§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Mr. Boscawen.]
§ 12.4 am
§ Mr. Matthew Parris (Derbyshire, West)I am grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for this opportunity to raise on the Adjournment the question of the closure of the Matlock tax office. I am grateful because it allows me to raise in what I hope is good time something which I should have raised with my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury some time ago.
I think that it was in April 1983 that my hon. Friend first announced that he was carrying out a general review of all the tax offices in the country. We knew then that Matlock was one of the districts that would be reviewed. I should have been beating at his door and collecting petitions in April. I should have visited the tax office then. That was the time to do it, but I had no idea how important the tax office was to my constituents and constituency. That occurred to me only at a much later stage last year, when my hon. Friend announced in October, in answer to one of my questions, that he was proposing to close the Matlock tax office.
I was taken by surprise at the weight of public opinion and the enthusiasm with which my constituents started to visit me, to write to me and to raise petitions to try to prevent the closure of the tax office. I had under-reacted, and I hope that it is not too late to set the record straight. I have received scores of letters from my constituents. I have received a petition bearing nearly 2,000 signatures. It was raised by those who work at the tax office and by many others in the town, who have collected signatures. I have had letters from numerous parish councils. I have received letters from the Matlock town council, the Bakewell town council and from the chambers of trade. I have had letters from many accountants in my constituency. I have had a letter from the county council underlining its grave anxiety that Matlock, which is the county seat and the place where the county council is situated, should cease to have its own tax office. I have received five delegations from the staff of the office.
Not long ago I went to visit the office at the staff's invitation. I felt sad that I should be visiting for the first time such a friendly and efficient place and meeting for the first time such courteous and helpful people only because the threat of closure hung over their heads. It made me realise that I should have visited them a long time ago before any such threat was there.
I have mentioned the staff, but I do not wish to say much more about them. There are about 40 people working at the office and they have a direct interest in the maintenance of the tax office in Matlock. It is obvious that they do not want it transferred or merged with the Alfreton office. That interest and the conditions of the merger, should it take place, are best left for them to discuss with their staff federation. I am not here to argue that the tax office should stay open for the benefit of those who work there. Most of them are women and not many of them have their own independent transport. Most of them live in the vicinity and many of them depend on walking or upon public transport. The offer of an alternative job somewhere outside Matlock must be an offer in name only. It cannot mean much to many of them, and it would mean the end 893 of many of their careers. However, they do not pose the problem which I really wish to raise with my hon. Friend. It is the customers about whom I wish to talk.
If I describe the geography of the area, it will be rather more real than merely looking at it on the map. On the map, Alfreton is not very far from Matlock, and neither is Chesterfield. It is hilly and fairly wild country. At the moment it is deep in snow and many roads are closed. It would not surprise me if the roads between Matlock and Chesterfield were shut or if it were impossible to travel from Matlock to Alfreton. It is an area in which public transport is infrequent, unreliable and expensive. The 50 miles from Stockport on the Manchester side to Alfreton on the east Derbyshire side—which will be the gap between tax offices when those at Matlock and Buxton are closed — will be an area within which it will be inconvenient to live should one need to call in person at the tax office. It is obviously those people who need to call in person whose inconvenience must concern us. Those who want to deal with matters by telephone or correspondence can probably do so as well at one tax office as at another.
From the correspondence that I have received it appears that those who need to go to the tax office in person fall into two categories. The first category comprises the self-employed and small business people. The self-employed must call every three years for their certificates, but often they must call more frequently. A self-employed or small business man paying tax is not in the same position as a person on PAYE. It can be a complicated business and a matter for negotiation and discussion with Inland Revenue. It can be difficult to conduct that business through an official correspondent. It is much easier to sort things out by going up Bank road to the tax office and having a half-hour chat with the friendly and efficient staff who work there. A great many self-employed people and business men have written to me in those terms.
One letter that I have received from a constituent in Cromford near Matlock states:
Dear Sir,I operate a very small business but it entails the submission of accounts so that my tax liability can be assessed. Without the friendly, patient explanations given by the staff at Matlock Tax Office I could not have managed to understand 'the system'. My PAYE tax is not dealt with at Matlock but telephone calls are too expensive to make during the day and, to date, any calls made have failed to make me understand the business of appeals. I tried to find out by letter and government pamphlets but they presumed a knowledge I did not have.
