Civil Service Compensation Scheme

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Friday 2nd December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. He is being moderate when he says that the policy is a kick in the teeth. It certainly is, and we need to remember that these civil servants deliver precious public services every day, and they deserve to be treated better.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern about the recent numbers published by the Cabinet Office in answer to my written question? The numbers seem to suggest that a disproportionate number of the civil servants who have been made redundant describe themselves as persons with disabilities.

[Chris Stephens]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and I will address the equality impact assessment. It is worth noting that, in the Enterprise Act 2016, the Government changed the cap to £95,000 a year and, in doing so, referred to people as “public sector fat cats,” despite the evidence that civil servants with 30-odd years’ service who earn less than £27,000 a year will be caught by the cap. Low-paid civil servants are not public sector fat cats.

The combined effect of all the proposed changes will be to reduce radically compensation for loyal civil servants. With cuts to the civil service compensation scheme in 2010, the recent changes to pensions, massive staff reductions and years of pay restraint, staff are left wondering what will be next.

The Government produced an equality impact assessment only once the consultation had concluded and they had produced their final response. That runs counter to the public sector equality duty, which states that such impact assessments should start in the early stages of a review and should form part of the active decision-making process.

Once it materialised, the equality impact assessment highlighted that there is a particular impact on older workers, who face both direct and indirect discrimination in the proposals. Raising the minimum age for the early access to pension option will have a direct and significant impact on those in the 50 to 54 age bracket. Meanwhile, lowering the caps on maximum compensation payments will indirectly affect older workers because they are much more likely to have long service.

Throughout, the Government have frustrated negotiations with trade unions and undermined the consultation process. The Government have shown little regard for the impact of the reforms, as illustrated by the fact that the equality impact assessment was provided only once the consultation had concluded, despite repeated requests from trade unions and Members of Parliament. Affected groups were therefore unable fully to understand the impact that the proposals would have on them in time to feed it in to the consultation. The data provided for consultation purposes did not cost individual proposals; instead, comparisons were made between the current civil service compensation scheme and the proposed future civil service compensation scheme, which suggests that the final package of reforms was a fait accompli.

Without information on how different proposals would affect different groups of workers, it was extremely difficult to conduct meaningful consultation. The Government have taken a similar obstructive approach to negotiations. In June, months before the formal response to the consultation, the Government issued a letter to trade unions outlining a set of reforms and demanding that the unions sign up to them before negotiations could continue. Those outrageous preconditions made a sham out of the negotiations. With little of significance to address and an absence of any equality impact assessment or analysis of the consultation responses, and refusing to be bullied into accepting the preconditions, trade unions representing the majority of civil servants—PCS, Unite and the Prison Officers Association—were excluded from the talks.

After months of silence, on 22 September 2016, the Government issued a formal response to the consultation, which set out drastic cuts. Alongside this came the long overdue equality impact assessment. Despite over 3,000 responses to the consultation, 95% of which disagreed with the Government’s fundamental premise about the need for reform, the Government set out a package of reforms that were little changed from their original position. The little movement made since the initial proposals has been used as leverage to blackmail trade unions into accepting detrimental changes to their members’ terms and conditions, as I outlined earlier.

The proposals will destroy civil service morale, which is already at breaking point, and as promises are broken that leaves no assurance that further attacks on terms and conditions are not soon to follow. The proposals will hinder future recruitment exercises as years of pay restraint, coupled with worse terms and conditions, make the civil service a less attractive employer.

I want to mention the process. On 20 October, I, as chair of the PCS parliamentary group, wrote to the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, but I have not had a response. I was told by him, behind the Speaker’s Chair during a Division, that he would meet me and other Members belonging to the PCS parliamentary group—there are 83 Members from both sides of the House in that group—to discuss the issue. However, in a written ministerial statement on 8 November, the Government announced that they were going ahead with the proposals, without bringing these matters to the Floor of the House. Such is the severity of the proposals that I firmly believe the Government should have made a statement in the House, so that all Members could question them on their proposals.

I pay tribute to the thousands of civil servants who will be watching this debate for all the work they do to deliver public services. I look forward to the Minister’s response, and I ask the Government to think again.

Autumn Statement

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Yes. I am not sure how much influence I will have over the Northern Ireland Executive, but next time I bump into a Member of it, I shall make that very point.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

According to the OBR, the fall in immigration following the referendum will cost the Chancellor £16 billion over five years. Surely he should be a brave and enthusiastic champion of free movement of people, with his next-door neighbour.

