Oral Answers to Questions

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

I am not sure that this morning is the point at which I can provide specific examples, but I can say that this Government are very ambitious about infrastructure. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has pointed out, infrastructure is one of the ways in which we can drive up productivity. That is one of the great challenges that we face, but we as a Government are determined to address it.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

The Minister has reeled off a list of moneys going to infrastructure projects in the west midlands. Will he publish a list of all those moneys that he is delivering? Who is going to be accountable for this public money—the local enterprise partnerships, the combined authorities, the local authorities, or HS2 Ltd?

[Mr Gauke]

It was not just the money—I also rattled off the numbers. I would be delighted to provide the hon. Lady with details of the projects that have been delivered, with, as I say, 300 infrastructure schemes delivered in the west midlands and 240 infrastructure schemes delivered in the north-west. Accountability depends on the specific nature of the schemes. Clearly, over the past six years we have delivered on infrastructure, but there is more to do and we are determined to do it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

At its own request, the peer-to-peer lending industry is now regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, which is alert to the risks that my right hon. Friend identifies, but I wish to make a broader observation. In the financial crash, we saw the limitations of the UK’s credit system, where many companies were reliant on bank finance. In the last few years, we have tried to broaden the range of financing options for small and medium-sized businesses, in terms of not just capital markets but innovative new products such as peer-to-peer lending. Using things such as ISA wrappers to encourage this new form of finance for small businesses is a good thing for our economy.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

To help Welsh businesses, will the Chancellor consider abolishing the Severn crossing tolls in 2018, rather than just halving them?

[Mr Osborne]

By halving the tolls, we have taken a significant step to help Welsh businesses and businesses on the other side of the border, while ensuring we have the resources to maintain the bridge without having to draw on the same taxpayers through their tax bill.

HMRC Office Closure (Walsall)

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

I should tell the House that I do not intend taking the full time available, so Members will be spared that.

I thank the Financial Secretary for coming to the House to respond to the debate. I was alarmed and disappointed that I had to apply for this debate and was granted it so soon after the debate on HMRC closures on 29 April in this Chamber. The Minister will know there has been a worrying unilateral change on the part of HMRC, which has decided to close the Walsall office on 20 June 2016. That has been brought forward, much to the shock of people who work there.

This debate is about public servants and those who have worked in the public interest, and how we treat them. If we want society to thrive, we need a balance between the public sector and the private sector. The public sector provides the framework of a good society, doing the things that it is harder for the private sector to do and that the private sector says it wants Government to do. The debate last week showed how important it was for tax to be collected. All that revenue should go into public services, the NHS, education, skills and infrastructure, among other things.

In the previous debate I referred to the tax gap—the difference between the tax owed and the tax collected. The Minister referred to it too in his summing up. In a survey undertaken in 2014, Richard Murphy said that the tax gap stood at almost £119 billion from tax evasion. That figure has not been challenged, and that is the scale of the amount of tax that needs to come back into the public purse. We need to collect that in order to pay for everything the Government have invested in public services.

Today I hope to persuade the Minister of the case for retaining the office and dealing urgently with the issues of HMRC staff in Walsall. What happened to the Walsall office at Pattinson House offends British values and natural justice. Under “Building our Future” it was announced in November 2015 that the office was to close by March 2017. Then on 4 May HMRC decided that all personal tax staff were to be compulsorily moved to Birmingham some six weeks later, on 20 June 2016. A collective grievance had been brought against the office, and many staff fear that this announcement may be a reprisal for the collective grievance and a petition. I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) in the Chamber. He and I were in the town centre that day and we saw how the public responded to the petition: some 500 signatures were collected in about an hour and a half, supporting the retention of the office. I do not believe I have had a response to the petition from the Department or from the Select Committee.