All was revealed by the staff at Matlock and without being inconvenienced by long, tedious journeys.
I can only say what a tragedy it will be to myself and other local people if this office closes and the service disappears.
Please—think again and keep a tax office open locally. West Derbyshire is a large area. It is an area which needs and deserves such a service. As my MP, please do what you can.The Matlock tax office is at the eastern end of the area it serves. Inconvenient though it may be for people in Matlock to go to Alfreton or Chesterfield, it will be more inconvenient for people in Bakewell and beyond, who will have even further to go.Pensioners face problems, and many have written to me. They are the second category of people who find it necessary to go to the tax office. Their tax affairs are often small beer in terms of the public sector borrowing requirement, but they are important to the pensioner concerned. They may also be intricate. The pensioner may 894 have a small pension or some capital. He may not be up to conducting an official correspondence, may not still drive his car and it may not be easy for him to rely on public transport. For such a person a call at the tax office at Matlock can be by far the easiest, and sometimes the only way of sorting matters out to his satisfaction, and many pensioners have written to me to say so.
There is another matter, which may not find favour with my constituents. I do not wish to enter into the controversy over what Her Majesty the Queen said in her new year's message to the Commonwealth, but she said one thing with which I believe everyone would agree—that it does not matter how intricate and sophisticated our information and computer systems may be, the quality of what comes out of them will depend very much on the quality of what goes into them.
No matter how technological our methods of communication, what we communicate is more important. The advent of computers may revolutionise our tax system, and we may rationalise until the cows come home, but the quality of the decisions made and of the whole tax-gathering process will depend on the quality of the information fed into the system.
Present plans will create a black hole in the Inland Revenue's information system, from Stockport to Alfreton. A local tax inspector who lives, works and travels in the area knows who people are, what is going on and even who drives which car. It takes that kind of knowledge to follow tax affairs properly in an area such as Matlock. No one in Alfreton knows who we are or what we are doing, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer may well be the loser if we no longer have tax inspectors familiar with Matlock and Bakewell. I shall say no more about that, however, as that point may not be as welcome to my constituents as others that I have made.
In a debating Chamber in which we talk increasingly about efficiency, rationalisation, cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit, it is not easy to talk about the happy and courteous atmosphere that prevails at the Matlock tax office. Nevertheless, that is indeed the case, as so many of my correspondents testify. It happens to be a particularly efficiently and pleasantly run office, where the staff seem to enjoy the confidence of those whom they serve and where the staff and the inspectors seem to get on particularly well with one another. Local accountants have written to me saying that the reputation of the Matlock office for reliability is much higher than that of any other tax office with which they deal. It works particularly well and there is sometimes an argument for letting such offices continue even when arguments for rationalisation lead in the opposite direction.
I do not suppose that the Conservative philosophy is so easily defined that I can crystallise in a couple of sentences the exact doctrine on which I commended myself to my constituents in the last two elections. Those people have already lost their local electricity and gas headquarters and their local hospital. We fear that the maternity hospital, too, will soon be lost. Much of our rail service and some of our bus services have gone. Now it seems that our tax office, too, is to go. I do not think that my constituents regard that as the kind of Conservatism on which I based my two election campaigns. It is certainly not my idea of Conservatism or of what the Government are about.
For that reason, I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will reconsider his plans very carefully. If he then still takes the view that they cannot be changed and that closure 895 is the only way forward, although I question whether it could be a way forward for Matlock, I make this final plea. It is very difficult not just for customers but especially for the staff of the office to live in constant uncertainty about the future. They have heard that closure may come at any time between 1984 and 1987. It is hard for those people to plan their careers and the rest of their working lives on the basis of such an imprecise prediction. We should all be most grateful for firmer assurances from my hon. Friend. We hope that the office will not be closed, but if the decision has to stand we need more precise information about when and how it will be implemented.
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for sitting up so late to listen to me and I am sure that my gratitude is shared by everyone in the tax office at Matlock.
§ The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. John Moore)I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, West (Mr. Parris) not only on having had the opportunity to raise this matter but on the manner in which he has raised an issue which is clearly of importance to his constituency. He is over-modest about the assiduous way in which he pursues the interests of his constituents. I am genuinely grateful to him for setting out the arguments so clearly. I shall try to reply in a similar fashion and to explain the background to the closures as well as the particular circumstances of Matlock.
