HMRC Office Closures

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

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.