Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between John Glen and Baroness Hodge of Barking(2 years ago)
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Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)
A happy Christmas to everybody.
The latest estimate that I have seen is that the Government’s failure to clamp down on tax havens in our overseas territories and Crown dependencies has cost us £65 billion—almost half what we spend on the NHS, or a third of our education budget. Does the Chancellor agree that our public finances would be in a far better shape, our taxes would be far lower and our tax system would be far fairer if we had cracked down on our tax havens?
John Glen
We always need to be vigilant about tax evasion and work closely with the overseas territories and Crown dependencies on those matters. A lot of progress on registers has been made in recent years, and more is due to be made. I will continue to reflect carefully and work with the Economic Secretary on further improvements to get things to where they need to be.