[2024] UKUT 00436 (TCC)

The Applicant argued before me that he disagreed with two parts of the summary of his police interview in 2009 that was relied upon by the FTT. His disagreements with the summary were: i) that he had not said during interview that he had been paid £400 in cash from the pub but that he had said he had £400 in cash to pay over to other staff for their wages; ii) that he had not said he had been working for the pub for 12-13 years as that would be impossible as his family had owned the New Tyke Inn since 2002 so he could have not been working there since 1997. He had in fact only been working there between 2008-2011. The Applicant accepted his disagreement with the summary / record was based on his memory of what had taken place in that interview which had taken place many years before. He submitted that the FTT took account of mistaken / irrelevant evidence.

Ultimately, the earliest dates on which the Applicant had worked in the pub, whether for 12 or 13 years prior to the interview in 2009, were barely material as, on his own account the Applicant had worked there since 2008. HMRC were only looking to assess his income from 2007-2008 rather than back to any earlier time such as 1997 or 2002. However, to the extent that any inconsistency between his interview account in 2009 and his later evidence to HMRC or FTT was relied upon against the Applicant to find him to be unreliable, I accept the summary of interview was material evidence which the FTT relied upon to make its findings.

Nonetheless, I reject this ground as it does not raise an arguable error of law in the FTT’s Decision. The FTT was entitled to find the note / summary of the interview the Applicant gave to the police in 2009 to be reliable and rely upon it as set out at [39] and [43]-[45] of the Decision and rely upon any inconsistencies with the account the Applicant gave to the Tribunal as explained at [76(1)-(3)].

It is recorded at both [39] and [43] that in the interview the Applicant also said that he had been working at the pub for 10 years. The Applicant did suggest in submissions to me that he the summary of interview should have said 10 years (although even this would not tally with the pub being bought in 2002 and an interview taking place in 2009). Further at various points in the Decision it appears that the 2009 summary records that he said he was working for his brother or in a pub for 12-13 years – that is not the same as saying the Applicant had been working at the New Tyke throughout that time (ie. he may have been referring to another pub(s) prior to 2002).

In any event, PC Picken’s statement and the interview summary (short descriptive note of interview) were served on the Applicant in advance of the hearing as part of the evidence and HMRC were entitled to rely on it at the hearing. The Applicant had an opportunity to challenge the accuracy of the contents of the summary / record if he contended that it was not an accurate note of what he had earlier said to the police. He could have sought to obtain a recording of the interview in advance of the hearing as soon as HMRC served and relied upon PC Picken’s statement and summary of interview (the Applicant said he had not asked for nor retained a recording back in 2009). The Applicant could have given evidence to the FTT as to which parts of the interview transcript that he disagreed with and why. It does not appear that he did either and there is no suggestion that he gave the FTT any evidence or made submissions as to the nature of his disagreement with the transcript which he now seeks to rely upon before me. The FTT was entitled to decide that the contents of the summary of interview were a reliable account of what the Applicant had said (and prefer any contemporaneous record of what the Applicant had said to the police in 2009 to the Applicant’s account that he only worked in the pub in the years 2008-2011).