I talked last week about the flurry of
consultations being launched by government ahead of the summer holidays and,
guess what, there have been even more since I wrote those words. It feels like I have spent every waking hour
of the last ten days ploughing through page after page of government documents
and preparing questionnaires and summaries to share with our members so they
can comment and offer their views.
The latest to hit my inbox was HMRC's
consultation document: 'Sharing and publishing data for public benefit', a set
of proposals that "form a significant development in HMRC's Open Data
Strategy". Judged by the title, you
wouldn't imagine this has much to excite credit professionals but as is so
often the case there are nuggets hidden away that are very interesting. Indeed, I would go far as to say that this one
has genuinely excited my imagination. Why is that?
In amongst the detail, the paper suggests
the possibilities of releasing of basic non-financial VAT registration data as
public data, and sharing more detailed VAT registration data on a more
restricted and controlled basis for specific purposes, such as credit
referencing. It also considers whether
VAT registration data could provide a foundation for private sector business
registers. It is this last point that
lights my fire! I'm old enough to remember the Business Names Register (I think
it was called) which allowed a supplier to identify a business. It ceased to exist years ago and no doubt someone
reading this will remember better than me the background as to why, and when. Since its demise, the ability to identify a
business that trades as a sole trader or partnership has been incredibly
difficult, and the proportion of businesses on which the credit reference
agencies are able to report is incredibly low because of the dearth of data
available to them. I know the VAT
threshold is currently £79,000 so the smallest businesses wouldn't be picked up
but it would still be a huge step forward. According to HMRC, around 800,000 VAT registered
businesses are not incorporated so making basic information available to credit
reference agencies would at least enable a business's existence, location,
legal status, and trade classification to be verified.
Of course we'd prefer to have financial
information as well but let's keep our feet on the ground; that's not going to
happen any time soon. In the meantime,
please let me know what you think (the ICM In-Brief newsletter published on 14
August will have a link to the document but it can also be found here
so we can make HM Government aware of our views.
I'm off to Scotland for my summer break
shortly and I'm grateful to Charles Mayhew, Sue Chapple, and Sue Kettle who've
agreed to do me the honour of writing guest blogs while I'm away. If you too are heading for some time of
relaxation in the coming weeks then make the most of them. This is the only time in the year when I
genuinely turn off emails (despite what I may tell Mrs K at other times!). I'll look forward to returning refreshed and
re-charged.
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