HMRC Inquiry Centre Closures

Debate between David Gauke and Ian Lavery

Tuesday 4th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Ian Lavery]

I will certainly come to that later in my speech. The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point.

I am fairly positive that the Minister—perhaps he can indicate that this is the case—met PCS representatives this morning.

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)]

indicated assent.

[Ian Lavery]

The Minister nods positively. I am pleased: perhaps he can assure me that support will be given to staff who are uncertain about their future and that compulsory redundancies will not be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gauke]

It is important that HMRC communicates the closure of inquiry centres. It has written to all Members of Parliament on the matter and will take other steps to ensure that our constituents are aware of the changes.

Inquiry centres are not universally distributed across the country, and large parts of the UK are not even served by them. My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams), who is no longer in his place, raised the position of rural areas. Rural areas do not tend to be well served by inquiry centres at present. There has been a sharp decline in the use of inquiry centres. Visitor numbers have halved from more than 5 million in 2005-06 to just over 2 million in 2012-13, and the number of face-to-face appointments also dropped by four fifths to 140,000 last year.

[Ian Lavery]

Is it not the case that individuals who wish to have a face-to-face meeting will be vetted on the telephone, and then someone will adjudicate whether they need one?

[Mr Gauke]

I will turn to how the new service will work in a moment, if the hon. Gentleman will bear with me. HMRC’s in-depth research further revealed that nine out of 10 of those who visited an inquiry centre last year did not require a face-to-face appointment and would have been able to resolve their queries through a phone call or by visiting the HMRC website.

[Ian Lavery]

On that point, will the Minister give way again?

[Mr Gauke]

I am keen to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, but I will give way.

[Ian Lavery]

Where on earth did that information come from? Surely, people who wanted a face-to-face meeting had one and thought it beneficial. Where do the statistics that the Minister has just mentioned come from?

[Mr Gauke]

They are the result of research undertaken by HMRC. Matters can often be resolved over the telephone rather than in a face-to-face meeting. The hon. Gentleman rightly highlighted a case in which an 85-year-old gentleman caught two buses to attend an inquiry centre. If it is possible to drive that service more easily over the telephone, so be it, but there are circumstances in which a face-to-face meeting will be appropriate, so that will be provided.

HMRC’s research has highlighted that up to 1.5 million customers need extra help with their tax and benefits affairs. Many of them need help only for a specific event in their lives, such as when they approach retirement. Others may have low literacy skills, or a mental health condition may make it difficult for them to cope with their affairs. The new, more accessible service will be tailored to the needs of customers who require extra help. Specialist help will be provided over the telephone by extra support advisers who have the time, skills, knowledge and empathy to handle customers’ inquiries at a pace that suits them, and who can identify when a customer needs extra help. If a customer’s query cannot be dealt with over the phone, they can arrange a face-to-face meeting with a team of mobile advisers based across the United Kingdom. Such meetings can be arranged at a time and place convenient to the customer, and extra help will be delivered through HMRC’s voluntary and community sector partners who have been provided with extra funding so that they can support more customers and refer them directly to the new service.

Finance Bill

Debate between David Gauke and Ian Lavery

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. If we are talking about unfairness in the tax system as far as rates are concerned, I should say that the much greater unfairness is when wealthy individuals are paying very low rates of income tax—lower rates than are paid by the vast majority of people working in this country.

Let me say a word or two about avoidance. In the Budget, we announced a package of measures that will yield more than £1 billion and protect more than £10 billion in revenues over the next five years. Our approach to tackling stamp duty land tax avoidance and the banking scheme closed down in February demonstrate that we are prepared to move quickly and take radical action where necessary. We are introducing strategic changes to address the underlying loopholes in the tax system, as can be seen in clause 22, which is about the treatment of manufactured overseas dividends. More generally, the Government have been active in their response to tax avoidance schemes and can and do act as soon as they become aware of abusive schemes. We have provided HMRC with additional financial support and we remain absolutely committed to tackling tax avoidance.

Amendment 1 asks us to leave out the additional rate for 2013-14. It is exactly the same amendment as was tabled in the Committee of the whole House. I will not repeat every point that I made then, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) said, that might well leave us with just a 40p rate rather than a 45p rate. There is an alternative interpretation, which would mean that no income tax was charged for earnings above £150,000. I say that with some nervousness. I hope that I have not overexcited my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset; I think that even he would accept that that was below the revenue maximising point.

When the 50p rate was introduced, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), the then Chancellor, explicitly stated that it was a temporary measure. We are announcing the cut to 45p now to provide stability for investment decisions and certainty for employees and the self-employed. That is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out the rate for 2013-14 this year.

It is right that we take these measures to improve competitiveness, and our doing so has been widely welcomed. This matter must be viewed in the context of the personal allowance increase, which shows that we are committed to a fairer tax system that provides greater reward for work while supporting the public finances. This year there is a £630 increase in the personal allowance, as introduced by clause 3. That represents the second step in our commitment to increase the personal allowance to £10,000 on top of last year’s increase of £1,000. We have also announced a further increase of £1,100 next year—the largest ever increase in cash terms. The Government are taking 2 million people out of income tax, we are providing a tax cut to 24 million people, and we are well on course to meeting our target of a personal allowance of £10,000.

