HMRC Office Closures

John Bercow Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

If I may, I will make a bit of progress. I am conscious that I am being generous to the people who wish to intervene, but I should also be generous to those who wish to take part in the debate.

[Mr Speaker]

Of whom—I know that the Minister will find this helpful—there are no fewer than 19. I point out very gently, because the Minister has been generous in taking interventions, that his speech, probably as a result of that, is significantly longer than that of the person who led the debate. I am sure he would not want that to be the case.

[Mr Gauke]

I certainly would not, Mr Speaker.

HMRC has done this the right way and told staff first. It has kept people fully abreast of its proposals for a number of months, and it has held events up and down the country to ensure that it works with staff. As I said earlier, this is a locations announcement, not a workforce announcement, and the Department’s policy is to keep redundancies to an absolute minimum.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rob Marris]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Before the hon. Gentleman, who is an experienced and versatile Member, replies, I remind colleagues that the convention—a fairly long-standing one—is that the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson for the party whose Opposition day it is not would ordinarily make a Front-Bench speech of about 10 minutes. The hon. Gentleman is a little over that. I am conscious that 18 Members wish to speak, and this is not a conventional Opposition day but the SNP’s Opposition day, so a brief contribution from the Labour spokesman is absolutely right and proper, but we need to get on to Back-Bench debate pretty sharpish.

[Rob Marris]

I am grateful, Mr Speaker. In fact, I had finished my speech but for the intervention. I shall respond to it briefly now. I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), and I think the Minister was very open in responding to the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). That is precisely the sort of investigation we needed before these sweeping changes were announced. There should be consultation, investigation and much more publicly available evidence.

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman confirms his reputation as a gentleman. It is very much appreciated that he took what I said literally. We shall have to start with a five-minute limit. I call Mr Philip Davies.