Commentary on Clauses Section 11: Treasury directions
70.This section sets out the relationship between the Treasury and the Commissioners’ exercise of their functions.
71.It carries forward the existing oversight by the Treasury of the predecessor Commissioners’ exercise of their statutory functions. “Any directions of a general nature” replaces a variety of expressions in previous legislation, and applies to all the functions of the Commissioners for HMRC conferred on them by section 5. In the exercise of those functions, it gives the right for the Treasury, for example, to direct the Commissioners’ strategies and call them to account for the overall effect of actions taken by them, but not to direct day-to-day or operational decisions. Thus it does not provide for the Treasury to be able to decide or be otherwise involved in, for example and in particular, an individual taxpayer’s affairs.