Let me turn to the second subject that we have debated—age-related allowances. Amendment 23 seeks to leave out clause 4, which introduces a phased withdrawal of age-related income tax personal allowances. Those will remain in place until the income tax personal allowance for those born after 5 April 1948 aligns with or overtakes these levels. At that point, the clause guarantees that older people will receive the higher allowance. Amendment 23, like others tabled by Opposition Front Benchers, is a repeat of an amendment tabled in the Committee of the whole House. The Government have committed to increasing the personal allowance above the rate of inflation. Next year, the personal allowance will increase by £1,100—£840 above inflation—and so from 2013-14 everyone born after 5 April 1948 will receive the same personal allowance of £9,205. This will take a further 880,000 people out of tax altogether. Similarly, everyone born after 5 April 1938 will continue to receive the age-related allowance that they currently receive instead of moving on to the higher age-related allowance, which will be maintained for those born on or before this date. There will be no new recipients of age-related allowances from next April.

One of the Government’s key objectives for the tax system is to make it simple and straightforward for people to understand. Clause 4 helps to provide for a simpler system while ensuring that nobody will lose out in cash terms as a result. It will help to make sure that people get the allowances to which they are entitled and pay the right amount of tax, and make the system simpler for Government to administer, thereby minimising costs to the taxpayer.

[Ian Lavery]

It has been mentioned a hundred times tonight that no one will lose out in cash terms. Will there be any losers in this?

[Mr Gauke]

Nobody will lose out in cash terms; that is the point.

Age-related allowances are complex and hard for older people to understand, as the Public Accounts Committee confirmed in a 2009 report. The same report also stated that too much emphasis is placed on older people having to prove their eligibility, resulting in erroneous claims and potential overpayments of tax. Furthermore, in March this year the Office of Tax Simplification published its interim report on its review of pensioner taxation in which it highlighted no fewer than nine complexities with the age-related personal allowance.

Half the people aged over 65 in 2013-14 will pay no income tax at all and are therefore unaffected by these changes. Those who will now not receive an age-related allowance will benefit from a £1,100 increase in the personal allowance, which represents the largest cash increase ever. At the same time, those who are affected by the withdrawal of age-related allowances will still see the total deductions they pay reduce significantly because we have retained the exemption from national insurance contributions for those of state pension age.

It is important to consider these changes to age-related allowances in the context of the wider support that the Government offer to pensioners. Only 40% of pensioners benefit from age-related allowances, about 50% are unaffected by the changes made by the clause because they pay no tax and will continue to pay no tax, and the remaining 10% have incomes above the taper limit for age-related allowances and are therefore unaffected by these measures.

Let us also remember that the triple lock ensures that each year, the basic state pension will be uprated by the highest of these: inflation, earnings or 2.5%. This April, the basic state pension increased by the consumer prices index inflation rate of 5.2%. That meant that there was an increase of £5.30 a week in the full basic state pension—the largest ever cash increase in the basic state pension. Under the previous Government’s plans, the basic state pension would have increased by only 2.8% from this April—an increase of only £2.85 per week. That means that the full basic state pension is £127 a year higher in 2012 than it would have been under the previous Government’s plans. Next year, a full basic state pension is forecast to be £130 a year higher than under the previous Government’s plans, and the year after that, it is forecast to be £133 higher.

Each year, more than 11 million pensioners will benefit from the introduction of the triple lock. An existing pensioner with a full basic state pension will gain more from the triple lock in each of the next three years than they will lose from the freeze in age-related allowances. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said:

“Our analysis shows that they have lost considerably less from recent tax and benefit changes than any other demographic group. And over the past decade and more pensioner incomes have risen faster than those of the working age population.”

To conclude, the Government are making changes to ensure that there is a fair and competitive tax system. Some of them are controversial, but we should look at the evidence, not the Opposition’s rhetoric. The 50p rate is not sustainable. The introduction of the triple lock on state pensions means pensioners continue to be better off. These changes are good for our long-term tax revenues, good for our economy and good for the UK as a whole. I ask the Opposition to seek leave to withdraw the amendment.

Budget Leak Inquiry

Debate between David Gauke and Ian Lavery

Thursday 22nd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

I refer my hon. Friend to, for example, the 50p debate, which the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) mentioned. In the days before the Budget there were five different versions of what was going to happen. One turned out to be correct and four turned out to be incorrect.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

We heard almost more information and detail on the Budget on Tuesday evening than we did on Wednesday evening. Was that due to the Liberal Democrats, was it due to the Conservatives, or were they simply all in it together?

[Mr Gauke]

My right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out yesterday a Budget for growth and for working people. There was an awful lot of information in it. It was an ambitious Budget, and one of which this Government are very proud.