HMRC Closures

Lisa Cameron Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Westminster Hall

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

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) for securing this important debate through the Backbench Business Committee. He made a thorough and detailed analysis of what is an appalling situation for our constituencies—particularly in Scotland. Many thousands of people face losing their jobs at HMRC, in a significant blow to local employment and our local economies.

Before the debate, I looked at some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East in his speech, and I discussed them with HMRC staff. We wrote a letter to the Minister’s Department about the closure of Centre 1 in my constituency and the associated tax offices. The talent pipeline cuts very deep, despite the suggestion that we do not have one, and I assure the Minister that there is an extraordinarily skilled and talented workforce in my constituency and throughout the other centres that are being cut.

My constituency is home to one of Scotland’s best known tax offices, Centre 1, which we want to keep there. It is named Centre 1 because it was to be Scotland’s centre for tax collection. In my constituency, it is synonymous with tax affairs, our skilled workforce and our families’ livelihoods. Like most local people, I have friends and family members who work for HMRC in the tax office. It is vital to my constituency, and the very idea that it could leave is absolutely devastating to all.

Staff members to whom I have spoken have voiced real concerns about the closures. They worry about the impact of staffing reductions on their ability to do their job well. They worry about having to travel to a new and unknown site, and about the difficulty of finding childcare or disability parking, given increased time away from home for part-time workers and others. They are also significantly concerned about the lack of consultation.

When the proposals were first mooted in the previous Parliament, I met the Treasury and was reassured that I would at least be kept up to date with what was happening about lease proposals. I have heard nothing since and have had to submit parliamentary questions to tease out the information, which I continue to chase. It feels as though my constituency and our workers are being ignored. They do not deserve that, because they have served the United Kingdom in terms of tax revenues so well for so many years.

I entirely agree with the comments of the hon. Member for Keighley (John Grogan) about impact assessments, which are crucial. I cannot understand why such assessments have not been undertaken. In the previous Parliament, I asked the Secretary of State for Scotland about them, but he would give me no reassurances that they would ever be conducted. We are now in the process of conducting our own assessments. That is appalling—surely it is incumbent on the Government to look at the impact that closures and plans might have on communities.

Our HMRC staff are specialists in their field and take great pride in their roles. As has been mentioned, decisions such as the ones we are discussing have a detrimental impact on morale, creating stress, anxiety and sickness absence. HMRC staff should be supported because they do such vital work and the tax income is vital to our public services in general. There is a knock-on effect; we cannot think that lower morale and productivity might have a positive effect on our constituents. We have to invest in the staff, make them feel important and listen to their concerns about what the closures mean for them.

We do not want to see staff uprooted from their established bases and communities and centralised in city-centre offices, which surely cannot be more cost-effective than those in the outskirts of towns. I have yet to hear about lease agreements and arrangements—no update—so it is difficult to make any comprehensive analysis.

My constituency has a “Stay in EK”—East Kilbride—campaign, which is supported by just about everyone locally, whether the media, me, the MSP, local councillors from all parties, the public or HMRC staff. The issue is fundamental for us. I urge the Minister to pause, to have a moratorium, to look at impact assessments and to think about the constituencies that will be devastated by the proposed closures.

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[Mel Stride]

The criteria are there to allow a balanced judgment across the eight criteria as to where the best place is for the regional hubs. That is exactly the approach that HMRC has taken. I fully appreciate that there are Members here who are very unhappy with the fact that there may be some closures in their constituency, but that does not necessarily mean that the criteria are being inappropriately exercised.

[Dr Cameron]

The Minister’s colleagues in Departments such as the Department for International Development feel that East Kilbride in my constituency is an excellent place to have a hub and digital and new services, and has a great talent pool. How does this make sense, because there is surely a contradiction? We do not fit the eight criteria, but for other Departments reaching out and doing excellent work in East Kilbride in the modern age, we meet all the criteria. It simply does not make sense. Why is it more fitting to be in Glasgow than in East Kilbride?

[Mel Stride]

As the hon. Lady knows, a transition office will be kept in East Kilbride; it would certainly not have been there had many of the strengths to which she alluded not been present in the local community. On balance, it has been decided that it is better to go to Glasgow with a hub than to have a similar arrangement in her constituency, but that is not to suggest that there is not a great talent pool in her constituency. It simply means that on balance, under the eight criteria that we reviewed, the best solution we have come to is Glasgow.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mel Stride]

I shall give the hon. Gentleman the same answer I gave to the hon. Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams); I am certainly happy to look into it—although I have now had some divine inspiration, and I believe that the criterion is an hour’s travel time. St Matthew has come to my aid.

Let us not lose sight of the bigger picture. As I have said, the programme is underpinned by the aim of making HMRC a more efficient and effective tax authority. I want to dwell briefly on our record in that area, because what we are doing is part of a broader drive to transform HMRC that has been going on for some years. Its performance has been improving considerably. I have already mentioned that the tax gap is the lowest in our history; it is also one of the lowest tax gaps in the world.

The hon. Member for Bootle bemoaned the Mapeley PFI deal. As I said, it was a Labour Government who put us into that deal, but he is right that there will be considerable savings from not having to continue with the deal, as a consequence of pursuing the current programme.

HMRC has improved customer service. Almost all its business customers now choose to deal with it online, and more than eight out of 10 self-assessment returns come in digitally.

[Dr Cameron]

I thank the Minister for giving way; he is being generous in that regard, at least. Are the cost savings on the Mapeley deal based on current expenditure on that deal or on renegotiation with the organisation?

[Mel Stride]

The cost savings are for an investment of £552 million over 10 years. Firstly, they arise through the avoidance of future costs that would be incurred in the event of our not going ahead with the programme. Those would be the costs of the PFI deal, were we to continue with it. That cost is £75 million per annum—obviously from 2021, when the contract for strategic transfer of the estate to the private sector comes to an end. There is a cost saving of £300 million in the 10 years to 2025. That gives an annual cash saving, as compared with 2016-17, of £74 million in 2025-26, rising to about £90 million in 2026-27.[Official Report, 27 November 2017, Vol. 632, c. 2MC.]