John Robertson
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HM Revenue and Customs
John Robertson Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on getting the debate, which is important. I do not intend to go over the same ground as other colleagues, but some points need to be re-emphasised. I am looking forward to the Minister’s reply, and if he gets time, I hope that he will answer a few of my questions, although I am happy to get a response in writing.
Other than the 40,000 jobs that will be lost by 2015—over the past eight and future two years—which is bad enough, what we have is an HMRC that has just employed three new non-executive board members. Volker Beckers, previously chief executive of RWE npower, is now the chair of the scrutiny committee and has a job worth £20,000 a year. That might not be an awful lot to Mr Beckers, but it would be to people who were about to lose their jobs. Why does that man have a job at £20,000 a year, which will not mean a lot to him? He also comes from the electricity companies, which have been ripping off customers left, right and centre, although the Minister might consider the case to be one of poacher turned gamekeeper. That might be right, but I would still like to know the reasons.
Norman Pickavance was previously director of human resources and communications at Morrisons. He left Morrisons just before it announced a third year of no profits. Will he be asked to bail out of HMRC if it is not successful? He is on a retainer of £15,000 a year, and I would like to know what he does for that £15,000 a year.
John Whiting, previously of the Chartered Institute of Taxation, perhaps has a job that is connected with HMRC, but he is working for it only part time, and he will receive £20,000 a year. How much time will he spend earning that money, and what will he be expected to do in return?
On 1 February, the Daily Mirror reported that a group called the Cup Trust had been banking millions of pounds and giving out millions of pounds in gifts to people, yet only 8% of its money seems to go to charity. Two days later, the same newspaper revealed that it had not given £80,000 to charity, although its books said that it had. That is not tax avoidance; it is ripping off charity people. On many occasions, I have asked what happens to the extra money that is put aside for proper charities, and we are told that the Treasury takes it back and will not give it to charities that do the right thing. The Daily Mirror stated:
“Charity tax avoiders: Scam bosses could trouser £7.7 MILLION while good causes received just £135,000”.
If the Daily Mirror can find that information, and we hear about it only through the paper, what have the Treasury and HMRC been doing?
The problem with HMRC is not the people at the bottom—the 40,000 people who will lose their jobs or have already lost them—who do a good job and work hard, but those who run it and are in charge of those people. That, Minister, is you.