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18 July 2007 : Column 70WH—continued
One of those concerns travel-to-work distances, of which we have just heard examples from Burton-on- Trent. On a map, the distance from Chesterfield to Sheffield, which both staff and customers would have to travel in order to get to the proposed Sheffield centre, might appear quite short—geographically it is—but in reality it certainly is not. One factor that has to be taken into account is that, of course, a number of people working in Chesterfield live in other parts of north Derbyshire, such as the Peak district. One member of staff that I talked to lives in Matlock in the West Derbyshire constituency. First they have to travel into Chesterfield before being able to make public transport connections to Sheffield, which would have a massive effect on calculating travel-to-work times. The same
would apply to many customers of the centres in Chesterfield, many of whom, we should remember, are not business men or accountants dealing with tax issues who, arguably, will have cars and be able to travel, but are pursuing issues such as tax credits and working tax credits. In some cases, they will be unemployed. Such people will not find it easy to access car transport—it is not easy to get to Sheffield anyway—or to pay the costs of public transport. The distance is one factor, and the distance on the map is a very different reality from the actual travelling distance, into which I shall go in more detail later.
Another issue concerning travel to Sheffield, whether by car or bus, is the massive congestion in the daytime, which will be the working hours of the offices. The relatively short land distance to drive is a nightmare journey, and one that I know very well. I was born and lived until I was 18-years-old in the part of Sheffield nearest to Chesterfield, and I still drive in that way every week to visit my mother. Of course, I go in during the day, quite often for media interviews and meetings as well. The road network is congested throughout the day, not just in peak travel times in the morning and at the end of the afternoon. A normal route-finder or map simply does not indicate the reality. Quite often, the key roads into Sheffield from Derbyshire are gridlocked at key times and other times during the day, which makes journeys a nightmare.
That, of course, has a knock-on effect on another Government policy, which, quite correctly, is to reduce the impact on the environment of the way we live and do business. Making those who work in the two Chesterfield offices and all of the customers and clients travel to Chesterfield on a regular basis simply adds more pollution, especially since most of that road transport, whether bus or car, will be sat in traffic jams for the greater part of the journey, churning out pollution as it edges forward, bit by bit, along gridlocked roads in Sheffield—more pollution, rather than less, despite what is meant to be the Government’s overriding objective across every Department.
We heard examples from Burton-on-Trent of part-time workers. A large percentage of workers in one of the Chesterfield offices in particular are female employees working part-time. I have talked to a large number of them individually, through letters and at a public meeting, and an awful lot of them chose to work part-time specifically because they have caring responsibilities, mostly for children, but also for elderly and disabled relatives. Although it is mostly women, there are men in the same situation as well. Certainly, at one of the two offices, the majority of staff are part-time, and across the offices as a whole, part-time workers constitute a large percentage of the staff.
Again, as we have heard from examples in Burton-on- Trent, many feel that they would not be able to maintain their job if they had to work in Sheffield, with all the problems of travel and time, and getting back to pick children up from school and to look after relatives and so forth. Their jobs would be lost, as, of course, would their skills and experience, as we have heard already. Many of those people have worked for many years for HMRC in its two previous incarnations.
I have touched already on the question of business service to the community, which has been mentioned by others as well. That affects partly the service to those coming to deal with tax issues and other personal matters such as working tax credits, which are horrendously complicated and can cause huge heartache for those trying to sort out the fact that they have been overpaid or underpaid and so on. If they have to travel to Sheffield, some simply will not be able to go and others will not bother, and so will lose out even further. Businesses, such as accountants, have said that, whereas at the moment they can often go to a local office and, in a face-to-face meeting, sort out quite easily many of the problems affecting their business clients, if they have to drive on congested roads to Sheffield, the service will be much worse—it might be done more at a distance, by phone or internet. The Government want e-government, but by no stretch of the imagination is that always as effective as face-to-face meetings with those involved. In fact, often, it is less effective. So there would be a loss of service to the community—to both individuals and businesses.
That business factor is important for Derbyshire as a whole, if it loses every centre, and for Chesterfield, which has been through bad economic times in the last 20 years or so. In Chesterfield, we have just, but not quite, got back to the level of employment that we had in 1981, just before Mrs. Thatcher’s Government began the slash and burn policies that wiped out almost the entire industrial base in Chesterfield—engineering and mining. In recent years, many new and small businesses have been attracted into the town, but they require a lot of interaction with tax and revenue departments in order to sort out their business affairs. The loss of all of the centres in Derbyshire and, therefore, Chesterfield would impact on local businesses in the town.
We had a very reassuring meeting some weeks ago with people from the Department who told us that no one currently working for HMRC would be expected, as a result of closures and mergers, to make an unreasonable daily journey. A reasonable daily travel time—RDT—is calculated at 60 minutes. They said that back-office work would be provided if people simply cannot move to the new offices when offices are closed. Such back-office work could be done more in their home location. They promised that a face-to-face interview facility for customers would be retained, that there would be no compulsory redundancies and that they would consider, when making their final judgments in the course of the consultation, issues such as the local economy and regeneration, and whether an area, such as Chesterfield, had suffered very badly from the economic downturn of the last 20 years, was just pulling out of that and needed the help, employment and support provided by those offices.
