PAC chair Meg Hillier questioned whether HMRC’s planned reorganisation into a smaller number of regional hubs and the closing of local offices will result in a potential loss of experienced staff.

Homer responded by saying that the department would consider offering older staff partial retirement so their expertise was retained, but they were working fewer hours.

‘Everyone has a choice to make and one of our challenges is a significant proportion of our workforce are over 50, and indeed, over 55... So we are aware that people may choose not to move. But we believe that over 90% of our workforce are within reasonable daily travel.

‘We've proposed arrangements to give reasonable daily travel assistance to those people, and we will undertake one-to-one discussions with all staff so that they can think about that,’ Homer said.

The PAC said it was unhappy about HMRC’s failure to mount more criminal prosecutions of UK taxpayers named on a leaked list of HSBC customers, and the lack of a formal investigation into the bank’s activities.

The committee heard from Simon York, the director of HMRC’s fraud investigation service, that the data had been exhausted.

‘We have been working with that data and all of those people featured on that list for some time. We do not have a current criminal investigation in relation to any entities connected with this data,’ York said.

Homer told the PAC that HMRC did not believe there was a basis for criminal action against account holders or the bank.

When challenged on this, Homer said HMRC is ‘not a prosecuting authority’, and had ‘to proceed on the basis of what we and the Crown Prosecution Service think is possible.’

Homer said of the 1,100 cases where HMRC found people owed tax the majority settled under the Liechtenstein Disclosure Facility (LDF). About 150 were considered as possible candidates for prosecution, but in the event only one case has been brought.

Stephen Phillips, a Conservative member of the committee, said it was ‘extraordinary that a bank domiciled in the UK appears set to escape any action from either its regulator or HMRC’, claiming it was ‘essentially advising investors as to how to evade tax’ and that everyone involved had got off ‘Scot free’.

Homer also faced criticism from MPs after she said 81% of calls to HMRC were answered within six minutes and claimed customer service performance was getting ‘better and better’.  Several committee members reported distressed constituents saying it was impossible to reach HMRC on the phone.

Homer, who was made a Dame in the New Year’s Honours list, has announced her own retirement from HMRC in April although she has not disclosed her next career move.

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