In 1982 as my hon. Friend said, an Inland Revenue committee completed a review of the organisation of the local tax district network. It reported on the principles which should decide the size, and hence the number, of the offices. The report was part of a more general review of the work of inspectors of taxes, the aim of which was to help the Department to make the most effective use of these highly-trained staff.
As a first step, the Department used the principles recommended by the committee to prepare an outline plan for reorganising the tax district network. This was announced to the House as my hon. Friend said, in April 1983, and a copy of the Inland Revenue report was placed in the Library together with a note on the reorganisation proposals. At the same time, the Department issued a press release. The Department also circulated details of the proposals to staff and their union representatives to enable them to consider the plans and make representations.
In a relatively small number of cases, the proposals involved the closure of the only tax district in a town, Matlock being an example. Recognising the particular difficulties which these towns and their communities might face—admirably described by my hon. Friend—my predecessor wrote in April to each of the hon. Members representing those towns, to alert them to the plans.
Generally the arrangements that I have described served their purpose, and the Department was able to consider the views of hon. Members, other interested parties and staff in coming to final decisions. This consultative process lasted some six months and it was not until late October that the final plans were announced. I think that the House will agree that Ministers and the Department did all that could reasonably be expected to bring the proposals to the attention of interested parties and to allow sufficient time for consultation. It would simply not have been feasible to contact individually all those who might have an interest in the matter to bring the proposals to their attention. It is 896 regrettable that the proposals do not seem to have been widely known to local authorities and professional bodies in the Matlock area until a late stage, although I understand that the proposals announced in April received considerable coverage in the local press.
Implementation of the final plans will mean that 164 offices will close out of a total of 765. As well as enabling the more efficient and effective use of existing staff resources—in particular trained inspectors—which is the prime purpose of the exercise, the implementation will provide significant savings in the cost of accommodation and administration generally.
The more effective use of inspector resources will come out in various fields. For example, a large number of fully trained inspectors will be released from management duties for redeployment in areas where it has already been shown, as my hon. Friend said that they will be more cost-effective. I am afraid that it is not possible to translate this move towards greater effectiveness and efficiency into some kind of profit and loss account with quantifiable financial savings.
As regards accommodation savings, the Department is completing a detailed review of four of its 15 regions. This shows that, in those four regions, there is every prospect of making savings of at least £2 million per annum, with the possibility of additional further savings of around the same amount in due course. I should stress that the reorganisation plans are not a staff-cutting exercise. The intention is to make better use of existing resources.
The closures will come mainly in cities and towns where there is at present more than one tax district. For example, Birmingham which now has 21 districts will be reorganised into 10 offices. However, the plans also mean that 23 towns, including Matlock, will lose their only tax office.
Where the proposals involve the closure of the only tax district in a town, the Department recognised from the beginning that factors other than efficiency and savings had to be taken into account. In particular, loss of access, the effect on the community generally and on the staff of the offices were of considerable importance. A difficult balance had to be struck. After careful consideration, the Department decided that of the 39 towns scheduled to lose their tax office under the outline proposals announced in April, 16 should in fact retain the office. I think that this shows the Department's willingness to listen to representations and to revise its decision if the arguments are of sufficient weight.
Turning now to Matlock in particular, the plan is to merge the tax districts in Matlock and Alfreton. Both districts are well below the minimum recommended size whereas the merged district will be of the optimum size if the best use of staff is to be achieved. There were two reasons for choosing Alfreton as the location of the merged office. First, it is larger and deals with more taxpayers. Secondly, it will enable the Department to give up leased premises in Matlock and to utilise more fully the existing Crown building in Alfreton. Apart from the accommodation savings, there will be a reduction in overheads and attendant costs.
Matlock is eight miles — and, as my hon. Friend stressed, eight difficult miles—away from Alfreton and I should not seek to deny that closure will have some unwelcome effects. The main such effect will as he says, of course be the difficulty which taxpayers will face in visiting the office in Alfreton. In saying that, I recognise 897 that some of my hon. Friend's constituents, for example, in the Bakewell area already have some problems in visiting Matlock and that these will be made worse by the move to Alfreton. For some taxpayers the problem is more acute than for others.
