Concentrix

Corri Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Corri Wilson (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)]

The Government have made it clear that the burden of austerity must be borne primarily by the most disadvantaged in our society. They made that clear through their repeated assaults on the welfare state, in their victimisation of the disabled, in their system of sanctions and in their attacks on benefits for our young people. They have made it clear that tax credits cost too much and are a drain on the public purse. They made it clear in their handling of the Concentrix contract that the suffering and hardship caused by this fiasco is not their concern. The Government did not seem to care about the indiscriminate targeting of single parents, the “fishing” letters, working parents being forced to give up their jobs, or families being forced out on to the streets as they lost their homes.

Strangely, none of those reasons was cited as a contributing factor to the withdrawal of the Concentrix contract. The statement given by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury explicitly said:

“Despite the best efforts of the staff manning the phones, Concentrix, with the high volume of calls in recent weeks, has not been providing the high levels of customer service that the public expect and which are required in its contract. HMRC has therefore given notice that this contract will not be renewed beyond its end date in May 2017.”—[Official Report, 14 September 2016; Vol. 614, c. 904.]

It seems that it was all about call handling. I am sure that I am not alone in having a list of constituents who are seriously out of pocket from waiting to speak to someone at Concentrix, but providing call waiting times as the main reason to ditch the contract is ludicrous.

This Government devised the model to target low-income families indiscriminately. The contract awarded to Concentrix was based on payment by results, creating a clear conflict of interest and encouraging bad practice. It was this Government, through HMRC, that supplied Concentrix with 1.5 million claimant records flagged as high risk—claimants like my constituent, Lauren. Lauren is the mother of two and a prime example of someone whom the system has failed, finding herself at the centre of a perfect storm. She suffers from anxiety and panic attacks and, despite having a line from her doctor, lost her job for being off ill. Her employer did not pay her statutory sick pay, and she was told that she would have to wait at least two weeks for employment support allowance. In a bizarre twist of fate, she found that both her working tax credits and her child tax credits had been stopped.

When Lauren first came to my office, she had no food and no money for gas or electricity. She had called Concentrix 48 times that day and had run out of credit on her phone. Rather than the state providing Lauren and her children with a safety net in their time of need, Concentrix had left them near destitute. Why? What was the key factor in determining that Lauren was one of the 1.5 million high-risk claimants? Someone had glanced at her file and decided that she could not possibly be working 16 hours a week and be paid so little. They had calculated her yearly income and then divided it, coming to the conclusion that she must have been working 15 hours a week, ignoring the fact that Lauren had spent a month out of work the year before—a change in circumstances of which she had diligently notified HMRC. A cursory glance was all it took to turn this young mother’s life upside down at a time when she was at her most vulnerable. My staff and I have been deeply affected by the number of cases in recent weeks in which people have been plunged into utter misery. We have felt sheer frustration at not being able to get a quick resolution. I doubt whether a single person on the Government Benches has ever experienced going without food.

We can stand here all day and trade stories like Lauren’s, and the Government can dish out platitudes and pat themselves on the back for acting so swiftly and decisively on the Concentrix contract, but that cannot detract from the fact that families have been driven further into debt and poverty by Concentrix’s actions. Families have been forced to beg for food by the actions of HMRC. Families are being forced to choose between heating and eating by this Government’s policies. It is time for the Government to accept their role in this fiasco and to step up and take some responsibility for the carnage they are causing in people’s lives. They must apologise for the hardship and suffering faced by people such as Lauren. They must look again at the ongoing policy of downsizing HMRC, leaving staff overworked and demoralised. They must introduce a freephone number for claimants and take on the costs of seeking mandatory reconsiderations. They must legislate to amend the compliance regime in respect of annual declarations and high risk renewals.

Earlier this month, leading figures from this Government stood up at the Conservative party conference right in front of a background that read:

“A country that works for everyone”.

Let us see them match their policy to that sentiment and step back from this destructive and failing drive to impose austerity on the many while allowing riches for the few. Those on the Government Benches should take a leaf out of the Scottish Government’s book and start treating people with fairness, dignity and respect.