It seemed to me at the end of the meeting that the Government had made it crystal clear that if all the promises were kept, there was no way in which they could close both offices in Chesterfield, as they had at first proposed, because doing so would not meet any one of the five criteria. If those reassurances are to be acted on, it looks as though we can be quite optimistic about what the Government will announce on Chesterfield later this year.
However, there are question marks over the reasonable daily travel distance. We are told that no one will be expected to have an unreasonable travel-to-work time
as a result of closure and mergers, but when we go into the detail and analyse how individual people will be affected, that is not quite so reassuring. The distance from Chesterfield to Sheffield is not very far on a map, but let us say that someone goes by train. There is a very good regular service from Chesterfield to Sheffield, but they will have to walk quite a distance from the station to Concept house, which is the proposed new location in Sheffield, and quite a bit will be uphill. From the flat area where the station is, they will have to go uphill past the town centre to Concept house. If people are older or disabled, that walk will not be easy. I am thinking of both staff and clients travelling from Chesterfield and north Derbyshire.
If someone travels by car, there are serious problems. The Government figures suggest that it takes 23 minutes to go by car from Chesterfield to Concept house in Sheffield. That ignores the fact that a number of the people who work in Chesterfield and a number of the people who use the Chesterfield office as clients come from the whole area of north and central Derbyshire—they come from the Peak district and from north Derbyshire. The issue is not just a 23-minute journey from the centre of Chesterfield to Concept house, but the journey time into Chesterfield first as well. In any event, there is absolutely no way the journey can be done in 23 minutes by car in the daytime. I have driven the route many times in the past 30 years or so, so I know. If someone is travelling to work in the morning or coming home from work at the end of the afternoon, it is impossible to do the journey in 23 minutes.
People who work at the centres in Chesterfield have questioned the Department about how much faith it is placing in the internet route-finders, such as the AA route-finders, that say that the journey takes 23 minutes. The answer seems to be, “An awful lot.” A member of the management of the work force change team for the Chesterfield area said that the AA route-finder was “a really good start” for the team analysis of individual journey times. Well, it is not a really good start; it is totally and utterly misleading about the journey times during the day and especially at peak travel-to-work and travel-home times.
A question that has arisen in the same vein from the London experience is whether, in the case of disputes about whether the travel-to-work times that people pull off the internet are realistic, the Department will pay for a test journey to be made by the individual, so that they can take the suggested public transport route or car route and see whether they can travel it in the given time. Initially, people were told that yes, the Department would pay for test journeys, but when they chased that up, they were given this answer in London:
“There is no departmental policy covering the reimbursement of expenses incurred whilst testing the journey to a proposed new place of work. The decision falls to the local business unit/manager’s discretion.”
It seems, from the negotiations that are already taking place in the London area, where decisions have been announced, that it will be very difficult to get support for a test journey, but if there is reliance on internet route-finders, that will be totally and utterly misleading and it must be abandoned.
As the hon. Lady said, everyone accepts that there is a need to rationalise the estate of HMRC; that is perfectly sensible. Previously, there were two Departments,
with two separate lots of offices. Of course money can be saved for the taxpayer and better spent on other things by rationalising what is being provided. In Chesterfield, the staff themselves have said that the situation is very simple. Dents chambers, which is one of the buildings in Chesterfield, could be closed and everyone moved into Markham house, which is the other building. That is under-utilised; there is room to move everyone there from Dents chambers. If that were done, a significant percentage of the savings that are sought in terms of physical office space would be made, without all the disruption to the service to people in Derbyshire, the loss of jobs and the inconvenience to people—without all the negative consequences that we have discussed.
The announcement was to be made this summer, but now we are told that it will be at the end of the summer. I hope that that does not mean at the end of August, when Parliament is in recess and Ministers are not accessible to be questioned by hon. Members from affected constituencies. I hope that it means October, when Ministers are entirely accessible.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jane Kennedy) indicated assent.
Paul Holmes: The Minister is indicating yes from a sedentary position. I look forward to her comments at the end of the debate. Obviously, hon. Members want to be very involved at the point when the final decision is announced and in the ongoing negotiations, where necessary, on behalf of individual workers in the area affected.
10.5 am
Judy Mallaber (Amber Valley) (Lab): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Mrs. Dean) on securing the debate and on the way in which she presented her arguments on behalf of Burton. I also welcome my right hon. Friend the Minister to her position, which is well deserved. We look forward to working with her again as we did when she was in her previous jobs.
I understand, as others do, the reasons for the review of office space and work force deployment, but I want to raise three issues. First, the proposal to close the Alfreton office, which is in my constituency but to which people also travel from neighbouring constituencies, cannot meet the criteria set out in the review.
Secondly, I am very concerned that although assurances were given—particularly in a debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), in which she set out all the arguments on the Chesterfield office, and subsequently—that no decisions had yet been taken and that the Minister would consider all the arguments made, in fact what is happening in the offices at the moment, certainly in Alfreton, is pre-empting those decisions. That is creating confusion for staff on what decisions they should be taking at the moment.
