HMRC Closures — [Philip Davies in the Chair]

Part of Backbench Business – in Westminster Hall at 1:44 pm on 2 November 2017.

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Photo of John Grogan John Grogan Labour, Keighley 1:44, 2 November 2017

I want to make one central point, which is to do with the eight location principles that the Revenue used to decide where the regional hubs should go. All of the proposed regional hubs will be in big, successful cities, such as Leeds, Glasgow, Birmingham and Cardiff. One could argue that, in those cities, a big HMRC office will crowd out private investment. Alternative choices would have been a lot cheaper and would have pump-primed the local economies. In west Yorkshire, if the regional centre had gone to Bradford, rather than Leeds, where there is a severe danger of crowding out, it would have acted as a pump-primer, boosting the local economy.

I do not know whether management consultants or HMRC bosses thought up the eight principles, but they include sustainable large sites, a talent pipeline, single location career paths, a catchment for a mix of business activity, digital infrastructure, facilities for HMRC’s people and robust long-term infrastructure. Only one of the eight—market rates—has anything to do with cost and savings to the HMRC. Obviously, in some of the smaller towns, rents are a lot cheaper. Given that the driving force of the review is meant to be to reduce costs, that seems odd.