Jessica Morden
Main Page: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)Department Debates - View all Jessica Morden's debates with the HM Treasury
Concentrix: Tax Credit Claimants
Jessica Morden Excerpts(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) on the excellent case she has put. Like many right hon. and hon. Members, in the past few months my office has dealt with dozens of cases every week of people who have found themselves in increasingly desperate situations as a result of Concentrix investigations, and I would like to make it clear that I welcome the decision not to renew the contract. I hope that it leads to the work coming back in-house.
Some of my constituents are victims of domestic abuse and have gone to refuges and then been rehoused. Although their support workers have told Concentrix of the change in their circumstances, it has not been logged. One constituent’s brother was accused of being her partner, and another constituent was accused of co-habiting with a former tenant. Many have been drawn to the discretionary assistance fund administered by the Welsh Government and to food banks. Yes, in the medium term we need scrutiny of how that has happened, of why it has not been monitored and of the payment by results model.
HMRC staff have been drafted in to help, but there are clearly not enough of them. All credit to them, but they have suffered huge cuts over the past few years. It clearly will not take 21 days to deal with some of the cases—I have heard that it will take up to six weeks. We need to clear the backlog now, because there is much distress out there and people have suffered. We need the Minister to give a clear steer about which cases are the priority. Yes, we urgently need to learn the lessons, but we also crucially need help now for those affected, with more staff to turn cases around.