HMRC: Building our Future Plan

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) and others on securing this debate. I am proud to have added my name to the motion.

HMRC has been dismantling its services in Wales for over 15 years. Where there were previously 21 tax offices in towns and cities across the country, it is now proposed there only be one, in south-east Wales.

HMRC’s Porthmadog office in my constituency is one of those threatened by the latest round of closures. This is the home of the Tax Office’s Welsh language unit and of needs enhanced service staff. It is well placed to attract and retain fluent Welsh-speaking staff, and offers a naturally Welsh-speaking workplace. Needs enhanced service staff, by the nature of their work, have to be close to the clients whom they need to visit in their own homes. This service and, of course, the Welsh language unit serves the region of Wales where demand for Welsh language services is at its highest.

As one of the users, I would urge every Welsh speaker, even those who lack confidence to use the language to discuss financial matters, to take advantage of these services, because English words can always be dropped in as well. This is good not only for the good of the language, but particularly because the Porthmadog staff are excellent at their job.

Beyond Porthmadog’s limited Welsh language remit, HMRC’s commitment falls far short of the statutory requirement to treat the Welsh and English languages as equal when providing public services in Wales, particularly as regards the opportunity for businesses and charities such as chapels to have access to services in Welsh, as is their right. To be honest, the proposal that the service can be maintained just as well in Cardiff needs to be questioned. The county of Gwynedd is home to 77,000 Welsh speakers, 65.4% of the county’s population. Cardiff has fewer than half that number of Welsh speakers and, of course, is a capital city where those speakers are not so concentrated. HMRC is intent on moving the service from a rural region where Welsh is the language of everyday life and civic administration, to an urban centre, 150 miles and over four hours’ drive away—about as far from the great majority of its Welsh-speaking users as it would be physically possible to go and still be in Wales.

If the Porthmadog office building itself—Mapeley’s Ty Moelwyn, I might add— is the problem, I would strongly urge the Government to look at alternative sites in that area and to urge HMRC to do the same. I have corresponded with the Financial Secretary on a number of occasions, requesting that this be done. Porthmadog county councillor Selwyn Griffiths and Town Councillor Alwyn Gruffydd have met the Under-Secretary for Wales, following a public meeting and petition earlier this year. Discussions have been held with HMRC’s regional implementation lead officer, and I am—I hope—right to be quietly optimistic.

The DWP office in the same town is perfectly suitable to house the Porthmadog HMRC staff, as is the Gwynedd Council-owned canolfan galw Gwynedd, nearby in Minffordd. Both these offices are excellent Welsh-language workplaces, ideally placed to attract and retain experienced Welsh-speakers in the area where Welsh is both a community and professional language. This is an important point. Although Cardiff might look like an ideal centre for Wales, if we want to keep good staff, who are used to working in the Welsh medium and want to work in Welsh-speaking workplaces, this is the ideal place to locate and keep them. Simply closing these offices will also be a body blow to plans to devolve tax powers to Wales.

On the one hand, the Tory Government extol the virtue of Wales taking more control over our taxes—something that Plaid Cymru, of course, warmly welcomes, as we have done for years—yet on the other hand, the means of administering these powers is being systematically reduced. The level of reorganisation proposed should be subject to proper public and parliamentary scrutiny at the UK level, and I welcome today’s debate, but there are specific issues unique to Wales that must be addressed before any final decisions are reached.

First, we must recognise that increasing Wales’s fiscal powers will require increasing staff capacity, as opposed to moving jobs across the border and centralising down in south-east Wales. Secondly, an independent economic assessment of the impact of moving HMRC’s Welsh language unit and needs enhanced service jobs from Porthmadog to Cardiff must be undertaken. Thirdly, HMRC must work with the Welsh Language Commissioner to undertake a language assessment of the impact of moving these jobs from a Welsh-speaking community in terms of their effect on the rights of Welsh-speaking taxpayers and Welsh-speaking staff. Finally and most importantly, HMRC officers must consider alternative locations in the Porthmadog area, including co-location with Gwynedd Council or the Department for Work and Pensions, in order to agree a cost-effective solution to retain jobs in the area.

I urge the Government to commit to reconsidering the impact of HMRC proposals on their services in Wales, their services to Welsh speakers, their services to the nation as a whole in the light of the devolution agenda and the significance of well-paid public sector jobs to a low-wage economy such as Dwyfor Meirionnydd.