In something of a reprieve for those workers struggling to file their income tax self assessments online, HM Revenue & Customs offices were closed today due to strikes over fears that its call centres are in the process of being privatised.
The Public and Commercial Services Union dislikes plans to trial the use of private firms at two of the government department’s centres and so is picketing tax offices today.
In response, the taxman said it would not issue the usual £100 penalty fines to anyone missing Tuesday’s deadline for self-assessment returns. Anyone filing their returns on 1 or 2 February would likewise not be fined.
The dispute centres on the possible appointment of two private companies, Sitel and Teleperformance, to run call-handling trials in HMRC’s tax credit contact centres in Lillyhall in Cumbria and Bathgate in Scotland. A year-long pilot project is scheduled to start in February.
But the union claims that the move is only the thin edge of a major privatisation wedge and that it comes at a time when tens of thousands of civil service jobs are being cut.
The PCS’s general secretary, Mark Serwotka, said: "Our members in tax offices want to do a good job and provide the best possible advice and help to taxpayers, but there are fewer of them working in fewer offices as a result of misguided and damaging cuts. Instead of making even more cuts and throwing public money at private companies, ministers should be investing in their staff and tackling the billions in tax avoided and evaded by the super-rich."
If HMRC wants to trial new ways of working, it should invest in its own staff rather than press ahead with plans to cut another 10,000 jobs by 2015 on top of the 30,000 that have gone from the department since 2005, he added.
An HMRC spokesman told the BBC: "HMRC is not privatising existing HMRC contact centre jobs, but we are determined to improve the service we provide to our customers. This means considering a variety of options, including drawing on the knowledge and experience of external contact centre operators. Industrial action is unwarranted and unnecessary."
The department was doing "everything possible to maintain contact centre services to the public" and would continue talking to the unions to address their concerns, he added.
