George Osborne waters down plans to raid bank accounts Tax experts who had previously expressed concerns about Mr Osborne's plans said the introduction of the safeguards made it a "fundamentally different proposal." They welcomed the changes but said that the Treasury must follow through on its pledge to ensure that the right to appeal is "enshrined in legislation." MPs earlier this year warned that HMRC was asking for the power to over-ride Magna Carta, which sought to protect citizens" rights from plundering kings 800 years ago. The Treasury Select Committee in July said it was "horrified" by the proposals, which HMRC said it needs to recover tax from 17,000 "recalcitrant debtors." Experts had also called for HMRC to be prevented from removing money from people's accounts after The Telegraph disclosed a series of major errors made by the Government department. It last month emerged that millions of taxpayers faced uncertainty after a leaked memo showed HMRC had twice miscalculated many people's bills. David Gauke, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury who negotiated the new safeguards, said: "The vast majority of people pay the tax that is due, on time, but there is still a very small minority who try to gain an unfair advantage by persistently refusing to pay what they owe, despite being able to. These are the people who will be targeted by the powers for the direct recovery of debts owed to the Exchequer. We already set out robust safeguards to protect vulnerable debtors in our original Direct Recovery of Debts proposals, but feedback from the consultation process told us we could do more to make sure this only catches those who are playing the system. Mr Gauke added: "We're strengthening the guarantees we can offer taxpayers that the powers will only be used when debtors have consistently refused to talk to HMRC and settle their debts, and their use will be subject to the toughest scrutiny and oversight possible." The direct recovery scheme is forecast to raise around £100million a year. Paul Aplin, the chair of the tax technical committee at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, said: "The most fundamental concern we had was the lack of any independent oversight or any right to appeal to a court. We've got the independent oversight, which is what we've been pushing for since day one. We've got to see the detail in the draft legislation... but the main concern was the lack of right of appeal and we've got that. But this is now a fundamentally different power. Now we've got a right of appeal, this is a fundamentally different proposition. And Patrick Stevens, tax policy director at the Chartered Institute of Taxation, said: "As long as it all happens and is properly recorded in the right legislation - real legislation rather than some HMRC guidance which can be changed - then as far as we can tell, that's covered most of our problems. The added safeguards are good news for taxpayers. We support the idea that everyone ought to be paying their tax bill.