asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will give an estimate of the loss to the Revenue from income tax evasion over the last five years, the number of legal proceedings brought in each year for income tax evasion and details of amounts recovered in each year by legal action.

By the nature of things, it is impossible to estimate the tax lost through evasion. Details of the under-assessments to tax uncovered by the Board of Inland Revenue and the criminal proceedings taken during the last 10 years are given at Tables 17 and 18 in the 118th Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue (Cmnd. 6302).