The grounds for the collective grievance were that HMRC failed to follow Cabinet Office redundancy protocols, including moving the administrative assistants into redundancy procedures unnecessarily; HMRC denied trade union representation in one-to-one discussions with staff about whether they could practically travel to Birmingham; HMRC failed to carry out an equality impact assessment for the closure; HMRC refused to offer staff the opportunity to move to sites other than Birmingham, despite alternative sites being more accessible for some staff; HMRC ignored evidence of increased journey times for Walsall staff, in favour of an unproven use of a variant of Google maps to estimate journey times; and HMRC refused to subject the closure plans to parliamentary scrutiny or to accept accountability for them. HMRC eventually responded to the grievance, but only to claim that it failed to meet the Department’s test of a legitimate grievance. HMRC refused to investigate the grievance under the Department’s procedures.

It cannot be right that the guidelines have not been followed and that the closure has been brought forward to June. The Minister has said in written answers and to the House that HMRC had given a commitment to staff that they would have a one-to-one meeting with their manager to discuss their options at least one year ahead of their office closure. That clearly has not happened in the case of Walsall. He also said that changing locations was not cutting staff, but the staff in Walsall have been given no choice and some are being made redundant. The Minister has also said that it is an operational matter, but who is the executive of HMRC accountable to? When the Minister said that the Government had asked HMRC to reduce costs, that is a policy matter, not an operational matter. The Minister said that the change would make it quicker and easier for taxpayers to report and pay their taxes online. Does that include those who have offshore accounts?

There are still appeals outstanding. Those who are out of scope for a move do not know what will happen to them. There are still concerns about travel support. The Public and Commercial Services Union has not been consulted. It was just told that a resource planning project had been announced. Now staff have been given six weeks to reorganise their lives and their caring responsibilities, when they were expecting that period to be almost a year.

I want to touch on the impact on Walsall. Walsall South has consistently higher levels of unemployment claimants than the rest of the region and the UK—4.4% of constituents claimed unemployment benefits, compared with a UK-wide figure of 2.5%. An assessment by Coventry City Council suggested that with the loss of quality jobs, almost £1.5 billion would be taken out of the local economy—a figure that I have cited before. Walsall South cannot afford to lose such a sum.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

I am pleased that my hon. Friend is putting the case so well. Does she agree that if HMRC’s decision goes ahead, it will have a negative effect on the borough as a whole? It is undesirable. A public body such as HMRC should not act in an arbitrary manner, as my hon. Friend has explained. Would it not be useful for the Minister, when he replies, to try to persuade HMRC to change its decision?

[Valerie Vaz]

I agree. The Government seem to do some things well—impose contracts on junior doctors, summarily change employees’ contracts, and dismiss them with no consultation and no negotiation.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

You would think that the Government would be a model for industrial relations, bearing in mind the fact that we pass the legislation in this place; instead, they are becoming the worst employer. More importantly, has my hon. Friend had cases where the public have faced long delays? I had cases like that over Christmas, and I have raised them here many times. At the end of the day, this is about the impact on the public as well as the staff.

[Valerie Vaz]

I absolutely agree. When unions and the Government are working together, and when unions and employers are working together, there can be a situation where something like the steel industry does not just collapse and we can move forward. We cannot move forward on anything unless we have negotiation and consultation, and that was clearly lacking in this case.

The sad thing about this case is that the majority of the employees are women. The vast majority have worked in the Walsall office for 15 years, and some have worked there for over 30 years. Their average age is 50—yet again, we have women of a certain age being discriminated against, and those with long service and knowledge being ignored. This will have a huge impact on their lives.

Where are the consultation, discussion and negotiation that are the bedrock of a civilised society? Will the Minster look at why some redeployment appeals are still outstanding? It is not clear how many people fall within the requirements regarding reasonable daily travel to Birmingham. What is the position of those who are out of scope? Could staff be offered redeployment in a nearer office, such as Wolverhampton? Could the three administrative assistants be offered promotion? Could long-serving staff be offered enhanced early retirement?

