Helen Goodman – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Helen Goodman on 2016-06-20.
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he has made an assessment of the additional staffing and resources required to deal with the backlog of employment histories for occupational disease compensation claims requested from HM Revenue and Customs.
Mr David Gauke
In response to the significant increase in demand for employment histories in recent years, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has looked at a range of options for improving the Record Retrieval Service; this has included introducing measures such as prioritising requests relating to serious and life-threatening conditions (when specifically identified).
However, the key constraint to reducing turnaround times is the existing machinery used to manually access the microfilm records – as these machines are no longer manufactured. Therefore, the deployment of additional staff would have negligible impact on service levels. It is not possible to provide a figure for the number of HMRC staff currently allocated to the production of employment histories for occupational disease compensation claims, as requesters of this information are not required to specify the reason for their employment history request. However, around 200 full time equivalent staff are allocated to the department’s Record Retrieval Service.
