HMRC Tax Office: Cumbernauld

Lisa Cameron Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I am very grateful for the opportunity once again to bring HMRC’s disastrous proposals to close Cumbernauld tax office to the House’s attention. Let me begin by paying tribute to its workforce for their dedicated service and thanking their representatives in the Public and Commercial Services Union, who have worked tirelessly on their behalf to make the case for keeping jobs in Cumbernauld.

If implemented, these proposals will be a huge blow to the workers at HMRC Cumbernauld, many of whom have given decades of service, and many of whom will not be able to transfer to the Glasgow office for a variety of reasons. If implemented, they will also be a disaster for the whole town and community of Cumbernauld. Finally, quite simply, they make no sense from the point of view of taxpayers generally. These are, of course, the workers who ensure the collection of the taxes that are needed to fund our vital public services. Disrupting them, putting some of them out of a job, reducing their capacity and moving them to more expensive inner-city accommodation seems to serve a dubious purpose, to put it mildly.

[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. A tax office in the centre of East Kilbride is also due to be closed, although it has been a pivotal place for tax collection in Scotland. This whole agenda goes against the Government’s towns initiative. Moving jobs from towns to cities is counter productive, and counteracts what the Prime Minister set out in his agenda.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

My hon. Friend has made a powerful point, and I shall say more about it later in my speech. The experience so far of similar changes in other parts of the United Kingdom seems to be that it is harmful to the collection of taxes, rather than helpful to the work that HMRC employees are trying to do.

As some Members may know—my hon. Friend certainly does—the proposal to close the Cumbernauld tax office forms part of a massive programme of reform to the HMRC estate, which has been given the title “Building our future”. Members on both sides of the House—including, obviously, my hon. Friend—may have seen similar offices close in their own constituencies, or may be battling similar proposals.

The scale of the changes and cuts faced by HMRC has been extraordinary. When it was formed in 2005, HMRC had 96,000 full-time equivalent members of staff in 593 offices; less than a decade later, staff numbers had fallen to below 60,000 based in fewer than 190 offices. “Building our future” set out to close 137 of those remaining offices, and to centralise even fewer workers in just 13 large regional hubs with between 1,200 and 6,000 staff. It seems that HMRC will shed many thousand more jobs during this process, with tens of thousands having to move location.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

I have no doubt that HMRC, which is operationally responsible for this change and for the management of its business, will have spoken very closely with the relevant unions on this issue, as it has been doing in other areas, too.

If I may, with your permission, Mr Speaker, I will continue to make some progress on my speech. In November 2015, HMRC announced that in the following 10 years it would seek to bring its employees together in 13 regional offices based in locations where it already had a significant presence, such as Glasgow, which is one of the two HMRC regional centres in Scotland. The co-locating of teams across HMRC is designed to lead to increased collaboration and flexibility, making it easier for skills across a lot of teams to be shared and for teams to switch between communications channels and subject areas in order to meet the evolving needs of taxpayers. HMRC recognises that the transition may not be easy and has put considerable support in place to help its workforce through these changes. The hon. Gentleman has mentioned that and I will address that support in due course.

In Glasgow, the regional centre will be situated in the heart of the city at 1 Atlantic Square and is currently in development. It will be home to some 2,600 HMRC staff, who will be moving from six offices around the region in order to fulfil a wide range of tax professional and operational roles, including in compliance and in large business relationships.

[Dr Cameron]

Does the Minister recognise, however, that HMRC’s plans to move the hubs to city locations are counterproductive and undermine the Government’s own agenda to try to support development in towns? The specialist expertise is already in the towns, so why are we moving the hubs to cities, against even the Prime Minister’s aims of reinvigorating towns?

[Jesse Norman]

The hon. Lady is right to say that the Government take the needs of towns seriously. That is why we have a towns fund, which, in turn, works with a much wider spread of support that we are giving to cities. Of course towns have their uses and functions, and cities have theirs. HMRC is seeking to use the benefits of the city: the capacity to agglomerate services and bring people together, and give them proper communications and technology support. Those are things from which both HMRC and those staff will benefit.

I have taken a lot of interventions and I now have a limited amount of time, so I will make progress. HMRC has already opened three new regional centres in Croydon, Bristol and Belfast, with staff planned to move to the Edinburgh regional centre later this year. Construction is under way at all the remaining new locations, including Cardiff, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, Birmingham and Stratford.

In addition to the 13 regional centres, HMRC will keep eight transitional sites open across the UK for several years to help retain key skills during the transition period, as well as five specialist sites for work that cannot be done elsewhere. For example, HMRC will retain Telford as a site for some of its specialist digital teams. Through this phased approach, HMRC will seek to minimise disruption to business operations.

The overall programme will deliver savings to the taxpayer of around £300 million up to 2025 and then rising cash savings, estimated to be more than £90 million by 2028. It also avoids additional costs of £75 million a year from 2021, when the current PFI contract with Mapeley, agreed by the last Labour Government, comes to an end.