It is in everyone’s interests to have a modern, fit-for-purpose office and up-to-date facilities—the Minister, I and everyone else agree on that. However, I would ask him not to close the office. Given the length of experience there, new work can be taken on. That would save money on rent and relocation.

The staff at Pattison House have given all these years to their country, and there is an accountability issue in terms of HMRC as a non-ministerial Government body. If HMRC is accountable to Parliament, the Minister should be able to look at the reasonable suggestions I have made. He may say that this is an operational matter, but that means that he is powerless in the face of an important department, and HMRC is not then accountable to Parliament. That would make a mockery of the Prime Minister’s anti-corruption summit, which will be held on Thursday, because HMRC should be focusing its efforts on closing the tax gap, not closing offices. There will be no one in HMRC offices with local knowledge who can assist the public to pay their taxes without the help of accountancy or legal trickery.

I hope the Minister will respond positively for the sake of the staff and their families. We owe that to them for their years of public service.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)]

May I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) on securing the debate? I welcome the opportunity to discuss HMRC’s proposals and, I hope, to address some of the points she raised.

Before doing so, it is worth recapping briefly on what we are trying to achieve with HMRC. The organisation provides an essential service to people in the United Kingdom, not only helping hard-working families with the benefits they need, but making sure that the taxes that fund our vital public services get paid. We want to help HMRC do that better. We want it to be faster and more efficient. We want it to cost less but to deliver more for taxpayers and tax credit recipients. We want it to focus on our top priority: tackling tax evasion and avoidance.

We have already done a lot to move in that direction. Since 2010, we have driven down the tax gap—the difference between what HMRC should theoretically bring in and what it actually collects—to just over 6%, which is one of the lowest rates in the world. That progress is important; without it, we would not have collected £14.5 billion in extra tax. The hon. Lady quoted Richard Murphy’s £119 billion estimate of the tax gap. She said that, as far as she is aware, that figure has not been challenged, but it has been challenged repeatedly, and it is not a number we accept by any means. None the less, it is important that we reduce the tax gap.

We have also committed to investing £1.3 billion in HMRC to make sure it can offer the digital services people expect in the 21st century, and we have committed millions more to improve customer services.

By the end of this Parliament, therefore, customers will start to see real improvements, whether that is reduced call waiting times, finding it quicker and easier to pay taxes online, or being able to use HMRC’s special phone line for businesses. Furthermore, by 2020, we expect HMRC to be saving £700 million a year, as well as delivering an additional £1 billion in revenue in 2020-21.

However, we want to go further. We want to save £100 million a year by 2025, by transforming the estate the HMRC works through and by creating a smaller but more highly skilled organisation. When HMRC was formed in 2005, it had 570 offices spread all over the country. That could hardly be termed efficient, and even now, in 2016, HMRC has around 170 offices, ranging in size from 5,700 people to fewer than 10. In the case of the Walsall office, at Pattison House, for example, there are 56 employees.

Back in November, therefore, HMRC announced its intention to finish the job of making itself more efficient. Over the next 10 years, the department will bring its employees together in large, modern offices in 13 main locations serving every region and nation in the UK. Those offices will be equipped with the digital infrastructure and training facilities they need to work effectively. Not only will these new offices encourage people to work more closely together, but they will provide more opportunities for them to develop their careers.

HMRC is fully aware that its most valuable asset is its people, and I commend the hon. Lady for her interest in the arrangements we are making for the around 56 employees of HMRC in Walsall for when the office is closed. I would like to reassure hon. Members that we are committed to making sure that the people in Walsall—indeed in every HMRC office—are supported through the changes and informed every step of the way.

First, I should remind the House that this is about changing the locations, not cutting staff. Although the Walsall office, in Pattison House, will be closed in 2016-17, HMRC hopes that everyone who is able to will transfer to an office in central Birmingham and then to a regional centre in Birmingham that will be home to over 3,000 staff.

