Business of the House
Debate between Mel Stride and Stuart C McDonald(5 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mel Stride
I associate myself entirely with the hon. Gentleman’s comments about the D-day landings, and I recognise the enormous damage and destruction that was caused to Coventry by the bombing in the second world war. May I congratulate him on securing an Adjournment debate on his local hospital next Thursday? I look forward either to being present at that debate or to reading Hansard after it.
The school breakfasts programme might be a good subject for an Adjournment debate, so that the hon. Gentleman can have a discussion with a Minister across the Dispatch Box.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
Sacred Heart and St Lucy’s in Cumbernauld are among the churches up and down the country that have close and long-standing links with priests, ministers and other religious leaders from overseas—people who come to lead and support worship while regular pastors are on vacation. May we have an urgent debate on the changes to the immigration rules that are set to destroy those links and make that recruitment impossible?
Mel Stride
The best forum for furthering the hon. Gentleman’s point would be Home Office questions on Monday.
HMRC Closures
Debate between Mel Stride and Stuart C McDonald(7 years ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mel Stride
The hon. Gentleman is right: much of the debate has focused on the matters to which he refers. I am not seeking to avoid those other elements of the debate at all and was coming on to them, but I shall deal with them now, as he has raised them. HMRC has had eight very sensible criteria by which to judge where to locate the new hubs. He will know that we are looking at sustainable large sites, with the capacity to hold all HMRC’s requirements for the region in a single building. The talent pipeline, which has been mentioned, is extremely important.
Stuart C. McDonald
Everyone in the Chamber is in favour of much of the approach to digitalisation of the tax process, but does not that process itself undermine the case for saying that everyone has to be in one location? The fact that everything is being done digitally means that folk can stay in the offices that they are in currently and we can get on with it.
Mel Stride
I do not accept that point. We could take it to its logical conclusion and assume that everyone could work from home, and we could then have a very disparate workforce. There may be some attractions to that, but there is huge value in bringing people together in a single building, where there is a critical mass of individuals: collaborative working and the sharing of experience and ideas can take place, meetings can be held, and the technology is all in one place. I would have thought the hon. Gentleman would recognise that. Let us face it: if we went back to 2005, we might be debating whether we should shrink the number of offices from 600, which is what it was at that point. There will always be arguments about whether we should do things and the local impacts and so on, but this overarching direction of travel, it seems to me, has to be right.