Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona O'Donnell Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

By April this year the Government’s measures, including increases in the personal allowance for those born after 5 April 1948, are estimated to have taken about 3.4 million individuals out of the income tax system altogether. Some 248,000 of these individuals live in the east midlands region, which of course includes the constituency of Kettering in Northamptonshire.

[Fiona O'Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Danny Alexander)]

The core purpose of the Treasury is to ensure economic stability, promote growth and employment, reform the banking system and restore sanity to the public finances.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

On Wednesday I asked the Chancellor about public registers of beneficial ownership in the Crown dependencies and overseas territories. He replied that

“they are all consulting, right now, on the creation of these registries.”—[Official Report, 3 December 2014; Vol. 589, c. 328.]

The fact is that two are not consulting and the others have all finished their consultations, although none has published its submissions or its policies. Will the Chief Secretary now set the record straight?

[Danny Alexander]

I will set the record straight. The record shows that under the previous Labour Government the Crown dependencies and these bodies did not make any progress on registers of beneficial ownership. Progress is being substantially made now because of the lead this Government showed at the G8. By the way, these same places have also now agreed to the automatic exchange of tax information, to make sure that for the first time—this is something the Government of the hon. Lady’s party never did—we can get tax from people who are trying to hide it in these jurisdictions.