of you also took some time to recharge or be with family over the summer
months. But, now we’re back into the ‘school year’ and it feels like things are ramping up, as
they tend to do. Though I know that our compliance and customer service work never really
stops and when you add that to all the work going on to support EU negotiations over the
summer, it was clearly already busy to begin with!
I was welcomed back straight away by the PAC on the 5 September, alongside Jim Harra
and Justin Holliday. If you didn’t manage to catch it live, you can watch it here. I felt it went
well as we were able to show the committee how our EU preparations were progressing, we
updated them on the expected time table for CDS and we could share some great customer
service and compliance numbers from the last year.
So, why is the PAC so interested in our department? I think it’s because of the issues many
of us often talk about: the scale of our delivery, the importance of tax to public services and
the nature of our continuing change. They’re important, one could say critical to the
Government and the PAC want to make sure we’re doing them well. Over the last two or
three years the Committee has built up its confidence in our delivery, in your great work, and
the hearings aren’t anything like they were three to five years ago.
You might have heard me talk about the scale of our delivery before. But sometimes words
and phrases don’t go far enough, so I want to give you some figures that show just a bit of
what we deal with as a department. Our recent tax credits campaign saw us dispatching just
under 2.5 million packs and receiving 2 million back by the deadline. During July, in Tax-
Free childcare, we saw our largest number of new accounts being opened, at 21,000. The
VOA continues to deliver additional Check Challenge Appeal functionality and the number of
businesses using CCA continues to increase, to more than 36,000. The number of forms we
send out to customers has dropped from more than 300 million in 2015 to less than 30
million now. More than 17 million people have opened a Personal Tax Account and more
than 3.5 million business too.
The number of digital transactions is rising fast and should overtake more traditional means
of contact, like phone and post, in 2019. This is backed up by the fact that phone calls are
declining as customers make more frequent use of our digital platforms – in 17/18 there’s
been a 6.2% reduction in calls down from roughly 49.8 million to just under 46.8 million. And
compliance-wise, we’re winning nine out of ten tax avoidance cases taken to court, and have
collected an extra £30.3bn through our work to tackle error, avoidance and evasion this
year. That’s a 5% jump from where we were in 16/17.
Stats like these are what I think about when I talk about our delivery. What do they tell us?
For me, they let us see the consequences of our decisions on our customers, and give an
indication of the work all of you put in behind these numbers to keep us delivering in the face
of challenging circumstances. And, as some of those numbers show, you do a great job. As
we look towards the Spending Review in 2019 we should be able to showcase a department
that’s dealing with demand, getting results, and raising revenue for public services.
Not only this, but we’re delivering while we go through our change programme. I’ve called
this chal enge ‘performing while transforming’ before. The obvious and most visible example
of this is the Building Our Future programme. However, there are other considerations for us
as a department. We need to continue to improve at collecting and analysing data, to
increase digital services for our people and our customers. These are all challenging
ambitions to meet on top of the demand on the business, and I don’t underestimate the
pressures this can put on everyone at HMRC. I know that the benefits of change will
continue, with smarter working, data led compliance work and digitally led customer service
improving staff and customer experience.
So, I hope that has left you with an understanding of why you often hear us talking about
‘chal enges’ and ‘pressure’. I know I do. We’re being asked to deliver a lot. But, we’re also
delivering a lot, real y wel . I’m excited to be leading HMRC through our continuing change
as we explore the possibilities of digital services and solutions for our people and our
customers. I want to realise the potential of insight led compliance and using data in a better
way to make our jobs easier, our investigations more thorough and our customer service
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more helpful. The future is challenging, but it is also full of potential. Thanks again for
everything you do.
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Jon’s thoughts on pay – 13 February 2019
In my video last week, I said I’d be turning my attention to the issue of pay. I’ve read all your
comments in response, alongside the several thousand free text comments you made in the
2018 People Survey, and the questions you asked about the Respect at Work review in last
week’s online Q&A with Esther and Laura Whyte.
I know some people are taking home less pay now than they were in 2010. And I know from
traveling around and meeting many of you that pay is one of, if not the single most important
issue to you.
Many of you have clear views about what we should do, proposing flat rate pay rises, closing
down pay ranges, tackling low pay or changing other terms and conditions. There are a
number of possibilities, and we will look at all of them.
I particularly wanted to address some of the key points you’ve been raising. Many of you
have said you don’t want an improved pay offer to be at the expense of changes to your
terms and conditions. I want to look at how we can create a fairer pay system that gives you
a substantial pay rise and we won’t do this by simply stripping out the more favourable terms
and conditions. However, there is a need to look at some of our working practices, because
a few are just not sustainable and don’t embrace smarter ways of working, and because
some of you identified change was needed too.
Something else that has really come through loud and clear is the challenge from many of
you of my role in championing the need for a pay rise and making public representations to
‘fight the case’ for an above inflation pay rise. I can assure you I’m doing all I can in my regu-
lar discussions with Treasury ministers and officials, and I’ve left my fellow permanent secre-
taries in no doubt of the strength of feeling on pay in HMRC. I realise seeing other public
sector employees, such as the armed forces or nurses, receiving improved pay rises is not
easy to take. Put simply, allocation of funds for increased pay across government is a deci-
sion for politicians and is not one I can easily change. But I will continue to try.
Many of you have asked why, given the record levels of tax we collect year on year, we don’t
see some of that making its way into our pay packets. We are all doing a fantastic job, col-
lecting the duties and revenue that pay for the nation’s public services. The tax we bring in
goes directly into funding those vital public services, and is entirely separate to the funding
we get from government for use in our annual pay award. But we are considering ways we
could make a case about more flexibility in return for this.
So we are looking hard at our options. To make a meaningful difference, we’l need to gener-
ate savings from our budget and move that money into pay as well as argue for more funds.
Unless, of course, Treasury increases our budget significantly, but this is unlikely. Any prop-
osition we can generate will need to be discussed with Trade Union colleagues and agreed
by Treasury.
I’m quite sure you’ve got more questions, but I hope this helps clarify my thoughts on pay,
and goes some way to responding to the issues you’ve been raising so far. Our Trade Union
colleagues have also clearly explained their position to me. I do not agree that industrial ac-
tion is the best way to resolve this issue, but I respect their views and their claim.
I hope I’ve given a bit more clarity and reassurance about how seriously I’m taking this is-
sue, and the work we’re doing to give you all the pay rise you deserve. My ExCom col-
leagues and I are listening. We rely heavily on the highly important work you do, and fully
acknowledge how hard you work. We will discuss our approach on pay reform at our ExCom
meeting later this month.
In the meantime, I’ve asked our Chief People Officer, Esther Wallington, and our HR Direc-
tor responsible for pay policy, Simon Claydon, to lead this piece of work, and they’re busy
taking it forward. It’s a complex issue and wil take some time, but we’l share more with you
in March.
As always, thank you for your patience, your continued hard work and professionalism
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