Tax Avoidance and Multinational Companies

Debate between Caroline Flint and Anna Turley

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) might have commanded a little more respect if he had listened with respect to the views of my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge). This debate is about Google, but it is also about so much more. We know that Google is currently valued at $524 billion, and that its profits in 2015 alone were £11 billion, an increase of £1 billion in a year, based on revenues of more than £52 billion. The Daily Mail has reported that Google has more than 5,000 UK-based employees, which is about a 10th of its total worldwide workforce. That figure includes 279 of its European, middle eastern and African directors, compared with Dublin, where it has 79 such directors. As colleagues have said, Google is constructing a new headquarters worth £1 billion near King’s Cross, in addition to its five other offices in the UK.

I do not want to get into a blame game. I want us to get the way we recover tax in this country right, but I believe that certain factors did not help to ensure focus on this growing problem. The public finances were healthy up to 2008. In the year before the crash, the Treasury netted nearly 30% of its corporate tax receipts just from financial services. That figure had fallen to about 17% by 2009. Also, at that time, the online giants of today were largely below the radar. Many floated before they had made a penny profit. Let us look at the corporate giants of today. Twitter, which floated in 2013, was valued at $18 billion on the day of its flotation yet it had never made a profit up to that point and did not do so for another year or more. Likewise, when Google first floated in 2004, its valuation was $23 billion but it was not turning the kind of profits that we are talking about today. Google’s circumstances are somewhat different today, yet after six years and with all the benefits of hindsight, this Government have achieved a payment of only £130 million, and we do not know how much of that is interest or penalties. We have to do more on this.

We can add other household names to the list of companies that paid no corporation tax in 2014: Shell, Lloyds Banking Group, AstraZeneca, SAB Miller, Vodafone and British American Tobacco. Those six companies made a combined profit of £30 billion in 2014, yet they are notionally making no money in the UK.

[Anna Turley]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that initiatives such as the Fair Tax Mark, which is a bit like the fair trade stamp, should encourage more companies to demonstrate publicly their tax liabilities and responsibilities, and that they should consider it a badge of pride that they are paying their full tax?

[Caroline Flint]

Absolutely. I think that there is cross-party support for more transparency.

Given that Google, HMRC and the Chancellor were quick to publicise the outcome of their negotiations, surely they should be open about how they arrived at the figure of £130 million. We need to know what sort of benchmark this is setting not only for Google but for other companies as well. The Government make the rules and HMRC enforces them, and it is about time that we had more openness. To be honest, if I worked for Google and I were advising it, I would say, “Volunteer to give the information, because this situation is not doing your company any good whatsoever.” This is important not only to reassure public opinion but to restore the confidence of those UK-based businesses that have much lower revenues than these giant corporations yet pay considerably more tax, including 20% corporation tax.

We cannot content ourselves with companies appearing to decide whether or not to pay any tax, as though it were discretionary or some kind of charitable payment to the UK. If the broadest shoulders are to bear their share of the burden for funding public services and our pension system, I am afraid that the Government will have to raise their game. We will support the Government on that. Our Labour motion might not receive a majority in the vote today, but this problem will not go away. I, for one, am looking forward to next week when, as a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I shall hear directly from Google and HMRC about what they have to say.