Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Anneliese Dodds and Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree it is disgraceful that some of those named in the Paradise papers are now threatening court action against those whistleblowers and are trying to scare people into not releasing such information in future?

[Anneliese Dodds]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend on that. There is a particular onus on the Government to be steadfast and clear in their rejection of those legal challenges and the problems they potentially pose to our democracy. Of course it is just the BBC and The Guardian that have been threatened with legal action, not any of the other 90 or so media outlets based in other countries. It is UK-based firms and media organisations that have been threatened with that action, so I hope the Minister will make clear to us today whether or not he agrees with Appleby’s threat of legal action against those who revealed the details of the Paradise papers in the public interest.

Many of the measures in the Bill intended to prevent aggressive tax avoidance and evasion do not go far enough. I have already referred in this House to clause 21, which seems to adopt a confusing new approach to measuring profit shifting, rather than aiming to reduce it per se. Yet again, there sadly appears to be deafening silence here concerning the need for tax simplification, with only minor measures that do not meet the required standard of a thoroughgoing, holistic assessment of the overall impacts of tax reliefs, which we desperately need in this country if we are to have proper Government accounting.

Finally, we see in the Bill a number of additional measures that seem intended mainly just to clean up previous mistakes by this Government, many of them following criticism from Labour Members. In clause 35 and schedule 10, for example, we find anti-avoidance provisions in relation to payments and benefits made from offshore trusts, no doubt reflecting the concerns we raised about the potential misuse of offshore trusts by non-doms. Let us be clear, before this issue crops up yet again in this debate: this Government have not abolished long-term, non-dom status. The new measures do not apply to those whose parents are non-doms, as is often the case, and a 15-year window is provided for individuals to get their affairs in order. In another example, clause 28 closes the loophole introduced by the coalition Government in 2011 that allowed foreign companies to hold on to an asset-stripped subsidiary for six years until they were then able to claim loss relief in excess of any genuine economic loss to the group. Again, the measure tidies up a problem that was created previously by those involved with this Administration.

To conclude, this Finance Bill was a chance for strong action against aggressive tax avoidance and evasion, but, sadly, we have here a paltry Bill, which some Conservative Members have praised in some of these debates for being thin. It is not thin because it is concise; it is thin because, sadly, just like this Government, it is lacking in ideas and ambition. We need a change now, more than ever.