Duncan Hames
Main Page: Duncan Hames (Liberal Democrat - Chippenham)Department Debates - View all Duncan Hames's debates with the HM Treasury
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
I can confirm that the agreement we have signed would not prevent us from receiving the so-called Lagarde list in exactly the way that we have been doing. Also, thanks to the Prime Minister’s leadership at the G8, we will now have an automatic exchange of information with Switzerland from 2017. That is one of the most important steps forward in tackling tax evasion. The answer is—[Interruption.] The shadow Chancellor is again not listening to the answers that he is getting across the Dispatch Box; the problem is that all his questions have been answered. The answer is that our agreement with Switzerland would not prevent us from receiving the Lagarde list.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
Should we not design greater resilience into our tax base instead of engaging in endless games of cat and mouse with firms of tax advisers?
Mr Osborne
The hon. Gentleman asks a good question. There are two approaches. The first involves introducing into our domestic law things like the general anti-abuse rule, which is more of a catch-all and tries to anticipate changes by accountancy firms and others who devise aggressive avoidance schemes. The second approach, which is not to be underestimated, involves the major international agreement on the automatic exchange of people’s tax information between jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the United Kingdom. That agreement has happened only because the Prime Minister put it at the top of the G8 agenda; no previous leader of the G8 had done so. That is why we will have the automatic exchange of information, which will be a revolution in tax transparency.