麻豆约拍

A firm used by the government to cut tax credit payments has received calls from "suicidal" clients, the Victoria Derbyshire programme has been told.

In an exclusive interview, a whistleblower told the programme that claimants "screamed" at call-centre workers after their tax credits were cut, he also said "hundreds" of households had not received advance warning that their payments would end.

In response to the allegation that untrained staff were having to deal with suicidal callers, Concentrix said: 鈥淭here is a process to follow as per HMRC guidelines and Concentrix staff are trained in exactly the same way as HMRC staff. It is important to realise that our staff are not counsellors and we would never position them as such.鈥�

Regarding claims that many people have said they failed to receive letters, telling them their tax credits would be cut 鈥� the firm said: "Concentrix is using a highly credible and proven third party to ensure letters are dispatched. We liaise closely with our partners and indeed completed a validation to confirm that all the letters that we expected to be sent out were in fact sent out.

The whistleblower also said the computer system was inadequate, to which Concentrix replied: "Concentrix systems were not down for a whole week in July. When we did experience some systems issues, which were beyond our control and specific to a third party supplier, this was resolved as quickly as possible and any impact on claimants was minimised. At no time would we have set the expectation to call back within an hour.

The whistle blower also claimed HMRC supplied Concentrix with inaccurate data. HMRC said: "We provide Concentrix with cases which have been flagged as showing potential discrepancies, along with the data we hold and have received from third-parties. Concentrix is then responsible for using their own internal checks to identify which of these cases they think require further investigation."

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