In February, HMRC made sure that everyone in Walsall had the chance to discuss, on a one-to-one basis, how this will affect them. In particular, that meant checking whether they will be within a reasonable daily commute of the new office and finding out what support they may need to make the move. That could, for example, include an extra contribution towards travel. It is worth pointing out that someone who lives within a reasonable daily commute of another office could get support for up to three years with any additional transport costs. Those outside the reasonable daily travel requirements could receive support with their fares for up to five years. There is therefore support for individuals, which can be considered on a one-to-one basis. However, we remain confident that most people will be able to travel to the new office in central Birmingham.

HMRC will also be asking its Walsall staff to change their area of expertise. As the hon. Lady will be aware, many of them currently specialise in personal tax. As part of HMRC’s restructure, it will be asking them to put their skills to good use in new roles in debt management. To help them make that change, HMRC will be running a full programme of induction and learning.

To address the hon. Lady’s point about why the process has been accelerated, jobs are now available in Birmingham in debt management. The desire is for those jobs to be filled as quickly as possible, and HMRC believes that the staff in Walsall are well placed to perform these roles. That is the reason this has been offered.

[Valerie Vaz]

First, if the Minister disputes the figure of £119 billion of tax avoidance, will he drop me a letter to say how he calculates that so that I can put it to the source? Secondly, this has not been communicated to the staff in Walsall, who were not told that they have been given other jobs; all they were told was that the office would close. The Minister has not dealt with why the process was accelerated.

[Mr Gauke]

These debt management roles are available in Birmingham, and it makes sense for people currently working in Walsall who are capable of moving to Birmingham to fill them at the earliest opportunity. That is why this has been done. As I say, it was announced in November that Walsall was going to close in the course of the year 2016-17. As these roles in debt management are available, it makes sense to move quickly to fill them.

I am happy to write to the hon. Lady about the tax gap. HMRC publishes its own estimate of the tax gap that is based on considerable work and makes use of highly skilled statisticians. The National Audit Office has described it as “credible”, if I remember correctly. Mr Murphy’s estimates are well known to be controversial—let us put it that way—so this will not come as a surprise to him. He is very well aware that HMRC’s estimate of the tax gap is very different from his. I will set out in my letter some of the reasons why HMRC believes that Mr Murphy’s estimate is not credible. I have debated this issue on a number of occasions, so it would be more than a pleasure to set it out once again.

[Mr Gauke]

I note the hon. Gentleman’s points. This was announced in November last year. PCS was present for the announcement and has been engaged throughout this period. I do not accept that HMRC has acted in an arbitrary way. There has been consultation and a series of one-to-one meetings.

Let me pick up on a point raised by the hon. Member for Walsall South about the administrative assistants in cases where there are no suitable roles within debt management. A personal tax team within HMRC is working with those individuals to see whether they are suitable for promotion to a higher grade and, if so, whether they could be offered posts within debt management.

It is necessary, in the view of HMRC—a view that the Government support—to move towards fewer offices where there is an ability to concentrate staff and to have greater flexibility as to the work that they undertake. It will also ensure that there is greater availability of career opportunities within the regional centres. That is the direction that HMRC is going in—we support that—and it does require staff to be moved from some of the smaller offices to the regional centres, in this case to Birmingham.

[Valerie Vaz]

This is the first time I have heard the term “debt management” in this regard. As a previously practising lawyer, I know what that means. In effect, these staff have been deskilled. They are going from personal taxation into debt management, which is just chasing debts.

[Mr Gauke]

No, I do not accept the description of debt management as a deskilled role. Debt management often involves making judgments on whether, for example, a business should enter into a time-to-pay arrangement, which is a highly skilled and sensitive role. HMRC’s assessment is that the teams in Walsall are well placed to be retrained to perform this role within debt management. Debt management is not an unskilled role within HMRC.

[Mr Gauke]

As far as I am aware, there is no suggestion that people will be put into a lower grade as a consequence of these changes. In a couple of cases, HMRC is looking at whether the move will involve a promotion for those members of staff, but there is no suggestion that anyone would have a reduction in pay. As I outlined earlier, this has to be worked out on a one-to-one basis. Staff may find that they are getting a contribution for up to three years for their additional travel costs as a consequence of a move.

