On Monday 13 October 2025 the House of Lords Economic Affairs
Finance Bill Sub-Committee will be taking evidence from two
panels of witnesses about the measures to close in on promoters
of marketed tax avoidance.
This one-off evidence session, which will be streamed live
on Parliament TV, will focus on
the measures introducing a criminal offence to the disclosure of
tax avoidance scheme (DOTAS).
At 4.15pm the sub-committee will hear evidence from:
-
, Technical Officer at
Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT)
- Jason Piper, Business and Tax Law Policy Lead at The
Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA)
- Lindsey Wicks, Tax Policy Senior Technical Manager at the
Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW)
- Lydia Challen, Tax Committee Co-Chair at the Law Society of
England and Wales.
At 5.15pm the sub-committee will hear evidence from:
- Dan Neidle, Founder at Tax Policy Associates
- Mike Lewis, Director at TaxWatch
- Alice Jeffries, Head of Tax Policy at Confederation of
British Industry (CBI)
- Chris Sanger, UK Tax Policy Leader at Ernst & Young (EY).
Questions the committee is likely to ask in this session include:
- How appropriate is it to apply a criminal offence to the
existing DOTAS regime, which currently gives HMRC only civil
enforcement powers?
- The Government says that the measures are needed to counter
the 20 to 30 promoters still operating. Are these new powers
targeted appropriately?
- To act as a deterrent, there needs to be a realistic prospect
of prosecution. With HMRC saying that a number of the remaining
promoters are now based offshore, how likely do you consider this
to be?
- What effect do you think the existence of this new criminal
offence will have on how compliant advisers give advice to their
clients?
