Vinovium House

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I am very pleased to have this opportunity to raise the proposed closure of Vinovium House, the office in Bishop Auckland that administers part of the child maintenance system, with the consequent loss of between 85 and 100 jobs. I have tabled early-day motion 1,001, which hon. Members are most welcome to sign.

To set the debate in context, the reforms to child support introduced by the Tory-led Government in the last Parliament were highly controversial, appearing to rely on good will, which is sadly lacking in all too many cases. None the less, it was agreed that the administration of the old system should continue, so that children could receive their legal entitlements. According to the Department for Work and Pensions December 2016 statistics, there are 1.1 million cases in the Child Support Agency system, and arrears now totalling £3.4 billion. It is vital for those million families—probably 1.5 million children—that this money is recovered and paid to them.

There is no published plan for how the debt cases currently administered at Vinovium House will be administered if the closure goes ahead. The team at Vinovium House had secured the debt work until 2020. In a four-year programme, surely it does not make financial sense to relocate and retrain staff to undertake that work if the current staff will no longer do the job. What exactly is the Department’s plan? How does it intend to run it, or is the plan to let the old child support system wither on the vine, irrespective of the impact on the 1 million families receiving their money?

The staff are extremely well respected. They were a top five office when they administered incapacity benefit. They are currently the highest performing office. They have the highest engagement score. They provide telephone cover from 8 o’clock in the morning until 8 o’clock at night—hours that are not covered in other offices. The telephone system went down when the announcement was made, and the entire national system crashed as it was unable to cope with the volume of calls without those staff. This does not bode well for the future. Child poverty is increasing under this Government, and further delays in Department for Work and Pensions systems for child support will undoubtedly tip some families over the edge.

In correspondence with me, the Minister for Employment said that he has conducted an equality impact assessment. I find that difficult to believe given that 69 of the staff are women and 14 are men. There are also support staff. The one-to-one interviews currently being conducted are a sham. Staff are asked to say whether they want to be transferred to other jobs or to leave on voluntary redundancy, but they are not being told where else they might work.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

Quite a few of the staff who work at Vinovium House live in Sedgefield. I have had several emails from staff who have a deep anxiety about the way they have been treated, their futures and where they might be transferred to. This is not just an issue for Bishop Auckland and Sedgefield. The staff live all over County Durham, and a lot of families will be affected.

[Helen Goodman]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is a lot of anxiety, and I will read out an email from someone who works there to explain to the Minister why:

“On the day the closure was announced to us, we were told there would be an option between a job if we were prepared to travel, or an exit package if not—a small lifeline to me that may have cushioned the closure up to my pension age, but the next day the package offer was revoked with a statement that failure to accept a compulsory transfer could result in disciplinary action.”

Will the Minister please tell us exactly what is going on? What offers are being made to people?