HMRC Staff: Dudley

Debate between Lord Austin of Dudley and Chris Stephens

Wednesday 7th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ian Austin]

The hon. Gentleman is completely right. I will make that point later. These are highly skilled, highly trained staff, who are very experienced in dealing with complex benefits. No better group of people could be employed for the introduction of universal credit. That is the case we are making to Ministers tonight and I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman is here to do so, too. I very much hope that Ministers will listen to and consider the argument over the next few weeks.

That is a really important point, because for staff in Merry Hill the closure will present grave difficulties. A high proportion of them have caring responsibilities which would make the journey to Birmingham impossible; I have spoken to mothers in exactly that position. A number of the staff came from offices that closed in the 1990s, and the journeys would make such a move impossible or impractical for them. The recent closure of the office in Walsall left more than half the staff without jobs, and the closure in Worcester is affecting nine out of 10 staff, who now face voluntary or compulsory redundancy; the majority of those staff have caring responsibilities.

HMRC insists that 90% of staff will have a job in the centres, despite the fact that all the closures so far have resulted in much higher job losses. The loss of these skilled and hard-working staff is very risky and it contradicts recommendations made by Committees of this House, which have called for a halt to the office closure process. Staff in Merry Hill believe that the DWP explanation that it has sufficient staff for universal credit to work properly flies in the face of all the current information we have about this complex new benefit’s introduction, as we heard a moment ago. Staff who work there are highly skilled: they have dealt with tax credits work since those were introduced, and they are helping with the changeover to UC from tax credits already. They were also stunned that the DWP vacancies were not even considered when the announcement was originally made.

Another point that I know will be of interest to the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) is that the office is in the middle of a recently announced enterprise zone, DY5, and the roles undertaken by HMRC staff completely fit into the Government’s vision for this enterprise zone. This brings me to my final point, which is about unemployment in Dudley.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. As the chair of the Public and Commercial Services Union parliamentary group, I wonder whether he could confirm that no economic impact assessment and no equality impact assessment has been carried out prior to these closures in Dudley?

[Ian Austin]

As far as I am aware, neither of those assessments has been carried out. That is another point the Minister should be considering this evening.

Unemployment in Dudley is already higher than the national average, and we cannot afford to lose another 250 jobs from the borough. It is important that civil service jobs are spread throughout the country, benefiting communities such as mine, instead of being centralised in London or major regional centres. The UK is already one of the most centralised countries in the world. As a result, investment and growth have been concentrated in the capital and stifled elsewhere. Extraordinarily, despite all the cuts, the proportion of the country’s civil servants located in London actually increased every year between 2010 and 2015. Even with deep cuts elsewhere in the country, there were 5,000 more civil servants in the capital in 2015 than there had been in 2013. Instead of closing offices in Black country communities such as the borough I represent, the Government should be moving civil servants and staff from non-departmental public bodies and quangos out of London, transferring jobs from the capital to the rest of the country, spreading wealth more fairly across the UK and contributing to the regeneration of communities in places such as Dudley. That would improve policy making by getting central, regional and local government working more effectively together, bringing government closer to the people and ensuring that policy makers were better informed about what life is like in places that are often ignored by civil servants and politicians based in London. It would also save the Government money by getting staff out of expensive London property.

As I understand it, HMRC has announced that it will be moving 1,500 jobs out of London, so in the spirit of generosity for which we in the Black country are well known, may I tell the Minister that we would be very happy to provide a home for those 1,500 staff? I very much hope that he will consider moving those jobs out of London and to Dudley and the Black country.

Before I finish, I would like to ask some other specific questions. Staff in the office were told late last year that they would transfer to the DWP on 31 March 2022. Can the Minister confirm that it is still the plan that staff will remain in Dudley, working on tax credits, until that date? That would give time to see whether the DWP at Merry Hill can make some or all the fixed-term jobs permanent and offer them to staff there, and it would give time for staff to seek other work in the area and to be retrained. In addition, other DWP roles in local jobcentres would become available. That would not preclude staff who want to go to Birmingham from doing so, and it would offer other staff who work in Wolverhampton a stepping stone if their office does close, as many of them live in our area.

Will the Minister visit the offices with me and listen directly to the staff involved, or meet them here in London? Will he explain how this proposal reflects wider Government policy, given that Ministers recently designated the area as an enterprise zone? Finally, will he explain what assistance will be provided to staff who cannot transfer elsewhere or who do not get jobs elsewhere, to help them to obtain alternative employment if the proposed closure goes ahead?

The decision to close the Merry Hill office came as a huge shock to staff. Many of them will not be able to transfer and Dudley cannot afford to lose their jobs. It is my job to stand up for local people, which is why I secured this debate to demand that Ministers think again. These are hard-working and highly skilled public servants. They are very worried about their future and we need to secure their jobs. That is why we are here today, and I very much hope that Ministers will listen.