The following comes from the PCS union blog and I reproduce it because I think it right and am happy to support that union's demands having worked with them on numerous occasions on this issue:
The department had said it would make an announcement to staff at lunchtime today, but details have been leaked to the media.
We believe the plans, being announced while parliament is in recess, "pose a significant threat to the operation of HMRC, its service to the public and the working lives of staff".
The threat is so severe, we believe, that as well as entering into genuine negotiations, it says HMRC must launch a high-profile public consultation and allow its proposals to be subject to full parliamentary scrutiny. We have previously pledged to support shadow chancellor John McDonnell's review of HMRC's role and resources.
Last week MPs on the public accounts committee criticised HMRC's "woefully inadequate" efforts to tackle tax evasion, raised fresh concerns about aggressive tax avoidance and said they feared the telephone helpline service was so bad it was "having an adverse impact on the collection of tax revenues".
Since 2010, more than 10,000 jobs have been cut from the department and 250 offices have closed, plus the network of 281 walk-in tax enquiry centres. The union says it is clear that with so few sites planned to remain, the livelihoods of thousands of current employees are being needlessly put at risk.
HMRC is currently not planning to subject these proposals to parliamentary scrutiny or public consultation, and we have yet to see any assessment of the impact on staff with disabilities or caring responsibilities, or the socio-economic and environmental effects of such a large-scale closure programme.
Local presence vital
MPs and tax experts have previously supported our view that a visible, local HMRC presence is essential to maintaining confidence in our tax system and ensure taxpayers comply with their obligations.
PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: "No one should be in any doubt that, if implemented, these proposals would be absolutely devastating for HMRC and the people who work there.
"Closing this many offices would pose a significant threat to the operation of HMRC, its service to the public and the working lives of staff, and the need for parliamentary scrutiny of the plans is undeniable and urgent."
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Sent this to Guardian this week:
How disappointing to see that Liz Homer, the chief executive of HMRC, was given such an easy ride by the Treasury select committee (HMRC failing to answer quarter of 50m a year phone queries,11/11/15). Admittedly, there was a gentle ticking off for the lamentable customer service, but what about the report from the public accounts committee which criticised HMRC for its “woefully inadequate number of prosecutions for offshore tax evasion”, and the subsequent excuse, for the eleven prosecutions for offshore tax evasion in the last five years, that exorbitant court costs prohibited more cases (HMRC`s unanswered helplines impede tax collection, say MPs,04/11/15)?
The committee was fobbed off with dubious and unfounded claims that the amount of uncollected tax in Britain is “no worse than in many other countries”, stating the tax gap to be £34bn. This, of course, does not take into account tax evasion, only avoidance. HMRC has done next to nothing about tax havens where trillions are squirrelled away, rather than paid to the Treasury; the British Overseas Territories, according to War on Want, together “rank as the most significant tax haven in the world”, ahead of even Switzerland. The reality is that there is no income tax, corporation tax, sales tax, wealth tax or any other direct tax in the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands account for 40% of the world`s offshore companies, and Bermuda remains Google`s favourite tax haven. Setting an example by taking some individuals to court, and letting them face the consequences, even if the costs amounted to hundreds of millions, would be more than worth it, as a deterrent to all evaders!
Government policy, far from publicly condemning all non-payment of tax as “morally repugnant”, now appears to have U-turned. Cameron`s worldwide endorsement of Greene King, whose battle to justify a tax avoidance scheme bought from Ernst and Young for 10% of all the tax saved, suffered two defeats in the lower tax courts, and widespread condemnation from MPs, including from the then chair of the public accounts committee Margaret Hodge, suggests no hint of any businesses “smelling the coffee” (A man walks into a pub, orders a large export boom…10/11/15).
Andrew Tyrie is the archetypal gate-keeper whose real job is to prevent true scrutiny. Announce an inquiry to great fanfare. Publish a mealy-mouthed report that provides a mild ticking off and everyone can go away content that there’s been an inquiry. Sadly the new Public Accounts Committee has reverted to type with the departure of Margaret Hodge. I can’t imagine HMRC announcing these closures day after such a damning report by the PAC under her leadership.
Seeing as HMRC can’t even manage such a simple task as answering the phone in their present structure, I have little sympathy for their views on how to run their business. Any reorganisation can hardly make things worse.
Unfortunately, back in the real world, the problem you complain about, failure to answer the phone, is the direct result of running the organisation as a business.
Running an activity like collecting all the taxes due requires a public service ethos and approach which considers those it interacts with as citizens rather than mere consumer drones (which is the approach taken when running something as a business) and which treats that interaction as a service rather than a commercial transaction.
The inability to answer the phone is a direct result of the business ethos of “cutting costs”, a large part of which involves transferring the cost of an activity in time and work from the “business” to the mug known as the “customer.” Any public service ethos which used to exist in what is still (inaccuraty) referred task licence service organisations like HMRC has log been managed out of the organisation in favour of private sector approaches, methods, and techniques.
