One of next year’s most controversial honours is the CBE which will be awarded Richard Summersgill, the head of HM Revenue & Customs (HMR&C)'s child benefit section, after the personal details of every family in the UK went missing two months ago.
An internal inquiry into who was responsible for the fiasco is continuing and the decision to honour Mr Summersgill is understood to have caused tensions in Whitehall, according to The Daily Telegraph.
Although Treasury officials are insisting Summersgill was unlikely to be directly involved, his reward is believed to prove controversial.
This is mainly because of HMRC's poor performance in running the flagship tax credits system, which is costing taxpayers up to £1 billion a year.
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