Finance Bill
Debate between Lord Mann and Brooks Newmark(11 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John Mann
Somebody is making money, because my own football club would appear to have been part-based in the Cayman Islands, in a structure that then took it into the British Virgin Islands and into Monaco and who knows where else. There are intricate webs criss-crossing these so-called “tax-efficient countries”—these tax havens for tax dodgers, corporate and individual. This Bill follows the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s, with working people losing real income year by year, unemployment rising, a worldwide recession, and people less well-off than they were five years ago. The Bill, however, contains no constructive, detailed, productive proposals on how we are going to deal with these territories. We spend taxpayers’ money providing the armed services to guarantee them and then we turn around and claim that we are the world leaders. I say poppycock to us being the world leaders. This is an excuse of a policy. This is an excuse of an attempt in a Finance Bill. This is an embarrassment to the coalition partners, who would love, if they could come up with some ideas, a robustness to put behind it.
The big dividing point in British politics at the moment is this unwillingness to deal with the tax dodgers. These little clauses—new clause 4 and new clause 12—in their own small way encompass the problem in front of us and in front of the British people.
Mr Newmark
I felt that the hon. Gentleman might need to refuel a little, as he was running out of breath. I am curious—given that many of the unions and pension funds invest in funds that invest in offshore places such as the Cayman Islands, making a lot of money for ex-union members and pensioners, will he suggest that the Labour party recommends that those unions and pension funds no longer use fund managers who invest in those offshore entities?