The euphemism “cutting costs” involves reducing staff levels by a process involving substitution of human beings in the process by technology. Which is why whenever you have the misfortune to contact any organisation, be it HMRC, DVLC, your energy/water/ telco supplier, whoever, instead of being able to pop down the road or into town to speak to a human being and look them in the whites of their eyes, you end up on the end of a metal Micky phone system pressing buttons and listening to some obscure piece of classical music for hours on end because; there are just not enough people to deal with the volume, they’ve all been made redundent; sacked on some spurious trumped management staff reduction target which involves a bonus for the numpty that calls themselves a manager; or they’ve had enough of putting up with nonsense ways of doing a job designed by people who have not got a clue (but do have a Micky Mouse MBA) and they’ve just left, totally disillusioned.
And it does not matter which organisation you pick, those who remain are mainly young and moulded in the image of the numpties running the show. Young, old or middle aged, there is no scope for common sense, you have to follow a set script when you are on the end of that phone. There is no such thing as changing context, just the script, the never to be questioned or deviated from process. Trying to do more and more, with less and less in the vainglorious and futile pursuit of being able to do everything with nothing.
And you seriously harbour the delusion, for a delusion is what it is,that things cannot get worse at HMRC as a result of this so called reorganisation? Oh dear. Are you in for a shock (not that anyone who claims to be ‘on the right’ would ever admit such are thing in this context). There are are great many of us still around who have not only seen reorganisations like this, we have lived,worked through and experienced them, and the nonsense results, first hand.
So stop whinging Jim. Those who vote for this bollox should be miles behind the very back of the queue when it comes to complaining.
Impressive piece, Dave. Your analysis rings lots of bells with me, in my experience first working for BP, when it downsized, delayered, and lost the vestiges of public service that had remained from its old ShellMex-BP, 49% nationally owned existence. Then I lived through the first big close down of HMRC estate, across the country, as IT supplier (EDS) account manager for the head office function. It was ruthless and virtually unquestioned at higher levels, but devastating on the ground. And of course, extremely damaging to the effectiveness of tax collection and compliance in the community. Similarly, with my JP hat on, the local justice system has been undermined by court closure, and amalgamation of benches into county wide jurisdictions, all in the name of cost saving, and efficiency. It didn’t even work for BP, but certainly isn’t appropriate in the public sector.
As there will be no HMRC offices east of Nottingham does that mean Downham Market will become a hotbed of tax evasion ?!
Seriously though, to abandon huge areas of the country means that the fraudsters will be laughing their way to the bank
That is my fear
And as for Great Yarmouth….
If the alternative (under the current administration) is cuts to education or health then HMRC is a much easier target.
By worked with do you mean you have received remuneration for working with them or count them among your current clients/sources of funds? I assume the point of the statement was to declare an interest and avoid ambiguity so could be a little clearer.
PCS have paid me to do work for them
Lack of local knowledge and the end of on the spot inspections will lead to a reduction in tax compliance. A simple example – when I was with Customs and Excise I visited a machinery dealer in a fairly remote area to examine the records – I noticed two very expensive Range Rovers behind a shed and asked if they were for sale, the dealer shamefacedly admitted they were but he had “forgotten” to put in them in his records. The application of local knowledge and regular on site visits to businesses had a huge preventive effect.When the Department started to withdraw from regular periodic VAT inspections to all local businesses I queried the wisdom of this but was crticised by management for not behaving in a “corporate manner”. The current proposals by the Board of HMRC are in my opinion verging on the negligent and a dereliction of their duty to protect the Revenue.
Being able to tell clients they would have VAT inspections was a great weapon for me as an accountant – it put the fear of God in them
But no more
And that’s a disaster for tax compliance
And intended to be so.
The little man/woman has to eventually talk to a call-centre operative, probably in Malaya/Taiwan/Korea/India, and try and get some sense made of their problem/s.
As anyone who has had to “resolve” a problem with BT/TalkTalk/Virgin etc knows; nothing gets done except for heightened blood pressure.
The country is fast going the same way as parts of the US, where tarmaced roads are being dug-up and graded as tracks…after all, if the government cannot/will-not collect tax, and cannot/will-not borrow to fund expenditure, they are faced with having to spend less. Which brings us to where we are now.
Of course, as call-me-dave-rather-than-the-name-I-should-be-called is finding out, cutting the money is fine as long as you can live with the cuts in associated services (or as long as the sheep can live with the cuts). When people suddenly notice that their £140/month council tax is still being collected, but services are reduced to a skeleton, things start to get interesting. Locally, services have been reduced to the point where staff, rather than work alone doing a job previously done by a team of six, are just leaving (many have departed on early pension….)
The problem the MP for Whitney should have noticed is that it is no good whining as an MP about local problems, when it is his day job as PM that has led to them.
Of course, if we had a free , uncorrupted-by-rich-owners, press, then stories like that may have got into the public consciousness sooner.
No doubt a VirginLocalGov service will start soon….to go with VirginIllHealth
But Council Tax only covers 1/4 of local authority expenditure. No wonder when the owners of UKP200m apartments in Mayfair pay not much more than that UKP140 per month.