In the labyrinthine halls of His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), where one might expect diligent civil servants to be chasing down tax dodgers and ensuring the nation's coffers are filled, a far more insidious game is afoot. According to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, unearthed by the ever-vigilant Guido Fawkes, no fewer than 119 HMRC staffers are permitted to fritter away 20% of their working hours on seven so-called "staff networks." These aren't networks dedicated to improving tax compliance or streamlining bureaucracy—no, they're a smorgasbord of identity politics playgroups: Carers, Disability, PRISM (LGBT+), Race, Religion or Belief, Sex and Gender, and Social Mobility. That's right, while the average Brit grapples with skyrocketing bills and a cost-of-living crisis, HMRC's pen-pushers are busy virtue-signalling their way through the workday.
Let's break down the absurdity. Each of these seven networks boasts a bloated hierarchy: one Network Chair, two Deputy Chairs, and a whopping 14 Regional Steering Group Members. Do the math—that's 17 leadership roles per network, multiplied by seven, equalling 119 cosseted positions. At 20% time allocation, this equates to 23.8 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff members doing anything but their actual jobs. And what are they up to? Recent events include gems like ‘Our Voices Matter’ (because apparently, the voices of overworked taxpayers don't), a ‘Multicultural Event in Portsmouth’ (sounds like a taxpayer-funded party), and ‘Dyslexia from a Cultural Perspective’ (as if dyslexia needed a DEI spin to be addressed). This isn't public service; it's a taxpayer-subsidised therapy session for the perpetually offended.
Now, let's talk money—because that's what HMRC is supposed to be good at handling, right? The median salary in the Civil Service, which includes HMRC staff, stands at £35,680 as of 2025. Crunch the numbers: 23.8 FTE multiplied by £35,680 comes to approximately £850,000 annually. That's nearly a million pounds of your hard-earned cash diverted from essential services to fund this ideological indulgence. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Guido Fawkes also revealed that HMRC has ballooned its internal 'Equality and Diversity' team to 30 full-time staff, further bloating the bureaucracy with roles that seem designed to justify their own existence. Add in the untracked hours spent on these networks—HMRC admits it doesn't even bother monitoring them—and you're looking at a black hole of waste that could fund real priorities, like hiring more agents to process tax returns on time.
But the real scandal isn't just the squandered resources; it's the glaring hypocrisy. While HMRC staff lounge in these echo chambers of enlightenment, the agency's core performance is in freefall. In 2023–24, HMRC answered a pitiful 66.4% of customers' attempts to speak to an adviser, far below their 85% target, with average wait times exceeding 23 minutes. Complaints are piling up: In the first quarter of 2025, Tier 1 complaints saw a not-upheld rate hovering around 55%, while Tier 2 escalations revealed partial or full upholding in a significant chunk of cases. Taxpayers are left on hold, fuming, as their queries about self-assessments, VAT refunds, or child benefits go unanswered. Meanwhile, HMRC's latest performance update for April to June 2025 shows continued misses on key targets, with service levels dipping further amid what they euphemistically call "challenges." It's a damning indictment: As call queues stretch into oblivion and errors mount, these networks provide a convenient escape hatch for staff to avoid the drudgery of actual work.
This isn't an isolated folly; it's symptomatic of a deeper rot in Whitehall's woke obsession. Just last week, the Taxpayers’ Alliance highlighted HMRC's near-miss with an hour-long session titled 'The Guilt of Being British'—mercifully cancelled after public backlash, but emblematic of the self-flagellating nonsense infiltrating public institutions. How can an agency tasked with enforcing fiscal responsibility justify such frivolous distractions? In an era of record tax burdens—where the average worker toils until June just to pay off the government—HMRC's priorities are grotesquely misplaced. They're not collecting taxes; they're collecting grievances.
It's high time for a reckoning. Scrap these networks, redirect the staff back to their desks, and focus on what HMRC was created for: efficient tax administration, not endless navel-gazing. Taxpayers deserve better than to fund this circus of complacency. If HMRC won't clean house, perhaps the new government should—with an axe to the budget for such banalities. After all, the only "network" that matters is the one connecting hardworking Brits to a functional public service. Anything less is theft by another name.
Tax does have to be taxing.
HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"
No comments:
Post a Comment