Autumn Adjournment

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Tuesday 7th November 2017 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). I thank him, the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) and all members of the Backbench Business Committee for ensuring that matters that are important to Back Benchers are regularly debated in this House. I will be touching on such matters in my contribution.

Tomorrow, it will be five months since the general election. I have tried to continue to be a left-wing, anti-austerity Member of Parliament, and to serve the constituents of Glasgow South West to the best of my ability. Being a Member of Parliament is an honour and a privilege. It is a job in which we should highlight our constituents’ concerns and celebrate constituency successes, such as those set out in several early-day motions. Early-day motion 349 congratulates all involved with the Govan stones, which continue to win archaeological awards and are one of the six hidden gems in Scotland. The Govan stones are a unique collection of early medieval stones found in the Govan old church. Hon. Members are more than welcome in Govan, and I hope that they will all take the opportunity to see those stones.

The work of the Coming Home Centre is celebrated in early-day motion 499. The centre assists military veterans, providing practical advice, furniture and food, and it gives a daily hot meal to the hundreds of veterans in Glasgow who require assistance to adjust back into civilian life. The 50th anniversary of the opening of the Bellahouston sports centre is commemorated in early-day motion 459, and the awarding of the Glasgow Saltire Award to young volunteers from St. Angela’s Participation Centre in Darnley is mentioned in early-day motion 411.

One seasoned parliamentarian put it to me that this debate is nicknamed the “moanfest”.

[The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Michael Ellis)]

indicated dissent.

[Chris Stephens]

The Deputy Leader of the House shakes his head in disbelief. On the basis of that nickname, I wish to raise a number of issues, the first of which concerns the process for parliamentary questions. One of the frustrations of the job of being a Member of Parliament is that we regularly receive answers from Ministers that end with the catch-all phrase “disproportionate cost”. That often happens when information requested in a parliamentary question has already been provided under freedom of information procedures. In such cases, it is quite confusing to receive responses from Ministers stating that information can be provided only at disproportionate cost. I fear that if I were to table a parliamentary question to the Deputy Leader of the House asking how many parliamentary answers end with the phrase “disproportionate cost”, the response might very well be that that information can be provided only at disproportionate cost.

I also want to raise the question of the cost of telephone calls to Departments, which the Deputy Leader of the House will have heard me raise many times at business questions. As a member of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, I was delighted to hear the Secretary of State say that telephone calls to his Department will be free by the end of the year. The Deputy Leader of the House will be aware that I have raised that issue for more than two years. However, that does not affect other Departments, including the Home Office, which runs the spousal visa hotline. Will the Government explain how my constituent Amera Hussain, who has telephoned that hotline twice in the past month, has received a phone bill outlining that the total cost of those two telephone calls was £28.77? The Home Office says that the spousal visa hotline charges £1.37 a minute, over and above network charges, but it has also said in response to a parliamentary question I tabled that that should apply only to non-UK residents. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will ask the Home Office why UK residents are being charged such premium, astronomical rates to telephone a Department.

I want to raise a general point about enforcement, because there has started to be a real focus on that since the election in June. I will cite some of the figures revealed by the Government in answer to parliamentary questions. At present, 399 staff members are working in the national minimum wage compliance unit, yet it has 83 vacancies, and the Government have intimated that they have no plans to fill them. Is it any wonder that there are 200,000 workers in the United Kingdom who are not being paid the national minimum wage when there are so many vacancies in Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs compliance unit?

I asked Ministers yesterday to confirm whether there were 420 HMRC staff in the high net worth unit, which deals with tax avoidance and evasion. Last year, it was revealed that there were 420 staff in that unit, with 700 in the affluent unit. I have been told by the Government today that those two sections of HMRC have been combined, so I was expecting to hear that there were 1,120 staff working in the merged unit. However, I have been told that there are only 1,040 staff, so it seems to me that there has been a reduction in the number of HMRC staff dealing with tax avoidance and evasion. In addition to that, given the office closures, in 2017 alone HMRC will lose 17,000 years of staff experience, which will surely lead to a decrease in enforcement.

Such a reduction does not, of course, apply to chasing social security fraud. As I said in the House yesterday, the latest figures show that 3,605 employees in the Department for Work and Pensions are chasing social security fraud. I have been told today in a written answer that the figure for full-time equivalents is actually 4,045. If 4,045 employees can chase social security fraud estimated at £1.2 billion, just imagine how much money HMRC could bring in if it had 4,045 employees chasing tax avoidance and evasion.

We need to ensure the House is always pursuing how to help the most vulnerable in our society. Today’s Trussell Trust report exposes the real situation in our communities where universal credit has been rolled out, with food bank use up by 30% in those areas. I am clear that food banks are not and do not wish to be part of the social security system. In my constituency of Glasgow South West alone, there has been a 56% increase in food bank use in the past year. That is why my constituency office will now be a collection point for those who wish to make cash or food donations to my constituents.

Real poverty is on the rise and wages are low. As the Member for the constituency with the largest percentage of public sector workers, I hope that the Government will give such workers a real wage rise shortly. The job of all of us is to hold the Government to account, and I hope that they will, in the weeks and months ahead, address the many challenges that our people face.