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‘You owe us beers’: Doubts raised over impartiality of Loan Charge review

Patricia – Contractor Tap:

The objectivity of the government’s supposedly independent review of the 2019 Loan Charge has been called into question following the release of a series of emails under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) that appear to show a degree of collusion between HM Treasury and the team leading the review, headed by Sir Amyas Morse.

In one email, the permanent secretary of HM Treasury, Sir Tom Scholar, thanks Sir Amyas for “steering [the review] to a conclusion”.  In another exchange, a review team staff member who is also a senior Treasury official agrees to buy beers for the Chancellor’s press secretary for help finding someone to help with incoming press enquiries…

…The emails exposed by the recent FOI requests were passed to the Loan Charge All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), a cross-party group of MPs and peers, who published a report on Monday entitled Exposing HMRC interference in the supposedly ‘independent’ Loan Charge Review: The Truth as revealed by Freedom of Information. The APPG’s report claims that the emails are evidence that “[the] Morse Review was not independent and [that] HMRC and the Treasury interfered from start to finish”.

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