Tax Avoidance

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and David Mowat

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), who always makes such fascinating and interesting speeches and observations—[Interruption.] Indeed—and colourful, as well.

I want to draw attention to the incredible amount of historical revisionism we have seen in the debate. It is worth looking back first at what happened in the 13 years before this Government came to office. In those years, the Labour party was very taken with its prawn cocktail offensive and allowed a culture of industrial-scale tax avoidance to grow. We can see it in the figures. During Labour’s time in office, income tax rose by 81% whereas non-oil corporation tax receipts rose by just 7%. Under the previous Conservative Government, between 1986 and 1997, income tax receipts rose by about 79% whereas non-oil corporation tax receipts rose by a stunning 144%. If anybody wants to see more receipts and more money coming in from business, they should send for the Conservatives. We have seen that happen again in this Parliament. Income tax receipts have gone up by 11% whereas non-oil corporation tax receipts have gone up 16%. Again, business tax receipts have outstripped income tax receipts.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

Those points are important, but capital gains tax is equally important. As the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) said, this Government’s rates change on business assets—from 10% under the previous Government to 28%—is huge and has made a massive difference in the number of millionaires that are being created.

[Charlie Elphicke]

That is indeed a huge change. The Government have also supported entrepreneurs with entrepreneurs’ relief, which I greatly welcome.

Under this Government, the tax gap for 2012-13 is lower as a percentage of tax receipts than in any year under the previous Labour Government. Tax yield for HMRC has gone up by £7 billion since 2010-11. The Government have been very effective at dealing with the tax gap and bringing in receipts. The corporation tax gap for large businesses in 2009-10 was £2 billion, whereas in 2012-13 it was lower, at £1.8 billion. We see a lot of revisionism from Labour, but when it came to getting money through the door they had an atrocious record. The Conservative party and this Government have had an effective record. Why? We understand that to up the take one must cut the rate. That is what the Government have done with corporation tax, with massive success.

Let me draw attention to another problem with the Labour party: its proposals are completely and utterly muddled. Labour talks about UK overseas territories that do not have a public central register for offshore companies being on some sort of OECD blacklist. The only problem is that countries such as America, Luxembourg, Ireland and the Netherlands and a whole stream of other countries do not do that. The chances of getting the OECD nations that do not do that to agree to blacklist a whole lot of other nations that do not do it are minimal, and that shows the absurdity of the Labour position.