[Valerie Vaz]

rose—

[Mr Gauke]

I will give way to the hon. Lady one last time.

[Valerie Vaz]

How many jobs have become available in Birmingham?

[Mr Gauke]

I think a significant number of jobs are available. The question is how many of the Walsall staff are in a position to move to Birmingham. There is no suggestion of those who are capable of moving to Birmingham entering into redundancy. Jobs are available for Walsall staff. As I say, the jobs in debt management should not be demeaned, criticised, or suggested to be of a particularly low-skilled nature.

We are determined to keep moving forward in helping HMRC do its crucial job more and more effectively. That is why we are supporting these changes, which put the interests of taxpayers at the heart of what HMRC does. HMRC is working closely with all the staff who will play their part in this important reform, and it is determined to continue to do so throughout the process. I hope that hon. Members will join me in commending the work that HMRC does. Although I may not have persuaded the hon. Member for Walsall South, I wish to reassure her that HMRC will continue to work with staff based in Walsall. These changes will help to move HMRC forward to become a more effective, efficient and successful organisation.

Question put and agreed to.

HMRC: Building our Future Plan

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Could I just suggest that we try to aim for between five and six minutes, in order to give everybody the same amount of time?

[Valerie Vaz]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I assume that that was an intervention, so I will get an extra minute! I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) for securing this Backbench Business debate, and, of course, the Backbench Business Committee.

This is an important debate. The Government can raise money in three ways: create it, borrow it or raise taxes. The main purpose of HMRC, the subject of the debate, is to collect taxes. That enables the Government to take back what they have spent on public services. I want to focus on whether HMRC works, where it is going and what can be done to change it to make it more accountable.

The governance arrangements are quite bizarre, for a democracy. Given HMRC’s importance in collecting taxes, the fact that it is a non-ministerial Department is incongruous. There is no Minister to hold to account on behalf of the people for whom it ostensibly works. It is governed by a board, on which four out of five non-execs are from big business. There is no representation from pay-as-you-earn taxpayers, of which there are 31 million, or even from small businesses. There appears to be no accountability and no acting in the public interest. That needs to change.

From the Occupy movement at St Paul’s in 2011 to the Panama papers, the public are becoming more aware of what happens to the tax people pay—or, in fact, do not pay. They are becoming more aware of the fact that after a few lunches, large corporations can get the light-touch treatment. Google paid the equivalent of 3% in corporation tax. In 2011, Starbucks paid no corporation tax. Mr Deputy Speaker, I do not know whether you know the joke about people who wanted to raise awareness about the fact that Starbucks was not paying tax. They would go in, ask for a coffee and say that their name was “no tax”, so that the barista who came back with their coffee would call out, “Coffee for no tax!” That has had a huge effect on making people aware that Starbucks was not paying any money.

It has been pointed out by the International Business Times that Shell, British American Tobacco, Lloyds banking group and Vodafone all paid nothing in corporation tax. You will remember, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the former head, David Hartnett, had 10 lunches with KPMG, and it had its tax liability reduced. It even has a non-executive representative on the board.

Where is HMRC going now? As the hon. Member for Glasgow South West suggested, the document is called “Building our Future”, but its subtitle should be “Tearing it down”. I concur with him. The future of the country really depends on the amount of tax that is put back into the economy in Britain. Instead of investing in people who have skills, expertise, a commitment to public service and institutional memory, HMRC is reducing that capacity. In 2005, it had 105,000 members of staff, but in 2016 it has only 58,000. That is a reduction of nearly 50%.

HMRC is closing 170 offices, presumably to sell off the public estate to developers, and replacing them with 13 regional tax centres; actually, they are call centres. It plans to save £100 million, but it could recoup that if it closed the tax gap. I do not know whether you know this, Mr Deputy Speaker, but the tax gap is the difference between the tax owed and the tax collected. In 2013-14, it amounted to about £34 billion, and I think the current figure is about £25 billion. That is a lot of money.

