It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) for securing this important debate through the Backbench Business Committee. He made a thorough and detailed analysis of what is an appalling situation for our constituencies—particularly in Scotland. Many thousands of people face losing their jobs at HMRC, in a significant blow to local employment and our local economies.
Before the debate, I looked at some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East in his speech, and I discussed them with HMRC staff. We wrote a letter to the Minister’s Department about the closure of Centre 1 in my constituency and the associated tax offices. The talent pipeline cuts very deep, despite the suggestion that we do not have one, and I assure the Minister that there is an extraordinarily skilled and talented workforce in my constituency and throughout the other centres that are being cut.
My constituency is home to one of Scotland’s best known tax offices, Centre 1, which we want to keep there. It is named Centre 1 because it was to be Scotland’s centre for tax collection. In my constituency, it is synonymous with tax affairs, our skilled workforce and our families’ livelihoods. Like most local people, I have friends and family members who work for HMRC in the tax office. It is vital to my constituency, and the very idea that it could leave is absolutely devastating to all.
Staff members to whom I have spoken have voiced real concerns about the closures. They worry about the impact of staffing reductions on their ability to do their job well. They worry about having to travel to a new and unknown site, and about the difficulty of finding childcare or disability parking, given increased time away from home for part-time workers and others. They are also significantly concerned about the lack of consultation.
When the proposals were first mooted in the previous Parliament, I met the Treasury and was reassured that I would at least be kept up to date with what was happening about lease proposals. I have heard nothing since and have had to submit parliamentary questions to tease out the information, which I continue to chase. It feels as though my constituency and our workers are being ignored. They do not deserve that, because they have served the United Kingdom in terms of tax revenues so well for so many years.
I entirely agree with the comments of the hon. Member for Keighley (John Grogan) about impact assessments, which are crucial. I cannot understand why such assessments have not been undertaken. In the previous Parliament, I asked the Secretary of State for Scotland about them, but he would give me no reassurances that they would ever be conducted. We are now in the process of conducting our own assessments. That is appalling—surely it is incumbent on the Government to look at the impact that closures and plans might have on communities.
Our HMRC staff are specialists in their field and take great pride in their roles. As has been mentioned, decisions such as the ones we are discussing have a detrimental impact on morale, creating stress, anxiety and sickness absence. HMRC staff should be supported because they do such vital work and the tax income is vital to our public services in general. There is a knock-on effect; we cannot think that lower morale and productivity might have a positive effect on our constituents. We have to invest in the staff, make them feel important and listen to their concerns about what the closures mean for them.
We do not want to see staff uprooted from their established bases and communities and centralised in city-centre offices, which surely cannot be more cost-effective than those in the outskirts of towns. I have yet to hear about lease agreements and arrangements—no update—so it is difficult to make any comprehensive analysis.
My constituency has a “Stay in EK”—East Kilbride—campaign, which is supported by just about everyone locally, whether the media, me, the MSP, local councillors from all parties, the public or HMRC staff. The issue is fundamental for us. I urge the Minister to pause, to have a moratorium, to look at impact assessments and to think about the constituencies that will be devastated by the proposed closures.
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