MR PAUL GRAY CB

1 MARCH 2007

  Q100  Chairman: A set of service standards which you specify for your organisation that people then know what they can legitimately expect and they know what they can complain about if they do not get that level of service, surely is the right way round?

  Mr Gray: Absolutely, and within our existing public service agreement we have a number of clear customer service standards which we are being measured on. At the moment, as you will know, we are in the process of discussing, in the context of the next spending review for the period up to 2011, what our public service agreements and our departmental strategic objectives should be and identifying the right set of customer service standards, incorporating what our customers want as well as what we might want to give them, is a key element in that process.

  Q101  Chairman: I hope so, and, similarly, on your code of practice you say it is helpful if you would write on your letters "Complaint" if you are complaining.

  Mr Gray: You made that point earlier on which I did not respond to. What we seek to do is we do not require that in writing. Sometimes we do get bits of correspondence where, to be honest, it is a little bit difficult to know where it is coming from, but anything that once we have digested we interpret as being a complaint gets treated as a complaint.

  Q102  Chairman: Would it be helpful, do you think, if there was a standard definition of what a complaint was across government?

  Mr Gray: Possibly. I think the risk is you can spend glorious days drafting these things and you then find you have excluded something. What I am interested in is we need to get better at responding to all forms of feedback. We get feedback on lots of things, complaints is clearly a major section of that, but I would not want to do something where somebody had something they wanted us to look at and somehow we defined it out of bounds by saying, "It is not in our definition".

  Q103  Chairman: I understand. We spend all this time talking about complaints and that is always, in a way, a distorting mirror on an organisation, it is not because we just want to grumble about things. Do you ever get letters of congratulation and commendation, people saying, "It has been a pleasure doing business with you"?

  Mr Gray: I mentioned earlier on there is a new database we are rolling out from April that will collect things much more systematically and that will include collecting compliments. [7]As it happens, you talked about tax credits earlier on, I think it would be fair to say two years ago we got no compliments on tax credits, we now get a steady stream of compliments from tax credit customers, we get some complaints as well, and we probably have not got to the tipping point balance that I aspire to get to.

  Q104  Chairman: You are surrounded in your office by these letters of congratulations from tax credits customers?

  Mr Gray: I can happily send them on to you.

  Chairman: No, we do the sending to you, that is the rule! Thank you very much for coming along. I think we can see why you are Chairman of the HMRC. It is really nice for you to come and talk in the way that you have done, we appreciate it very much indeed. Thank you very much.