Thirdly, I urge my right hon. Friend to ignore completely, unless it has been changed dramatically, the summary of the consultation responses that was drawn up by HMRC staff, because it bears no relationship to the responses that certainly I and staff made. It is not a proper representation of those responses. I will return to that.
As with the Burton office, it is quoted in the review that Horsefair house, which is the Alfreton office, lies well outside the 25-km radius for both the main offices in Derby and Nottingham within the urban review area and should therefore be assessed as a stand-alone office. In addition to the fact that it is well outside those boundaries, the travel distances are calculated on the basis of office-to-office distances by car, and many of the people who work at Alfreton travel a considerable distance into Alfreton before they even get going, so the distances are considerably greater than that. Those distances indicate that Alfreton should also be seen as a stand-alone office.
As has been said, the relocation would not allow staff to take journeys involving reasonable daily travel. It just is not possible for it to be reasonable daily travel if staff from Alfreton have to travel to Nottingham. Because of the nature of transport links in the rural area and from Nottingham, it is not possible to say that they could travel reasonable distances. In the submissions that I sent in—I do not know whether I shall have time to return to them—I cited a number of examples, with travel times, of staff who will simply lose their jobs because they cannot possibly travel to Nottingham, given their responsibilities and the times when they have to travel. It is physically not possible.
There has been discussion about congestion on the journey into Chesterfield for staff travelling by car. I would challenge people to try travelling in and out of Nottingham during rush hours—it is a complete and utter nightmare. Anyone travelling by car will have real problems. For people travelling by public transport, at least there is a train service from Chesterfield to Sheffield. Trains from Alfreton to Nottingham go hourly only. The Alfreton Parkway station is about 1.5 miles out of the centre of the town. It is a very difficult station for people with disabilities, and at the moment the trains are not even running, so going by train certainly creates interesting challenges. For anyone who has to time their travel to fit in with when they, for example, have to drop children off at school and pick them up, it becomes virtually impossible. If they travelled by bus, most staff would have to take more than one.
I urge the Minister to talk to the Minister who dealt with the attempt at the beginning of this Parliament to close the two medical assessment centres in Derbyshire. A lot of work was done on the travel distances involved, which showed that it was very difficult to make the necessary connections in our area. Largely as a result of the work that we did and the submissions that I made on travel connections with help from the public transport unit and individuals, the two medical assessment centres stayed open.
It must also be emphasised that staff with caring responsibilities do not have flexibility as to when they can travel. We cannot, therefore, simply say that it is a certain distance from one place to another; if the trains go only hourly, many staff in the office will almost have to leave work before they get there, and that creates considerable problems.
On individual staff, we are told that one of the criteria is that HMRC is keen to ensure that
“the degree of disruption for its staff is minimised”.
“No jobs will be lost directly as a result of this proposal. It is expected that staff will relocate within the Nottingham/Derby urban centres.”
However, the consultation document says that 47 per cent. of the staff at the Alfreton office work part-time and that 86 per cent. are women, and those are among the highest proportions in any office covered in the Nottingham, Derby, Leicester and Sheffield reviews. In a union survey of staff at the Alfreton office, 84 per cent. indicated that they had caring responsibilities.
I refer the Minister to a recent response by the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Barbara Follett), who has particular responsibility for women’s issues and equality. In response to a question on 5 July, she stated:
“HMRC is committed to ensuring that women and other groups do not suffer when tax offices are closed.”—[Official Report, 5 July 2007; Vol. 462, c. 1088.]
Given the incredibly high proportion of women, part-time workers and people with caring responsibilities at the Alfreton office—it is possibly the highest proportion in any of the offices affected by the review—it is just not possible to meet that commitment not to have an effect on women. Nor is it possible to say that nobody will lose their jobs, because these people are just not able to travel.
The equal opportunities implications of the proposals are really serious. If the proposals are applied to Alfreton, they will not meet the new gender duty on public authorities. We are talking about some of the few quality jobs in the Alfreton area that are available to women with caring responsibilities and which allow the flexibility to combine paid work and caring.
I mentioned our concern about decisions being pre-empted. Within the past fortnight, the staff responsible for face-to-face contact, who are meant to be staying so that a contact service is retained, have been told that only those who can make the commitment to covering a full contact service will be wanted. In effect, they are already being told that if they work part-time, they will not be wanted. That pre-empts the decision that will be taken and goes against what has been said about equal opportunities.
As I said, such jobs are not widely available to women in the Alfreton area; indeed, there is a lack of quality jobs generally in the area. HMRC is one of the larger employers in Alfreton. Unemployment in the area is the highest in the Amber Valley borough. The office also serves a number of neighbouring constituencies, which are also classified as deprived areas.
There are therefore serious issues in relation to equal opportunities. At the moment, I am chairing an inquiry for the Select Committee on Trade and Industry on how to implement the women and work commission proposals. We are looking, in particular, at the fact that occupational segregation leads to an equal pay divide, and that relates considerably to the number of decent jobs that are available to women. The proposals therefore have serious equal opportunities implications, and we need to take account of those.
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