[Mr Hammond]

The Prime Minister has made it clear that we have to accept not only the decision of the British people to leave the European Union, but that clearly implied in that decision is a desire for control over movement across our borders. That is not the same as cutting ourselves off from Europe, or turning our backs on Europe, but there has to be control of the flow of people into the United Kingdom. The challenge, therefore, is to get a deal that effectively allows our businesses and workers to sell their products into Europe, and European businesses and workers to sell their products into the UK, while still meeting the political mandate that we have received from the British people.

Concentrix: Tax Credit Claimants

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Nuttall. Right hon. and hon. Members have already highlighted numerous ways in which our constituents have been badly affected and I want to highlight just one more. Constituents are suffering ongoing problems, even when mistakes by Concentrix are acknowledged and credits are reinstated. Having built up big debts to friends or family members, or even to childcare providers who agreed to keep working on the expectation that debts would be settled on the resolution of the tax credit problems, my constituents are now being told that they will get their back payments over the course of a year. That does not really help, because the major debts are due now. Will the Minister explain why HMRC cannot make the back payments now? It is not fair on our constituents and it is not fair on those who have had to help out when the Government have failed in their duty.

I agree that this was a rotten contract from the outset, with a commercial organisation making decisions about a claimant’s past eligibility and getting payment by results. The contract even specified how many cases— 2 million, I think—were expected to be modified, even before a single piece of evidence was considered.

Back in July 2016, the independent Social Security Advisory Committee said that the payment model would:

“potentially create a conflict of interest”.

The only bit I can quibble with there is “potentially”. It was a clear conflict of interest. It becomes hard to square information from our constituents with what we are told about the performance of the contract. I read somewhere that only 120 cases had breached the contract terms, yet I think we have had almost 120 examples of awful cases in the debate so far, so either the systems for monitoring contract performance are not up to scratch, perhaps because they rely too much on the company the performance of which is being measured, or they are monitoring the wrong things entirely.

I hope that the Government will explain what more they will do to resolve the mess, because they are not doing enough yet. Once cases are brought back in-house, they should stay there. We should not repeat the same mistakes again.

HMRC: Building our Future Plan

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I should like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) for securing this debate. There have been plenty of thoughtful and, indeed, robust contributions so far, with Members—notably all on this side of the House—doing their best to scrutinise the general principles behind HMRC’s proposals as well as individual local proposals. I shall add my tuppence-worth in a moment. What shines through in this debate is the frustration, which I share, at not having enough information or attempts at justification to enable us to do our job of scrutinising the proposals thoroughly at a strategic and local level.

Whatever view people might take of these proposals, they are certainly radical. As we have heard, thousands of jobs could be lost and a 93% cut in the number of HMRC offices could be implemented. This is not tinkering around the edges in any way, shape or form. It is therefore not only right but imperative to ask questions about how such cuts and closures will impact on HMRC’s ability to collect taxes and tackle tax dodging, particularly at a time of huge public concern over that issue in the light of the Panama papers. It is right that we should ask about the consequences for the towns and cities in which tax offices are marked for closure. It is also absolutely right that we should pose some of the many questions that the hard-working, dedicated and expert staff in our constituencies have raised.

Perhaps the Minister will be able to answer some of our questions today, but I must emphasise that debates alone will not be enough. We need the people behind these proposals to come here to explain them directly to Parliament. That would allow Members to get stuck into the nuts and bolts and to get behind the management-speak and buzzwords that are too often passed off as answers. If that does not happen, staff and taxpayers will be left questioning whether HMRC is really “building our future”, as the glossy brochure states, or whether this is in fact a question of buildings forcing our future. It has already been pointed out that this is taking place in the context of the expiry of the extraordinary contracts that were entered into in 2001, when 600 or so properties were sold to the offshore company, Mapeley Steps, and then leased back, PFI-style, to HMRC. Those contracts expire in the years leading up to 2021. In the absence of answers to our questions, many will conclude that this is more about digging HMRC out of the hole that it jumped into in 2001, rather than being about any kind of strategy. That is the only conclusion open to us.

The remaining questions are many and varied, but I shall get down to the basics of the issue. Why is 13 the magic number? Why are 13 offices preferable to 30 or 530? Why is the sensible range of hub sizes calculated at 1,200 to 6,000 staff? And if that size of office is perfectly efficient, why should offices such as Cumbernauld, which are within that range, have to close? Does the proposed configuration take suitable account of the expertise and local knowledge that can be built up by having a presence across the country? For example, the offices in Aberdeen and Inverness have experts in oil and fishing. And does it take into account the expertise that will be lost through employees being unable to travel to new locations?

