HMRC Office Closures

Debate between Rob Marris and Susan Elan Jones

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rob Marris]

I do not, but again, I will say more in a couple of minutes.

At one end of the spectrum, the IOD says it broadly supports this type of change, and at the other end, the unions say they have grave misgivings. The president of the Chartered Institute of Taxation—hardly known as a supporter of the Labour party, the SNP or any political party—has said:

“Taxpayers and tax professionals alike will be anxious that a public body that is struggling to meet its public-facing service targets has announced that it is about to lose many staff and close its local offices.”

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales—I do not know what the position is in Scotland—says that the timing of the changes

“could stretch HMRC to breaking point”,

and that the restructuring of HMRC could be disruptive and could distract its leadership.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the distribution of well-qualified civil servants around the country will alter fundamentally, and that it is simply not on to say to well-qualified civil servants in north Wales that they have to go to Liverpool, no tax offices being left in north Wales at all?

[Rob Marris]

I tend to agree with my hon. Friend. I cannot make any commitment from the Front Bench that a Labour Government would keep every tax office open, but to keep this issue in proportion, in 2010 we had about 393 tax offices collecting an average of well over £1 billion each. Any business that was bringing in that amount of money would be kept open.

Assisted Dying (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Rob Marris and Susan Elan Jones

Friday 11th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rob Marris]

My understanding is that five judges expressed grave concerns about a possible breach of article 8 of the convention.

The Supreme Court has indicated that Parliament should address this issue. We have a situation in which Directors of Public Prosecutions—principally, the previous DPP, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), who hopes to speak today—have felt it necessary to issue pages and pages of guidelines on when it would be in the public interest not to prosecute in possible cases of assisted death. It is time for Parliament to grasp the issue.

Social attitudes have changed in the past 50 years. As politicians, we all know not to rely too much on opinion polls. However, opinion polling of 10,000 people by Dignity in Dying, carried out independently by Populus, has suggested that there is extremely strong support for the kind of measure I am proposing.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

Can my hon. Friend tell the House why he thinks that so many disability organisations and the British Medical Association are opposed to the Bill?

[Rob Marris]

Many disability organisations appear to think that this Bill has particular relevance to those with disabilities, but it does not. Disability is not an illness—it is rather old-fashioned to suggest that it is—and disability is certainly not a terminal illness. Despite repeated requests from its members, the British Medical Association has refused to debate this issue since 2012, and it has refused to poll its members. That is regrettable. In that context, The British Medical Journal editorial supports the Bill.