AN extraordinary row has blown up between a York MP and the director of a care provider over its payments to employees.

York Central MP Rachael Maskell claimed in a press release that constituents who had worked for Independent Home Living had not been paid on time – claims rejected by the company - and said it must meet its legal obligations by paying "outstanding" wages.

She accused the firm of treating staff in a "shoddy and unprofessional way" and claimed its director Anton Palmer had refused to answer correspondence, instead directing his solicitor to answer on his behalf. But Mr Palmer has hit back, saying Independent Home Living was a "responsible employer" that treated its employees fairly and paid them on time.

And he claimed the MP had issued the release without first making proper inquiries and giving the firm an opportunity to respond, and said her "false and inaccurate allegations" had upset its hardworking and committed staff.

Ms Maskell said in her release that a failure to pay staff on time had resulted in a majority in York leaving the company and being replaced by mainly agency workers, or people drafted in from the company’s other premises in Beverley and Scarborough.

She said workers had received communiques from the company, including a letter from early March, promising payment on March 26, which "did not happen".

She said: “Despite then making promises to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and City of York Council that payments would be made within seven days, this again did not happen.” She said she had written to the council and received an assurance that they had not received any complaints about the service.

She had also written to Helen Whately, the Minister for Social Care, as she was "deeply concerned" about the process local authorities go through to give contracts to private providers.

Mr Palmer said Independent Home Living was a domiciliary care provider which looked after vulnerable adults in their own home, was subject to a governing body and local authority scrutiny, and had a rating of “good” in all areas indicating it was achieving all required standards.

He said a suggestion by the MP that it was a “rogue” provider was "insulting and categorically untrue". He claimed a "very small number" of staff who had recently left the employment of the company had all been paid their full salary.

Mr Palmer also said Ms Maskell had suggested that its employees were low paid but claimed their salaries were "extremely competitive" and higher than many other comparable employers in the area. He said the MP had sent a total of two emails to his office, and he had directed his office to respond to the first and he was in the process of preparing a response to the second email before she issued the release "without warning".