The truth about those tax inspectors

If you were curious about Danny Alexander's extra 2,250 tax inspectors announcement,you would be correct to question exactly what is going on.

HM Revenue and Customs has revealed this morning that £35bn of tax went uncollected between 2009-10.

The sum,you will be glad to know is less than the previous year,£5b, but still makes up 7.9 per cent of the amount of money that should have been collected.

Now the FT's Sue Cameron has spilt the beans


What the minister said was that “an additional 2,250 staff will move into new anti-evasion and avoidance jobs”. In plain English, existing HMRC staff will move from their present jobs to work on tax evasion by the rich in a new “affluent” unit. Mr Alexander told the Lib Dems that “this month over 1,000 of these jobs are being advertised”. And so they are – all of them internally. (No, I wouldn’t dream of describing him as Duplicitous Danny. He is just dexterous with words.) Meanwhile, the cull of HMRC staff from the present 66,000 to 56,000 in 2014/15 continues.

War breaks out over the £5bn

There appears to be a row developing over the spending plans of the coalition.

With yesterday's warning from the IMF over the risks of the economy slipping back into recession,various sources are leaking that there will be a £5bn increase in capital spending to help boost the economy.

The Treasury has rejected suggestions that George Osborne would change his economic strategy and this morning the Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander has been rolled out to the media to confirm that the coalition will not be changing its spending plans.

They are an integral part of our deficit reduction plan he told the Today programme adding that

'This country has a great asset in clear spending plans that we are sticking to, and that is something we should not sacrifice'

However there is no smoke without fire with the BBC's Nick Robinson quite adamant that sources have told him that there are moves afoot to release the £5bn.

Odds on that the source is the Business Secretary?

One Tory who is definitely against a move is John Redwood.Writing on his blog he says spending an extra £5 billion is a stupid idea launching a tirade at the BBC whose economic correspondent

seemed unaware that the government has already tried the £5 billion capital boost, and the economy has slowed down markedly despite it. (Red Book page 93 Public sector gross investment) She seemed unaware that the government upped the spending figures in March, with so little favourable effect.