Since 2010, only 11 people have been prosecuted by HMRC, despite the fact that it was given a list of 3,600 British people who hid their money in Switzerland. Revenue and Customs has not quite worked out that if it has more staff, it can collect more tax; and that the more people it employs, the more tax they pay and contribute to the economy. No wonder the wealthy—the 1%—are laughing all the way to the Cayman Islands.

The closure of the offices is having a direct impact on my constituency. Walsall faces the closure of its HMRC office, with the loss of 60 staff. My constituent Sahin Kathawala has said that she may not even qualify for one of the relocated jobs. If they are lucky, staff will have to go to Birmingham, where rents are higher so it will be more expensive to live there. It will be more expensive for staff to travel to Birmingham, so they will incur certain costs. My local people in Walsall South will have to telephone a call centre, rather than being lucky enough to have face-to-face contact like that between Dave Hartnett and KPMG. The Public Accounts Committee said in 2013 that the telephone services were absolutely abysmal, and The Telegraph reported that half of all calls to HMRC were not answered. The impact of that could be millions of people paying the wrong amount of tax.

This week in Walsall, we have had the news that BHS might close, and who knows what will happen to our local BHS. With the closure of the HMRC office, nearly £l million will be lost from the local economy, which Walsall cannot afford to lose.

PCS says that the plan is designed not to maximise tax collection, but to reduce spending, which is the opposite of what HMRC’s main objective should be. What can be done? I do not know if you have read “The Joy of Tax” by Richard Murphy, Mr Deputy Speaker, but it is very much worth reading. I think it should be required reading for everyone, including sixth-formers. In his books on making economics easy, which we should all read, Ha-Joon Chang says that people do not need to be economists to understand economics. Richard Murphy has said that HMRC should become a Government Department in its own right, subject to proper parliamentary scrutiny and to independent review.

We need to retain our local tax offices with local staff who have information about the local economy; stop the relocation until an equality impact assessment has been done; and invest in more staff. HMRC must reduce the tax gap, not the workforce. In that way, we can stop the outflow of capital and give back to the public purse all it is owed. After all, it is the Government who put in the investment in education, skills and infrastructure that enable communities, companies and the workforce to thrive.

Short Money and Policy Development Grant

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

I cannot speak for what happened while we were in opposition, but I can confirm that we have on occasion handed back parts of, I think, the policy development grant because we were unable to spend it and we felt that it was appropriate to ensure that the taxpayer was reimbursed.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware that 63% of the British population did not vote for this Government, and those people need to have their voices heard when policies hurt them. This is not about money for hotel rooms during by-elections; this is about democracy. Will the Minister start the consultation after the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee has reported?

[John Penrose]

We are all anxious to crack on with this as soon as we can, and we would like to start the consultation shortly. Given the level of interest that has been made evident during this urgent question, I am sure that we would be criticised further if we were to delay the consultation. I would like to get on with it soon, if we can, and to allow plenty of time for people to respond over a period of weeks. I am sure that the Select Committee’s Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), will understand that timetable and that he will time his Committee’s investigations appropriately.

HMRC and Google (Settlement)

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

We always seek to ensure that HMRC has the powers and resources it needs. For example, in the July Budget last year we announced a requirement for large tax companies to set out explicitly what their tax strategy is, and we will be legislating for that in the Finance Bill.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

To clarify the misinformation, under the law of the land what is Google’s theoretical tax liability?

[Mr Gauke]

The statutory rate for Google is exactly the same as the statutory rate for everybody else.

Elections for Positions in the House

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I thank him for that. We will hope to secure an improvement in the next Parliament.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is in fact further to the point of order raised by the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie). Could we have your guidance on whether or not a referral relates to a letter that has gone to the Standards Committee or a letter to you? Should the hon. Lady not have given us a courtesy when she released informal notes of conversations in meetings of a Select Committee to the media and in Prime Minister’s questions?

