§ Sir Charles Fletcher-Cookeasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer why inspectors of taxes were previously 142W allowed to take part in the job release scheme but are now prevented from so doing; and if he will take steps to change this.
§ Mr. Peter Rees[pursuant to his reply, 9 February 1981, c. 263]: The Inland Revenue allows its staff to take part in the job release scheme whenever the conditions imposed by the Department of Employment can be met.
The objective of the job release scheme is to provide employment for those who are unemployed rather than to provide a route to early retirement. One of the conditions of the scheme which must be complied with is that for each civil servant released the Department must certify that there will be an additional consequential vacancy which will be filled as soon as possible in the normal way by the existing recruitment arrangements.
In the early days of the scheme—which commenced in 1977—there were very few applicants from the Tax Inspectorate, and the Inland Revenue took a rather broad view as to what constituted recruitment of a replacement for the purposes of the scheme, and in consequence accepted the inspectorate as meeting the necessary requirements. In May 1979, however, the scheme was suspended throughout the Inland Revenue because of the temporary ban on recruitment. As soon as this was lifted it became necessary to re-examine carefully the position of each of the various different groups of staff, and in particular the recruitment arrangements, to see which of them met these requirements. As a result the Inland Revenue came to the conclusion that the inspectorate did not do so. The reason, very broadly, is that because of an inspector's long training, the great majority are recruited or selected up to three years before the expected vacancies, and not as a response to actual retirement decisions.