Concentrix

Debate between Kevin Foster and Philippa Whitford

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

I encourage the hon. Gentleman to read the HMRC report being discussed this afternoon by the PAC; it might be worth his attending the session if he gets the chance. It is worth noting that with new leadership, which has been needed for some time, HMRC is starting to turn around its customer service, by moving more staff into dealing with post, for example. There is some evidence that the customer service is improving, therefore, which is welcome, although I know that some of these assertions will be robustly tested by a number of Members, including the hon. Gentleman’s party colleague and PAC member the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Philip Boswell).

It is vital that the investigation is full and that we look at what comes out of it. I welcome the Minister’s saying that there is an ongoing negotiation about concluding the contract early. We cannot go into the details of that today for obvious reasons, but I hope the work being done to bring this whole sorry tale to an end will be shared with the NAO as part of its inquiry.

One of the conclusions to be drawn is that it is clear that people have been caused pain and suffering that they should not have been caused. People have been subjected to allegations that were flagrantly untrue: the “philandering shop”; the person living down the road; someone who has been dead for some years. We should think about the way the contractor went about things—sending letters with the contractor’s logo that looked very similar to official Government or HMRC letters. We might have debates about whether in future the symbol of the Crown and HMRC should be used on a letter sent by a contractor.

[Dr Philippa Whitford]

Many of the constituents who came to me did not appear to have received a letter at all. A letter with some strange logo on it might not register as being what it is about and therefore might get overlooked.

[Kevin Foster]

I understand that point, but the evidence from my constituency case load is that it cut both ways. Some people saw a logo that looked like it was from HMRC and wondered what the letter was about. This matter might require further inquiry, and we should consider the information that the NAO will bring forward. The NAO does not just look at the sums. It is not just going to work out how many people got paid for what. It will also go into the detail around the customer service, and certainly in previous reports it has been extremely thorough when doing so.

I welcome the overall tone of the Minister’s response to this motion, and I welcome the fact that the Government took clear and decisive action to bring this contract to an end and are continuing to do that and to prevent more people from having to experience the issues many Members have highlighted today. I hope the monitoring will go on because, as we have seen with past issues to do with HMRC, an in-house solution is not necessarily a magic bullet to achieving amazing customer service. We have only to look at past debates on HMRC’s performance to see that. I welcome some of the tone of today’s debate, but it is now absolutely clear that we need to resolve the outstanding cases, let the NAO do its work and then form our conclusions based on the evidence it brings to us.