HMRC: Building our Future Plan

Debate between Chris Stephens and Roger Mullin

Thursday 28th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens]

My hon. Friend raises a fair point in that some workforces were told that offices would close if they voted for independence. To be fair, in my experience, workers in the shipyards and at HMRC came to an individual choice on the referendum. I do not think those scare stories were necessarily accepted by many parts of the workforce. However, again we hear the use of rhetoric around the constitution to say that places will close. We will find that it is not an independent Scotland that is closing those offices but a Tory Government.

In preparing for this debate, I came across a debate on the then Inland Revenue from over 30 years ago in the other place. A contribution by Baron Houghton of Sowerby, a former Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee and chair of the Inland Revenue Staff Association, stood out:

“the human factor is the ultimate right…and there is no substitute for it. No computers will deal with taxpayers who require consideration and attention, and to whom some measure of discretion or of consideration may be due.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 July 1983; Vol. 443, c. 1199.]

Those words are as appropriate today as they were in 1983. They seem to me to be part of an ethos that all of us, across parties, should endorse as a cornerstone of public services. Sadly, those behind HMRC’s Building our Future plan are taking the wrecking ball to those foundations and not just demolishing the future of HMRC’s buildings but hammering the staff, the taxpayer, and the public. If they are allowed to proceed, towns and cities across these isles will be at the forefront of yet more ideological austerity. Hard- working and conscientious staff will once again be expected to clean up the mess, and taxpayers will foot the bill for the short-sightedness and short-termism of successive governments and Treasury Ministers. HMRC is not building a future—it is destroying it.

Fifteen years ago, the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise combined had 701 offices across the country. Today we are being asked to accept that the 13 centres proposed by HMRC can possibly replicate that kind of coverage. Is there anyone who believes that the citizens of Penrith can better be served by a “super-centre” in Manchester, compared with Carlisle; those in Portlethen served better from Edinburgh than Aberdeen; or the people of Penzance served better from Bristol than Redruth? We are asked to believe that the best interests of the taxpayer and of society are met in a system that has staff in Glasgow travel halfway to Golspie to meet clients who have travelled halfway from Golspie to Glasgow, sitting down at some “neutral location” to discuss an individual’s sensitive and confidential tax affairs. I am told that one of these neutral locations is what can only be described as a hut in a public park. I am told—if I had not heard this with my own ears, I would not have believed it—that HMRC staff are advised to take a warm jumper and a bag of grit to these meetings during winter.

In truth, a look at the latest staff satisfaction survey from HMRC unfortunately makes this all too easy to believe. It would make some informative bedtime reading for those behind this closure programme. Fully 2% of staff strongly agree with the statements “I feel change is managed well in HMRC” and “When changes are made in HMRC they are usually for the better”, while 6% strongly agree that “I would recommend HMRC as a great place to work”, and 3% strongly agree that “HMRC as a whole is managed well”. On measure after measure, time after time, staff at HMRC are shown to be demoralised, demotivated, and depressed.

What other outcome in staff morale could result from the shuttering of office after office around the country? How enthused would anyone be knowing that, in a matter of months, their workplace is to be closed and that they and their friends and colleagues are to be relocated miles away? I suspect that if those behind this scheme were to be told tomorrow that their palatial offices were to be shuffled off from London to Norwich, Peterborough or Harwich—a journey that staff in these offices will be expected to do in reverse from next year —a murmur or two of discontent may well escape from their lips. Staff are entitled to ask exactly why a Government who invent catchphrase after catchphrase on regional policy—from the northern powerhouse to the midlands engine—are intent on such a centralising agenda. They may well ask why they are being shunted into sidings, rather than providing an express service to their communities.

I am sure that colleagues will touch later on the impact the closures will have on their constituencies, so I will not dwell too long on the specific towns and cities that will be hit, or on how hard they will be hit.

[Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the loss of service will not only be geographic? Specific services are being abandoned. For example, HMRC has recently announced the abandonment of its valuation check service for small and medium-sized enterprises, thus completely compromising employee share ownership schemes.

[Chris Stephens]

I am aware of that and I hope to touch on it later. I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention.

Middlesbrough has the third highest unemployment rate in England, and nearly 3,000 people are already on the dole in Bootle, while Derry has the highest unemployment rate of any constituency. To see those places on a list guaranteed to create job losses at HMRC and in the wider community is to see a plan that will, in the words of the Public and Commercial Services Union,

“consciously increase unemployment in areas which are already employment blackspots.”

I suspect that the word “Mapeley” will come up in the course of this debate, so let me touch on it. I referred earlier to the more than 700 offices formerly used by HMRC. Mapeley Estates snapped up more than 130 of them for its offshore property portfolio after loading itself up with debt in order to front up its side of this rotten charade with the then Government: 84% of the funding that Mapeley obtained to acquire that lucrative contract came in the form of loans. That shabby deal with a shabby company comes to an end in 2021. For the privilege of renting publicly built offices sold off for a song, HMRC will have the

“right to occupy buildings, with leases based on market terms”

after that date. That is very generous of Mapeley.

I commend the National Audit Office on its 2009 report on the deal. It is redolent with phrases such as,

“the Department has not achieved value for money…The Department did not fully appreciate the risks… The Department has not had strong processes to monitor the overall cost of the contract and whether it is achieving value for money”.

The Exchequer Secretary admitted to this House last year that the end life of the Mapeley contracts represented a

“one-off opportunity to make this change to the estate footprint.”—[Official Report, 24 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 1300.]

That is part of the truth behind the closures—a private finance initiative deal worth billions from the public purse, used to enrich a Bermuda-domiciled corporate entity, with the public left with nothing at the end of 20 years, except the right to sign a commercial lease.

I will end with the words of a PCS member and HMRC employee, my constituent Bobby Young, who is chair of the PCS Revenue and Customs branch:

“Whilst my branch welcomes the news of a slight increase of jobs in Glasgow, we absolutely oppose it if it comes at the cost of jobs elsewhere. Communities from Bathgate to Bootle will be devastated by these closures—that is not a price worth paying for the sake of a few extra jobs in Glasgow.”

If anyone should know about prices, it is an employee of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Sadly, it seems that their superiors know very little about value.