Concentrix: Tax Credit Claimants
Debate between Hywel Williams and Fiona Mactaggart(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Fiona Mactaggart
The point is that if we do not manage to get answers from the Minister, we will end this contract but will be walking into the risk of future contracts making the same kind of mistakes, including targeting single mums in a way most of us find completely unacceptable, and breaching the law that provides the power to end benefits and so on. This situation really is not tolerable, and it is up to us to ensure that it never happens again in any aspect of Government administration.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for raising this important issue. I, too, have constituency cases with which I could regale this Chamber. Does she agree that there is a fundamental danger in a model that has a private organisation, which is accountable to its owners and has a duty to make profits for them, providing a public service, where the accountability must be to the public and the first duty must be to provide the public with a full and proper service?
Fiona Mactaggart
The hon. Gentleman is right. Civil servants are trained to conform with the law. How can Ministers ensure, in this contract or in any future contracts, that there is not a parallel reinterpretation of the law by a private company? When the Minister was informed about the Wikeley judgment, as I hope he was, what did he do to ensure that all future decisions would conform to the law? Civil servants are generally trained in a culture where the law is the guide to how they work; I am concerned that Concentrix staff were not operating within such a culture. There is a real risk of letting out similar contracts in future that do not operate within such a culture.