Magazine |
Timms admits errors on data

Stephen Timms, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, has admitted that HM Revenue & Customs has issued coding notices to the wrong agents, in apparent breach of data protection law.

In his reply to a Parliamentary question, Mr Timms stated that HMRC had been made aware of two instances where a Form P2, Notice of Coding, had been issued to the wrong tax agent and that HMRC had been advised of this problem in September 2009.

He added that HMRC’s investigations discovered that there was a problem with the new computer system.

The reply was in response to Vince Cable MP, Treasury spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, who wrote to the minister expressing his concern that ‘HMRC have not learnt the necessary lessons and still do not understand the core issue of data security’.

This followed the news, reported in the January issue of Payroll World (page 5) that some Self Assessment and PAYE notices and statements had been sent to the wrong agents in summer 2009.

17/02/10