G8

Fiona O'Donnell Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We commissioned the OECD to help us. The simple principle is that there should be a tool to enable a country to see how much revenue, profit and tax a company is paying in each jurisdiction. Sometimes non-governmental organisations and others have asked for full disclosure of every piece of information, but, frankly, boxfile after boxfile of information does not necessarily get us the high level tax tool we need to see whether there is a problem, to share information with other tax authorities and to find an answer. This is the right approach for the reasons I have just given.

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

The Prime Minister has in the past supported the public disclosure of ownership of companies, so why is he hesitating now, rather than seizing the opportunity to show leadership again and committing the UK to a public register in its action plan?

[The Prime Minister]

As I said, we will set up a central registry and consult on whether it should be public. There are strong arguments for it to be public, but let me make two points. First, the point at which one says one’s own registry will be public, one gives up rather a lot of leverage over other countries we might want to encourage to do that at the same time. Secondly, it is important to take the business community that believes in responsible behaviour with us on this journey of greater transparency and fairness. To be fair, the CBI has been supportive of this agenda, so there is nothing to fear from a consultation where we try to take people with us on this important progress.