By Jay Tavares
The Ministry Of Justice received a £72.1 million bill from HM Revenue and Customs for tax and national insurance liabilities due to errors in assessing the employment status of contractors between 2017/18 and 2020/21, documents reveal.
The HMRC the MoJ had been ‘careless’ in its application of the off-payroll working rules, according to the report, and imposed a penalty of £15m.
However, the fine was suspended for three months on a number of conditions .
They include the department meeting its notification and filing obligations, a 100% assurance check on all ‘out of scope determinations’, and improved training of hired managers.
The accounts also revealed that £100m spent in relation to HM Prison and Probation Service’s development of a new case management system as part of the electronic monitoring legacy programme , was also written off, the report states.
HMRC ‘concluded that the public interest would be best served by ceasing the development of the case management system rather than continuing to invest’, causing £98.2m to be included in the financial statements as payments ‘which will not result in future benefit to HMPPS’.
It is unclear why the fine was suspended for three months
Also revealed was that the Ministry of Justice’s former permanent secretary received an ‘exit package’ of more than £250,000 when he left the post last year, the department’s annual accounts reveal.
Sir Richard Heaton received £262,185 for ‘loss of office’ upon his departure – on top of at least £125,000 in salary, fees and pension-related benefits for 2020/21, according to the MoJ’s annual report and accounts to 31 March 2021.
The MOJ was contacted for comment