Tax credit helpline failing millions

10.14.31am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 1st Aug 2005

Nearly 100 million calls have been made to the Government's tax credit helpline but more than half of these callers (52 million) got an engaged tone or they abandoned the call while stuck in a queue waiting to speak to an adviser, according to newly released figures.

In 2003/04 the chances of getting through to the helpline were particularly low with three times as many people failing as succeeding - 117,000 calls a day failed or were abandoned.

Despite having improved the service in 2004/05 so that only 1 in 10 calls were failing, performance in the first three months of 2005 has worsened so that twice as many are failing.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, David Laws MP said:

"These figures are a disaster for the Revenue.

"So many calls going unanswered undermines the Revenue's attempt to resist the Ombudsman's call to write off overpayments arising from official error.

"These figures also highlights the frustration that so many families must be feeling in having to deal with such a rollercoaster of assessments, reassessments, overpayments, and disputes over Revenue errors.

"The Revenue is clearly struggling to cope with a system of such complexity and an IT and telephony system that is proving very hard to manage. They are now resorting to 'streamlining' disputes rather than looking at the merits of the case to reduce the backlog."

Mike Crockart, Liberal Democrat parliamentary spokesperson for Edinburgh North & Leith added

"This is a completely unacceptable situation. 1500 families in North & Leith are being told to pay back money they thought was rightfully theirs and now can't even talk to anyone at the Inland Revenue to discuss their options. The government must take away their uncertainty as soon as possible and then simplify the tax credit system to ensure this never happens again."