The brochures and press releases tell us that saving £100 million a year by 2025 is apparently the goal. We are told:

“Moving more of HMRC’s work out of central London, which has some of the world’s most expensive office space, will enable HMRC to make substantial savings”.

How has that figure been calculated, particularly when HMRC does not know exactly where the new hubs will be? And how is the idea of moving out of expensive city centre locations consistent with closing offices in Cumbernauld, East Kilbride and Bathgate, for example, and centralising them in big prime city centre sites in Glasgow and Edinburgh? Can we see the sums?

[Hannah Bardell]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. On the specific issue of centralisation, virtually no work has been done in my constituency of Livingston to assess the impact of the proposals in relation to transport and travel. The distance between Livingston and Edinburgh is relatively short, but what about the people in Dundee who will be expected to travel? Is it not clear that this is an ill-conceived and ill-thought-out proposal?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Absolutely.

We want to see the sums and the justifications for the proposals. Will each of these local decisions be revisited if the sums do not add up? Has the effect on local communities been factored into HMRC’s considerations? Does it feature at all? I have had a similar experience to that of my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron), in that when I asked the Minister about this, his written answer stated simply that HMRC

“will undertake all necessary consultations and impact assessment work to inform”

its plans. No one is suggesting that any town or city where a public sector office is based can assume that the office will be there forever, but it is far from unreasonable to say that the local economic impact of office closures will be a significant factor in decision making, so what weight has been attached to that?

Most important to me and many MPs here are the questions of our constituents—the dedicated, skilled staff in the tax offices. They want to know whether jobs are moving with them or whether they are moving to new roles in a new location. HMRC claims that people will be better able to develop careers up to senior level, but my constituents fear that their good-quality roles will be replaced with poorer-quality work. How did HMRC calculate that 90% of employees will be within reasonable daily travel? Not only does it not know where offices will be, but reasonableness of travel does not just depend on distance but transport links, parking spaces, and accessibility. Will those issues be assessed on an individual basis?

For other staff, including a good number in my constituency, challenges arise through disabilities and care commitments. Why has HMRC not undertaken a proper equality impact assessment of its proposals? Why did HMRC change its HR policy in February 2016, particularly when redundancies were on the horizon, so that union members, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West mentioned, were no longer entitled to take a trade union rep to one-to-one discussions?

Most concerning are the questions around the 152 compulsory redundancy notices that have been served. How can they be genuine redundancies given that the work that the employees are doing is continuing, that there are no immediate plans to close the offices, and that the Department has recruited over 1,000 new staff in other locations at the same grades? What is the explanation for that? Why will HMRC’s chief executive not meet the Public and Commercial Services Union about alternatives to compulsory redundancy? How can all that be happening while HMRC is apparently spending £1 million a month on overtime to mask staffing shortfalls?

[Mark Durkan]

At Foyle House in my constituency, staff are being made compulsorily redundant while other staff are being moved in from other locations, with it supposedly being used as a stepping-stone office. Those who have been told that they are being made redundant are being told that redundancies will happen on a workstream, rather than whole-office, basis. People are getting word week by week. HMRC calls that a plan, but it cannot tell people where they stand from week to week.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I agree. That emphasises that the sums do not appear to add up and the plan is not any sort of plan, but a desperate attempt to get out of the hole that HMRC got itself in back in 2001.

The debate has been helpful and provided another opportunity to raise questions, but it also highlighted that much more scrutiny and consultation are required if we are to understand properly what the plan means for HMRC, for taxpayers, for towns and cities where offices are situated and for hard-working employees. The case for cuts and closures has not been made. We no longer need glossy brochures and buzzwords, but hard facts, detailed scrutiny and genuine consultation.

Fixed Odds Betting Terminals

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I was delighted recently to be elected the vice-chair of the new all-party parliamentary group on FOBTs. I too congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing this debate. He has said it all, and there have been many excellent contributions, so I will be incredibly brief.

Against the background of what many hon. Members have said, the degree of lax regulation of FOBTs is extraordinary. Two pounds is deemed the correct stake for machines in arcades and bingo halls—environments that have far higher levels of supervision than bookies. High-stakes gambling should take place only in highly supervised and regulated environments such as casinos. Our lax approach to FOBTs makes no sense, and it sticks out like a sore thumb compared with the equivalent regulations that apply in other European countries.

