Richard Bacon MP: HMRC "doing a quite good job in difficult circumstances"

How involved should politicians get in the way Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs handles investigations? The Chancellor George Osborne says it wasn't for him to interfere on prosecutions, Ed Miliband says a Labour government would order a review of HMRC's approach to tax evasion and avoidance. The background is of course the HSBC files on Swiss bank accounts.

Conservative MP Richard Bacon, a member of the Public Accounts Committee, told Today: ‘They (HMRC) are trying to recover the money, change the behaviour and have the regime act as a deterrent to illegal activity.’

‘If they upped the level of prosecutions it would probably have a deterring effect.’

‘However we do not want a tax authority that is at the behest of the whims of every single politician… it’s important that HMRC is a non-ministerial department.’