In a letter issued on 22 October 2018, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean said: 'I am disappointed at your refusal to appear before the finance bill sub-committee on the powers of HMRC on Monday 5 November.

'In the course of our current inquiry, the sub-committee has received evidence alleging severe failures of oversight over HMRC enforcement. According to personal accounts submitted to the sub-committee, these have had a destructive effect on the health, families and employment prospects of individuals.'

The Lords economic affairs finance bill sub-committee has taken evidence from a number of witnesses who discussed HMRC’s use of its powers to tackle tax avoidance. On 10 October 2018, Frank Haskew, tax technical manager at ICAEW, said: 'We are seeing that HMRC is sometimes raising assessments or inquiries out of time. It is not always following the law in raising inquiries.'

'HMRC’s guidance says it needs to give the taxpayer examples of concerns before it raises inquiries. That is not always happening.'

The increased scope of HMRC’s power in recent years was brought into question on 15 October by Malcolm Gammie QC, chair of the tax law review committee at the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS). He noted the increased pressure on HMRC to tackle tax avoidance in the years since the financial crisis, and said: 'The short point is that if you give a body powers, those powers are likely to be used. One of the criticisms, of course, of some of the recent powers is that they have been drafted extremely widely.'

Graham Webber, director of tax at WTT Consulting, has also criticised HMRC, saying, ‘Very often there are no checks and balances. HMRC leaps from a small error by a taxpayer to the taxpayer being an evader or potential evader’.

Lord Forsyth had invited Stride to provide a counterpoint to these criticisms, as was noted in the letter: 'As is proper, the sub-committee has not come to a final opinion on this evidence, did not wish to do so without giving the government an opportunity to respond fully to these issues.

‘We therefore reissue our invitation for you to meet with the sub-committee on 5 November. We have offered you three possible dates: 22 October, 31 October and 5 November, all of which you have refused while offering no alternatives. If you decide not to attend, we are likely to note this in our final report as evidence of the government's approach to this matter.’

Report by James Bunney