I am well aware as my hon. Friend stressed that many pensioners, for example, find it hard to understand all aspects of their tax affairs and that for some personal contact is often the best, if not the only, way in which they can come to grips with the matter. The self-employed, as he again stressed, while in many cases represented by professional advisers, often need to visit their tax office. Subcontractors are required to visit their tax office, admittedly only every three years, to collect or review their exemption certificate. It is perhaps as well to remember, however, that dealing with personal callers represents a small part of the work of a tax officer. Far and away the main means of communication are telephone calls and letters.
The Department does not keep a record of the number of visits made by taxpayers to the Office in Matlock, nor to other local tax offices. We are aware that a considerable number of visits are made. However in coming to a view on the inconvenience which will flow from the closure, knowing the specific number is of relatively limited value. What is important is the degree of difficulty and expense to which taxpayers, whatever the precise number, will be put in having to travel to Alfreton. I assure the house and my hon. Friend that these problems were carefully considered. I should emphasise that this was not an armchair exercise carried out in London. The Department's regional managers, based in Sheffield. were closely involved in evaluating the difficulties of access. Those managers were well aware of the geographical characteristics of the area and of the public transport facilities available.
All those points were weighed against the arguments of increased operational efficiency and savings which pointed to closure. It was not an easy matter but the Department concluded, on balance, that the arguments for closure should prevail. The Department is very conscious of the feelings which this decision has aroused, as evidence by the petition to which my honourable Friend referred. It is also full aware of the high reputation which the present Matlock office has for efficiency and courtesy. I welcome the generous tribute paid to the staff by my hon. Friend. It is true that the Department will not be able to offer the same service to the public, if one thinks solely in terms of the location of the tax distric. However, in all other respects it is the Department's intention that the present high level of service should be maintained and, if possible, improved. In saying this I recognise the force of my honourable Friend's arguments, and I do not seek to dispute the merits of the points that he has made. Rather. I differ on the relative weight to be attached to them.
Difficulties of access are also of relevance to the ability of tax district staff, particularly inspectors, to carry out their duties. The need for local access and knowledge was specifically considered in the Inland Revenue report, from 898 which these reorganisation plans flow. In some areas of work it is of vital importance, and therefore the reorganisation plans seek to retain it. The element of centralisation is very limited. In the case of Matlock and Alfreton, we are talking about the merger of two small offices, with the merged office still in Alfreton eight miles away from Matlock. Looking at the plans as a whole, even after completion the Department will have a local district network of about 600 offices.
Another unwelcome effect of closure will be inconvenience to staff whose place of work will change. Many will face significantly longer journeys; and staff rightly made represenations on this point. Again these were considered by the Department's regional managers and were also discussed at central level with trade union representatives. Again the Department, while recognising the difficulties, did not consider them to be such as to outweigh the advantages of closure.
My hon. Friend rightly asked me to address myself particularly to the current uncertainty. The Department is now discussing with staff how they can be redeployed in Alfreton or other offices in the area, taking into account, wherever possible, their wishes. More generally, the Department is in discussion with the trade union concerned to set up a joint committee to oversee the personnel consequences of the reorganisation programme.
The exact timetable for the merger of the offices has not been fully worked out as yet. However, it is probable, as matters stand at present, that the closure of Matlock will take place towards the end of 1985. The closure cannot be left any later because of the Department's plans to computerise PAYE, which, as my hon. Friend said, is a major reform, which is scheduled to take place during 1986 in that part of the country. The merger must precede computerisation if considerable abortive expenditure is to be avoided.
My hon. Friend drew to the attention of the House several important considerations for Ministers and for the Inland Revenue in operating the tax system. In concluding that there is not scope to alter the decision to close Matlock tax office, I am not seeking in any way to dispute the importance of the points he made so eloquently, but rather I would attach more weight to others. As I have described, proper arrangements were made for representations to be made and consultations were carried out before reaching the decision. I have satisfied myself that during the six months between the announcement of the outline proposals and the taking of final decisions the Department has given due weight to all the arguments. I hope that the House will agree that the cost savings and improved operational efficiency that will result from the closure of some 150 tax offices, including Matlock, will make a worthwhile contribution to the Government's programme of improving the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the public sector. That is in the interests of all taxpayers. I welcome the way in which my hon. Friend has drawn this matter to the attention of the House.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes to One o' clock.