Chancellor George Osborne's plans to close 137 HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) offices will undermine efforts to reduce the amount of tax that remains uncollected, the SNP has said.

The party's business spokeswoman Hannah Bardell suggested the majority of the UK's tax gap of £34 billion could be made up by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) having better advice and guidance on their tax affairs.

But the decision to close local HMRC offices around the country will undermine this and increase the errors and miscommunication that leads to tax remaining uncollected from SMEs, she said.

Opening an SNP opposition day debate on the closures, Ms Bardell said: "Small and medium-sized enterprises account for the largest proportion of the overall tax gap, some £16.5 billion, followed by large businesses with some £9.5 billion.

"We in the SNP take the view that the vast majority of SMEs actively want to contribute to society by paying tax and that a high proportion of the SME tax gap will have been lost through errors and miscommunication.

"The UK Government's plans to slash 137 local HMRC offices across the UK will inevitably have a knock-on impact on the ability of SMEs to access information and tax advice."

Ms Bardell also highlighted the potential loss of up to 2,000 jobs in Scotland with the closure of offices in Aberdeen, Bathgate and Livingstone, Cumbernauld, two in Dundee, three in East Kilbride, three to close and consolidate in Edinburgh and two in Glasgow to consolidate into one large office.

She said this will leave businesses in areas of Scotland which rely on specialist local tax advice without the expertise needed to help ease their work.

Ms Bardell said: "Beyond the central belt of Scotland we have a wide range of industries including farming, fishing, whisky, tourism and indeed oil and gas.

"Many of these industries rely on the ability to work with their local tax offices, given the complexities of their businesses.

"For industries such as farming which often operate a year in arrears to very tight margins, I and my colleagues have very grace concerns about the impact on them and indeed a wide range of other sectors, not least the small and medium enterprises of our countries."

Shadow Treasury minister Rob Marris said there were huge risks, part of which was to do with insufficient funding, insufficient staffing and an insufficient number of offices.

He said: "This issue is a classic case of this Government putting the cart before the horse. They announced the closure programme before they have got adequate information, so for example we need a public consultation on this kind of change, we need a business consultation and we need parliamentary scrutiny for example by the Public Accounts Committee and the Treasury Select Committee.

"Only having gone through that process could I, and I would venture other honourable members, form a view as to how many offices, distributed around the UK, MRC should have given the changes brought about by technology, the desire for efficiency, but also balanced against that the desire for a customer facing service."

Tory MP Philip Davies (Shipley) said he would much prefer to save jobs than buildings if it came down to it, but added: "But I do think the way in which HMRC have gone about this has been a rather cack-handed way and I therefore as we stand at the moment I don't feel able to support the Government either in what it's doing and so I shall have to reflect on this further before the division."

Mr Davies criticised the decision in West Yorkshire, stating that in Shipley the tax office due to close employed 924 staff, while in Bradford there were two further offices employing 358 and 632 people, with a total of 2,300 employed by HMRC in the Bradford district.

He said: "Now to close down all of the offices in Bradford and locate a regional hub in Leeds makes absolutely no sense whatsoever."

He added: "What it's doing here in a rather bizarre way, is actually locating a regional hub in a place which is going to be more expensive for the taxpayer than a very feasible alternative."

HMRC is planning to close 137 offices and replace them with 13 new regional centres.

David Gauke, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, confirmed the plans will result in some job losses.

"By 2027 when this process will have been completed, approximately 4,000 of the existing 58,000 people employed by HMRC will not be within reasonable daily travel distance to an HMRC office," he said.

"I want to be completely straightforward with the House of Commons. That is the scale by 2027."

Jim Cunningham, Labour MP for Coventry South, asked if all those staff will be able to be redeployed.

Mr Gauke said: "For those people I'm afraid there will have to be redundancies, assuming that they are still working for HMRC over the course of that period.

"But I would make the point that clearly the vast majority of HMRC staff, and I recognise it's difficult for those who aren't in that position, the vast majority are able to work in the regional centres that I have outlined."

Mr Gauke said redundancies will be kept to an "absolute minimum".

Meanwhile, he made the financial case for the shake-up, telling the House: "I welcome the fact that HMRC's expenditure on its estates fell from £371 million in 2010/11 to £255 million in 2014/15 and that these plans will generate further savings of £100 million a year by 2025 ... allowing HMRC to better concentrate on its core task of revenue collection."

He also reiterated the locations of the 13 new regional centres.

He said: "These new high quality regional centres will serve each and every region and nation in the United Kingdom, creating high quality skilled jobs and promotion opportunities in Birmingham, Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Croydon, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Stratford.

"There are significant advantages to such a system."

Mike Wood, Tory MP for Dudley South, said: "Moving more of HMRC's work out of central London which has some of the world's most expensive office space will enable HMRC to make substantial savings.

"It is right that HMRC does make whatever savings it can on its property costs so that the money that it does have can be used to improve customer service and maximise tax revenues.

"It simply cannot be sustainable for HMRC's 58,000 full-time employees to be spread across 170 offices around the country, many of which are really little more than a legacy from the 1960s and 70s.

"This is highly inefficient."

But Mr Wood also stressed the need for staff to be treated "fairly".

"That is why I hope that everything possible will be done to retain the skills and expertise that we have within the HMRC by making sure that as many of the workforce as possible are redeployed."

But Drew Hendry, SNP MP for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, described the changes as a "hammer blow" to workers.

"It is ludicrous that such a massive change would be made without any public or parliamentary consultation," he said.

Treasury minister Damian Hinds again reiterated that most of the jobs in offices earmarked for closure would be relocated within "reasonable travelling distance" of an hour for most people.

But Mr Davies echoed the sentiments of many other MPs in the debate by suggesting HMRC's plans were not based on local analyses of need.

Intervening on Mr Hinds, he said: "Can I just say to you that what we've got here is a really lazy reorganisation by HMRC, who just appear to have picked either the biggest place in the region or the one that's easiest for the London staff to get to by train?

"Can I ask you to listen to this debate and go away and come back and actually look at this thing from a properly local perspective covering the issues that have been raised in the debate today?"

Mr Hinds replied: "That is not the way in which the process was gone about to identify the locations, it is a combination of site-specific, location-specific criteria, and also critically mapping out where HMRC staff live in order to calculate what counts as reasonable travel distance and what locations those individuals can reasonably travel to."

The SNP's motion calling for a halt in the office closure plan was defeated by 301 votes to 154, majority 147.