The Government promised to review stakes and prizes, but to date, they have failed to do so. The longer they prevaricate on this, the greater the damage that will be done to individuals, families, communities and, indeed, our economy. It is time for the Government to get their act together. I look forward to working with hon. Members across the House and with colleagues in the new all-party parliamentary group to ensure that that happens.

HMRC Office Closures

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to take part in this debate and to put on record the profound disappointment and, indeed, anger felt by my constituents, who have for years worked incredibly hard at Cumbernauld tax office. I want also to express the huge disquiet felt across the town at these proposals to close down our biggest employer and relocate good-quality jobs elsewhere. All that comes, as other hon. Members have said, with little in the way of explanation and even less in the way of consultation.

On any view at all, the announcement made two weeks ago about the HMRC offices is of enormous significance and has the potential to cause immense disruption to the staff affected, to the communities where those tax offices are currently based and to the services that HMRC provides in collecting taxes. It is astonishing to me that the Government think that such a major announcement does not merit so much as a ministerial statement.

I have received no correspondence from HMRC, so I feel like I have been missed out a little compared with honourable colleagues. However, my colleague Jamie Hepburn MSP received a letter similar to that sent to my hon. Friends, full of vague management-speak rather than information. There were no parliamentary debates until we secured this one. PCS representatives were not consulted on the criteria used by HMRC for site selection or on outline decisions, and they agree with neither. That is not good enough at such a huge moment for HMRC and its staff.

HMRC claims that £100 million of estate savings will be generated each year by 2025, despite not knowing where these brand-new city centre sites will be and how much they will cost. If HMRC has such confidence in the model it proposes, the supposed savings that it will make and the claimed benefits to service standards, it should have nothing to fear from extensive scrutiny, so let us have that extensive scrutiny. Will the Government agree to a full debate on, and scrutiny of these detailed proposals here in Parliament, to both public consultation and full consultation with PCS, and to the pausing of implementation while all that is under way?

To say that the months leading up to the announcement have been a frustrating and worrying time for hard-working and dedicated staff in HMRC offices across the UK would be a grave understatement. Up to 1,600 people in Cumbernauld will be directly impacted once we factor in IT staff provided by contractors, as well as catering and cleaning staff. Most frustratingly, between woolly press releases, vague correspondence and contradictory information at staff meetings, many questions remain unanswered. HMRC’s letter to my colleague Jamie Hepburn, which I think was almost identical to that received by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) and others, said that

“90% of our current workforce, including the majority of those working for us in your constituency, will be able to either work in a regional centre or see out their career in an HMRC office”.

The hon. Gentleman raised several issues arising from that letter. I would also ask, how big is the majority of staff who will continue to be able to work in HMRC offices? There is a grave lack of clarity.

The Government have said that there will be no compulsory redundancies. Yet, on the other hand, workers in Cumbernauld have been told that no voluntary packages will be available to them. Given that we know that the Government require a cut in the workforce in the west of Scotland in order to fit them in the new office, people are rightly asking whether the Government are seeking to lose staff on the cheap, hoping that they will jump without having properly to compensate them.

Staff also ask whether it is coincidence that rules on acceptable travel distances in the event of relocation have recently been tightened to their detriment and why travel allowances have been limited to three to five years. What about those who already commute from a considerable distance east or north of Cumbernauld, many of whom are closer to Edinburgh? Why are they not being allowed to choose the Edinburgh hub ahead of Glasgow? Will there be options such as home-working or other creative solutions? While measures on retraining and redeployment could be positive, we need to see so much more detail before we can judge how meaningful they are.

Most importantly, people need to know when exactly they will be expected to move. Is it soon, towards the end of the five-year period or some time in between? Is their job moving with them or are they moving to a new job in terms not only of location but of role? HMRC claims that people will be better able to develop careers up to senior levels, but my constituents fear that their good-quality roles will be replaced with poorer quality work.

On so many levels this does not seem a well thought-through plan, and it should go back to the drawing board. What is particularly perplexing in the context of Cumbernauld is that some of the proposed regional centres will hold as few as 1,200 staff. Cumbernauld hosts between 1,500 and 1,600, so why not retain it if that is efficient enough as part of the new model?

