Roadchef Employees Benefit Trust — House of Commons, 2017-12-19
Topic: Labor
Neil Charles Gray (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for granting this debate. I thank the hon. Members from across the House who have so far agreed to stay back to listen and perhaps contribute to the debate. What I am looking to discuss this evening can be boiled down to basic fairness and people getting access to what is rightfully theirs. I think it is important to set out some context to where we are today, before I come to the main points that I hope the Minister might be able to help with In 1986, the Roadchef employees benefit trust was established to give employees at Roadchef motorway services, such as those at Harthill in my constituency, Watford Gap, Hamilton or dozens of other locations across these isles, access to a John-Lewis-style employee-ownership scheme, whereby they would benefit from increasing share entitlements based on length of service. It was established honourably by the then chief executive Patrick Gee in consultation with and with the support of the GMB union. Sadly and tragically, Patrick Gee died aged 43 before the scheme could be fully realised and Tim Ingram Hill took over. He then transferred the shares that Mr Gee was making available to employees into a second employee benefit scheme, of which he was the only beneficiary When Roadchef was subsequently sold to the Japanese company Nikko about a decade later, Mr Ingram Hill made approaching £30 million on the shares that should have been made available to Roadchef employees. In 2000, he made a tax payment on his ill-gotten share windfall to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to the tune of approximately £10 million, something which has only to come to light further down the line. On discovering the unjust enrichment, the trust then took Mr Ingram Hill to the High Court, and Justice Proudman found that he had acted in breach of trust and, crucially, that the shares were never his in the first place—they were the employees’ shares. The purchase of the shares in the sale of the company was therefore void and—this is important—the £10 million paid to HMRC also belonged to the beneficiaries, not Mr Ingram Hill Subsequent to the High Court ruling, Mr Ingram Hill settled with the trust, thus ending our interest in him for the purposes of this debate, but the trust then notified HMRC of the fact that the settlement had occurred and that it now intended to pay out to its beneficiaries, who total some 4,000 current and former Roadchef employees. The trust also wished to clarify that there would be no tax implications from the payments being made, thinking that that would just be a formality, but the response from HMRC was rather surprising. HMRC said that it would be happy to waive any tax implications for the beneficiaries as long as the trust did not pursue it for the £10 million paid in tax by Mr Ingram Hill. That was the first time that the trust had been made aware of such a tax payment. In accordance with any trustees acting on behalf of beneficiaries, the trust has challenged HMRC on the £10 million payment, which should be repaid to the trust with interest. That brings us up to date on this complex and unique case. I am grateful to the chairman of the trust, Christopher Winston Smith, and to Huw Edwards for their insight ahead of this debate, and to the current CEO of Roadchef, Simon Turl, who I spoke to last night. Roadchef wants the issue settled for its current and former employees and has been working constructively with HMRC to that end. The trust has also worked with a number of hon. Members from across the House to raise the matter with HMRC, including my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) and the hon. Members for Newport East (Jessica Morden), for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly), for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), for Dudley North (Ian Austin) and for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) My constituents certainly want this issue settled. Twenty constituents, most of whom live around the service station at Harthill, have contacted me about the matter, but I am sure that more are waiting for their payment. They include Mrs Margaret Gibson, who lists some of the things that she has struggled to do in recent years that this money would have helped with, including borrowing money for home improvements, helping her son to pay for his wedding, or helping her and her husband to get by during periods of unemployment. She considers it a ridiculous amount of time to wait for what is rightfully hers, and I completely agree.