Gill Furniss
Main Page: Gill Furniss (Labour - Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough)Department Debates - View all Gill Furniss's debates with the HM Treasury
Concentrix: Tax Credit Claimants
Gill Furniss Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
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Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
As constituency MPs, we are all aware of the hardship and suffering caused by Concentrix. By definition, people receiving tax credits are on low incomes and are not able to cope with a sudden drop in that income. Concentrix’s “Shoot first, ask questions later” approach, in which recipients have been accused of living with people they have never heard of, it takes more than an hour for their calls to be answered, and it is suggested that they get by on payday loans while Concentrix sorts out its mistakes, caused anxiety, distress and extreme hardship. In many cases, we have had to make personal referrals to food banks, so that people can feed themselves and their children. We all have examples from our postbags and inboxes of shocking cases in which families have been left struggling to make ends meet.
By way of example, I want to put on record some of the highlights—perhaps I should say lowlights—of the many cases I have had to deal with in recent weeks, and show the pattern of incompetence that has been exposed. More than three quarters of the cases I have dealt with have been of people accused of living with the previous tenant at their address. In one case, a constituent found after asking their neighbours that the person they were suspected of living with was in prison.
It is worth pointing out that with a handful of exceptions, all the cases that have come to my attention have been raised by women, and two thirds are from single mothers. In nearly two thirds of the cases, constituents found their tax credits stopped without any prior warning. When they contacted Concentrix, they were told that letters had been sent to them weeks previously but not replied to, hence the stopped payments. The occasional letter going astray in the post is one thing, but Concentrix is apparently sending letters into some black hole, never to be seen again. Advice given over the phone has been inconsistent and often contradictory. My constituents have reported that, as have my staff.