Oral Answers to Questions

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The Office for Budget Responsibility assesses and puts on the scorecard the estimated revenue that we will raise from tax avoidance, but it will be around an extra £1 billion a year just from the measures in the Budget. In last year’s Budget after the election, we had measures to raise £5 billion from clamping down on aggressive tax avoidance and evasion. The fight continues.

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

T8. Following reports in this morning’s Daily Mail that energy firms overcharged customers by £130 for their energy this winter, does the Chancellor agree that Treasury cuts to incentives for building new renewable energy sources were another one of his bad ideas?

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Damian Hinds)]

As we covered earlier, the tariff system in place to encourage renewable energy has to deliver a balanced portfolio of energy, and it does so. Of course, we encourage energy firms always to pass price cuts that they benefit from on to their customers.

HMRC Office Closures

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rob Marris]

I do agree, but I will say more on that in a couple of minutes. Views vary on whether the closure programme is wise. Last week, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury and I again met Stephen Herring from the Institute of Directors, who broadly—this is paraphrasing his position—welcomes this kind of move because he thinks that technology has transformed, and should further transform, how HMRC operates, and that it should be driven by business efficiencies and so on. The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants is broadly in favour of this sort of change, too. Its head of taxation said it was

“reasonable to restructure the offices and we support there being higher skills”.

Correspondingly, the Public and Commercial Services Union, which does a great job representing its members in HMRC and across Government, has grave misgivings —to say the least—about the programme, as does the Association of Revenue and Customs, which is part of the FDA union and represents senior people in HMRC.

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend feel that adequate and meaningful consultation, with full regard to the facts, was undertaken on this decision?

[Rob Marris]

I do not, but again, I will say more in a couple of minutes.

At one end of the spectrum, the IOD says it broadly supports this type of change, and at the other end, the unions say they have grave misgivings. The president of the Chartered Institute of Taxation—hardly known as a supporter of the Labour party, the SNP or any political party—has said:

“Taxpayers and tax professionals alike will be anxious that a public body that is struggling to meet its public-facing service targets has announced that it is about to lose many staff and close its local offices.”

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales—I do not know what the position is in Scotland—says that the timing of the changes

“could stretch HMRC to breaking point”,

and that the restructuring of HMRC could be disruptive and could distract its leadership.