HMRC Estate

I thank my hon. Friend for her comments. Given her membership of the PAC, it is important and nice to have them on the record. Much work has gone into improving customer service levels. At the moment, they are very good and improving and remain a key focus. She made a point about supporting staff with training and so on. That will be much easier in regional centres. For example, at the moment we have a large number of offices, and owing to the nature of the tasks being undertaken and the number of people working in them, it is not possible to provide easy and effective training programmes or to plan career progression in the way it is when a large number of people are concentrated together. As is reflected across both Government and the private sector, we can do a lot more for people when we can concentrate a different range of skills so that people have a chance to plot a career within the same office. That goes to the heart of how we intend to improve the service to customers.