Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateBaroness Clark of Kilwinning
Main Page: Baroness Clark of Kilwinning (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Clark of Kilwinning's debates with the Department for International Development
(11 years, 2 months ago)
Commons Chamber1. What proposals her Department has to tackle tax avoidance by multinational companies operating in developing countries.
2. What steps she is taking to help developing countries improve their tax systems.
The UK Government are committed to ensuring that developing countries have the ability to collect the tax that they are owed. The UK is using our G8 presidency to promote tax transparency, tackle tax avoidance and ensure tax compliance.
The Secretary of State will be aware that developing countries lose more than £160 billion each year through tax avoidance, more than one and a half times what they receive in aid. What is she doing to ensure that we get country-by-country reporting so that we see how much those multinationals are taking from developing countries?
Addressing tax avoidance and encouraging tax compliance will be one of the key elements of the G8 agenda, and transparency sits alongside that. We will look at how we can obtain more transparency, including sectoral transparency through measures such as the extractive industries transparency initiative. All those measures together have the potential to ensure that we can help developing countries to collect the tax they are owed.