HMRC Office Closures

David Mowat Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

To return to that point, I gave the statistic that 4,000 of the current 58,000 people employed by HMRC will be outside a reasonable daily travel distance by 2027, as HMRC has acknowledged. I am afraid that there will have to be redundancies for those people, assuming that they are still working for HMRC, over the course of that period. I would make the point that the vast majority of HMRC staff—I recognise that this is difficult for those who are not in such a position—will clearly be able to work in the regional centres I have mentioned.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that the current level of customer service in HMRC is unacceptable? The speech of the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) would have made sense were it not for the fact that, currently, about 40% of calls are never answered. It is not even that they are answered after 40 minutes; they are never answered. Does he agree that regional centres enabling us to flex the number of staff must form a coherent approach to getting calls answered, which cannot be done with 190 centres?

--- Later in debate ---

[David Mowat]

I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s argument. Perhaps he could tell us, on behalf of the Opposition, how many tax offices he thinks we should have. Do we go back to 310, or whatever the number was, or is 170 about right, or should it be even lower? What is the hon. Gentleman’s number?

[Rob Marris]

This is a classic case of this Government putting the cart before the horse. They announce the closure programme before they have got adequate information. We need a public consultation on this kind of change; we need a business consultation; and we need parliamentary scrutiny, by the Public Accounts Committee and the Treasury Select Committee, for example. Only when that process has been gone through, could I—or, I would venture, other hon. Members—form a view about how many HMRC offices should be distributed around the United Kingdom, given the changes brought about by technology and the desire for efficiency, and, balanced against that, the desire for a customer-facing service.