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HM Revenue and Customs

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for putting that issue in context. There have been cuts in a number of departments as a result of work on efficiency, and there has been a massive reorganisation as a result of work by the Government; we have not had a lapse of this seriousness or to this extent in any other department. My noble friend is right about that. The obvious point is that procedures were not followed effectively in this case. There is no evidence that it concerned someone suffering from an enormous overload of work or insufficient supervision. The problem was that procedures were not followed. That lapse cannot be countenanced. Neither I nor anyone else in the House can put the lapse down to insufficient numbers of staff without more evidence than I have at my disposal at the moment.