Tax Avoidance and Evasion

Debate between Catherine West and Peter Dowd

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

I will try to take that on board as a suggestion rather than a direction, Mr Speaker. The Minister identified what he thinks should be done, but I will tell him what should be done. In our “Tax Transparency and Enforcement Programme” document, Labour calls for an immediate public inquiry into avoidance, greater scrutiny of MPs, the creation of a specialist tax enforcement unit, and the public filing of large company tax returns and of the tax returns of wealthy individuals earning more than £1 million. We want no public contracts for tax avoiders, the repatriation of contracts parked in tax havens, public contract transparency, a register of beneficial ownership of companies and a register of trusts, and our programme would be enforced by working with the banking sector. We also call for a general anti-avoidance rule in principle, strict minimum standards for crown dependencies and overseas territories, the creation of an offshore companies levy and full country-by-country reporting. All that represents a comprehensive proposal from Labour.

[Catherine West]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is an army of tax avoidance facilitators that includes, sadly, the four big accountancy firms, which are often based just down the road in the square mile?

[Peter Dowd]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Transparency is at the heart of all this. I experienced a bizarre situation last week when I was on “Newsnight” with the chairman of the Cayman Islands stock exchange. What an insouciant attitude that man had to tax avoidance. He actually said that there had not been any wrongdoing—maybe not—and called for the journalists to be jailed. That is what he did, and that is the position in which we find ourselves.