I rise to speak briefly on these amendments and new clauses. The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin) was absolutely right to mention HMRC. Successive Governments have consistently understaffed HMRC, consistently arguing that they would make it more efficient or whatever. When I was first elected to this House 19 years ago, I remember going to my local VAT office and being told that every member of staff collects
five times their salary. Being a logical sort of person, I wrote to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer and suggested that it was a good idea to employ more staff to collect more revenue for the Government. I received a letter back not from the Chancellor and not even from a junior Minister but from a civil servant, suggesting that HMRC was to save money by cutting staff. It was so irrational that it was just nonsense. That kind of nonsense has continued ever since—reducing the number of offices, making things more remote and so on. I was also not terribly impressed by the idea of having a benefits-distributing service—tax credits—going through HMRC rather than through the Department for Work and Pensions. I was not the only Opposition Member who was uneasy about that change.
I want to discuss new clause 3 and the tax treatment of workers employed through intermediaries and support my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) on the Front Bench. It has long occurred to me that intermediaries and private agencies make lots of money out of both the public purse and the people they employ. That could be overcome if we instituted a substantial public ownership programme for agencies, particularly when the public sector is involved. If there was a local authority or NHS agency for nurses, the money would either go into the pockets of the staff employed through the agency or would be saved in public spending by the health service—everyone would benefit. However, the people who would lose would be in the private sector, which could not make profits out of employing people in this way. In that way, staffing and taxation could be properly regulated. There would be no cheating, irregularities or tax fiddles, because it would all be within the publicly accountable public sector.