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

It truly is an honour and a privilege to make my maiden speech as the new MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East. I grew up there, I have family roots there and I will always be grateful to my fellow citizens for putting their faith in me to represent our constituency here in Parliament.

As hon. Members across the House will know, the first few weeks of life as an MP give rise to many and varied challenges. There is, for example, the huge challenge of navigating the complicated corridors of Westminster—a challenge that I failed spectacularly when I found myself, by accident, a fish out of water and the cause of considerable mirth, in the middle of a meeting of the Conservative 1922 committee. I think that I escaped, just about, with my political integrity intact.

The other major challenge that I have faced is the fact that there are two new SNP MPs called Stuart McDonald here in Westminster. Given that we spell our first names differently, I was expecting only the odd stray email or letter. In fact, in two short months, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Stewart McDonald) has managed to steal my seat on one flight to Glasgow, leaving me stranded at Heathrow; cancel two other sets of return flights; hijack one of my constituents who had travelled 500 miles to lobby me; and steal credit in Hansard for my first ever intervention in this Chamber. At such times, many words spring to mind, but “honourable” and “Friend” are not among them. Looking to the positive side, it was comforting to receive a note congratulating me on my maiden speech some four weeks before I rose to make it.

More seriously, for their assistance in helping me surmount some of the challenges, may I put on the record my thanks to all the staff in the Houses of Parliament, who have been unfailingly helpful in these frenetic first few weeks?

I also wish to pay tribute to my immediate predecessor, Gregg McClymont. A Cumbernauld lad, after school at Cumbernauld high, he studied at the universities of Glasgow, Pennsylvania and, finally, Oxford, where he taught prior to his election in 2010. His mastery of the pensions brief means that he will be missed on the Labour Benches. I know at first hand that he is definitely missed in the parliamentary football team, notwithstanding his inexplicable support for Airdrie football club. I wish him and his new wife well, as well as all his staff, as they take on their next challenges.

Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East is a constituency that is big in name, but also big in character. Situated right at the heart of Scotland, from Croy you are but 20 minutes by train from Glasgow city centre, while from Lennoxtown, you are a pleasant half hour drive over the Campsie fells to the banks of Loch Lomond. It is the best of both worlds, to use that expression in an appropriate context.

The communities of Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East have diverse histories, from old parishes and mining towns to the new town of Cumbernauld itself. The communities have shared ambitions and a determination to forge a bright new future. In the weeks before and after my election, I have been amazed at the range of community groups, residents associations, community councils, social enterprises, churches and charities that work so hard for the local people.

The ambitions of the people of Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East include secure well-paid jobs, strong communities, well-funded public services and a future free from poverty. The Budget does not support those ambitions; rather, as for millions across the country, it puts them further out of reach. The Chancellor spoke of a Budget for security, yet his Government have singularly failed to tackle the scourge of zero-hours contracts. He spoke of fixing the roof while the sun shines, but he risks the roof caving in altogether as more and more families are pushed deeper and deeper into debt, with household borrowing soaring. He spoke of boosting productivity, but he is determined to make UK workers the least protected and least invested in in western Europe. He made claims about a living wage, but, unlike the Scottish Government, his Government do not pay a living wage, and the welcome progress on the minimum wage was utterly undermined by the regressive measures he took on social security. He spoke of efficiencies, but his relentless pace of cuts risks pushing proud public services and committed public servants beyond breaking point.

Perhaps where the Chancellor’s rhetoric was most removed from reality was in his claim to be a one nation Chancellor, when all the while he was deliberately targeting those he accused of making lifestyle choices by the simple fact of claiming social security. He claimed that that was tough but fair. What is fair about systematically undermining the support for low-income families? What is fair about deliberately targeting children and young people for further cuts? My constituents have aspirations, but thanks to Tory Budgets, for far too many of them even putting food on the table at the end of the week is a difficult ambition to fulfil. This is a Budget that does not support aspiration but stifles it.

While other parties might be having some difficulty in deciding whether and what to oppose, we in the Scottish National party have no such problem, because we believe there is a better way. This party has outlined a programme to increase investment in public services while still moving towards balanced budgets. It wants to see action to tackle unfair zero-hours contracts, and we support a partnership approach between employers and employees, recognising the link between workplace rights and productivity and the fact that union participation and collective bargaining can be key drivers of fair pay and efforts to tackle inequality.

It is an honour to serve the constituents of Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East and, however they voted, I will do whatever I can to support them in achieving their ambitions for themselves, their families and their communities.