RS McCOLL must be a “Casanova” living with women all over Scotland if benefits officials are right according to an MP

Mhari Black SNP MP said women have had their tax credits stopped because officials believed they were in a relationship with someone called RS McColl.

The MP for Paisley South, told of a catalogue of “ridiculous incompetence” where several cases of women being accused of living with an RS McColl because they lived in a tenement flat in the same building as one of the firm’s shops.

She spoke in a debate about the firm Concentrix which had then lost a contract to investigate tax credit claims for fraud.

Ms Black said she and her staff dealt with cases where people had tax credits stopped unfairly based on wrong information.

She said: “Once we started to dig into this, it is truly the most ridiculous level of incompetence that I have ever heard.

“The best one was the case of RS McColl. Just to give you a bit of perspective RS McColl is a corner shop that is as common in Scotland as WH Smith is in England.

“And yet people were being accused of living with this mysterious RS McColl because their flat was above an RS McColl shop.

“At no point did anyone in Concentrix or HMRC think ‘wait a minute this Casanova’s getting about a bit’.

“This would be funny until you remember this is people’s lives, their survival we are talking about.”

She related various examples of false accusations.

She said: “People were being accused of being in relationships with dead tenants 70 years their senior.

“People were accused of being in relationships with their children.”

She told of hearing evidence form people who had benefits stopped and only discovered when they went to the bank to draw out cash.

She said the woman, Marie, spoke of her shame at having to take her kids with her to a food bank to rely on the charity of others.

She told of a disabled woman with one hand who spend a combined total of 19 hours on the phone to HMRC trying to resolve an issue, who was then told to write in with her concerns.

When told of her disability she was told to get someone to write for her.

She said: “These aren’t unfortunate or rare examples this is happening throughout the UK.”

She said the result of the removal of tax credits and leaving people with no money was “people coming home to their children crying because they don’t want Tesco 8p Bolognese for the fourth time that week”