Finance (No. 3) Bill

Hannah Bardell Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 20th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss]

That is indeed astonishing, and if it is a problem, the Government ought to be looking at it. People living in Scotland should pay the appropriate amount of tax, because that is the price we pay for living in a civilised society. That is what the Minister said in his speech earlier. We also have to look at what we get for our taxes in Scotland. We get a better, fairer society, which is good for us all. All the academics in this field recognise that a fair society is better for us all.

Last year, this Government opposed my amendment to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill that would have increased the transparency of Scottish limited partnerships by ensuring that those partnerships had bank accounts. We are still waiting for a response from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on the consultation that closed on 23 July this year.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

I served on that Bill Committee with my hon. Friend, and the work that she did was excellent. Does she share my concern about the damage being done to Scotland’s reputation by Scottish limited partnerships? The partnerships are nothing to do with the Scottish Government, they have not been legislated for in Scotland and we have no power over them there, but they are doing serious damage to Scotland’s reputation internationally, and the UK Government need to act.

[Alison Thewliss]

This Government absolutely do need to act on this issue. It cannot be right that something we have no control over becomes a noose around our neck when it comes to our reputation internationally. I expect this Government to come forward with something on this soon, because their not doing so allows this to continue to happen. The Herald, whose journalist David Leask has been a constant campaigner on this issue, has reported that

“in the year to March 2016, 95% of SLPs were set up by offshore tax havens.”

That ought to ring alarm bells for this Government, given the likely sums of money involved in these tax havens. I have tabled more parliamentary questions on this today, but the last time I checked, no fines had been issued to those SLPs that have not yet registered a person of significant control. Even pursuing those fines against SLPs could have brought large sums of money into the strapped Treasury coffers, never mind dealing with the underlying lack of transparency surrounding SLPs.

It is no secret that SLPs are being abused to carry out crimes abroad and launder money and that the anonymity they provide enables all this, but this Government are simply not doing enough to stop it. There was some progress after the Salisbury attack, and there was talk of clamping down specifically on Russian dirty money, but we have not yet seen that happen. We need to know what the Government’s plans are, because we cannot allow this to continue. I commend to the Minister the investigation on Uzbekistan by David Leask and Richard Smith, because the sums of money and levels of corruption involved are absolutely hair-raising.

The SNP has put forward many sensible proposals to crack down on tax evasion and avoidance, but they have been rejected by this Government time after time. No action has been taken on enforcing the people of significant control rules governing SLPs. No action has been taken on the alternative investment market loophole that allows families to register homes as business properties, effectively overriding inheritance tax. No action has been taken to make online retailers liable for tax avoidance when they falsely classify their goods as gifts. And no action has been taken to create a legal framework to combat tech firms who avoid corporation tax by registering implausibly low profits in the UK.

[Hannah Bardell]

On top of all that inaction, does my hon. Friend share my concern about the centralisation of HMRC offices? Highly skilled staff will lose their jobs because of this Government’s centralising agenda. In my constituency, more than 1,000 jobs are being moved from West Lothian to Edinburgh, which will create huge issues.

[Alison Thewliss]

I agree that that loss of expertise is a huge issue. I have a constituency interest, because many of these centralised offices end up being in Glasgow Central, but this also comes at a significant cost to the taxpayer. It is no secret that city centre office space in Glasgow is expensive, and there would be greater benefits in keeping those services in areas such as the Clyde Gateway, which is also in my constituency but much cheaper, or in Livingston. That would provide better value for money for the taxpayer than having them all in city centre offices.