[Mr Speaker]

I am genuinely grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order. She is, of course, a member of the Committee in question and therefore has a very direct interest. I hope she will not take it amiss if I say that I think my fairly comprehensive response to the point of order from the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) treated of those matters. I acknowledged the veracity of what she had said, but I also made the point about courtesies and confidentiality and, by implication, the inappropriateness of breaching such conventions. I hope colleagues will feel that there is nothing that now needs usefully to be added.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for a member of a Select Committee who has been involved in a serious leak and a possible breach of privilege in this House then to raise that, as happened today at Prime Minister’s questions in a question from the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie), thus exacerbating the situation the Committee has found itself in? I would be grateful for your advice.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Other members of the Health Committee are also affected. The hon. Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) has openly leaked the private considerations of the Committee. What action can be taken immediately?

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

May I just say that we are raising a matter where a Member is being discussed? I presume that they are aware that this matter was going to be raised as a point of order.

Oral Answers to Questions

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

I did indeed see the fantastic work at Anthony Best Dynamics, which supplies 20 out of the top 20 automotive companies in the world. Yesterday, the Deputy Prime Minister and I visited the Transport Research Laboratory to announce £500 million of support over the next five years to ensure that the United Kingdom is the best place in the world to develop and manufacture ultra-low emission vehicles.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

According to the Office for National Statistics, unemployment in the west midlands has risen to 8.2%. Can the Chancellor explain why?

[Mr Osborne]

The statistics for the hon. Lady’s constituency show that unemployment is down 20%, youth unemployment is down 20% and long-term unemployment is down 20%. In the west midlands, during the boom years—the unsustainable boom—private sector employment actually fell. That points to what went wrong with the previous Government—they put all the bets on the City of London, the shadow Chancellor did not regulate it properly, it blew up and we are now retrieving the situation that he created.

Consumer Rights Bill

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman is correct that an undertaking was made, which I understand is in process. Different Departments are proceeding at different speeds, but there is a commitment to do this. If he wants more information on it, I will try to get it to him. It is a perfectly legitimate complaint that people have.

The consumer law enforcement powers establish a primary authority to improve co-ordination. The enhanced consumer measures relate to the law and the gap between criminal and civil law in relation to consumer enforcement. At the moment, consumers rarely get their money back when a business breaks consumer law. That is partly because criminal courts are reluctant to award consumers redress and enforcers are often unable to seek redress in the civil courts. There is a common law remedy, but it is often difficult to realise it. What then tends to happen is that the more extreme cowboys are prosecuted on criminal grounds, but compensation, particularly for lesser levels of abuse, is more difficult to obtain. The legislation will enhance consumer measures to give enforcers greater flexibility to get the best outcome for consumers.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has set out a lot of rights for consumers. What has been the impact of the lack of legal aid for those consumers to enforce those rights?

[Vince Cable]

Many of these issues are dealt with through small claims courts. I recognise that there is often a difficulty in enforcing claims in the small claims courts. I am not sure that legal aid is the central issue there. It is a question of ensuring that, when court remedies are imposed by the courts, they enforce them and there are proper fines on companies that do not yield at that point.

The measures on the civil courts seek to ensure that there are properly specified rights aimed at giving consumers their money back, giving them more information and increasing business compliance. We must try to ensure that the measures are reasonable and proportionate, and that there is flexibility. Let me give a concrete example, because this is a slightly abstract and legalistic issue. Under a more flexible regime, a furniture retailer that has made false promises on delivery dates may not only have to give consumers their money back, but have to advertise in the press or social media what they are doing to put the situation right. They may also be required to change their internal systems to ensure that there is no repeat of the breach of the law. Essentially, the changes will enable enforcement to take place in a much more flexible way that reflects the circumstances of particular companies and customers.