Tax Avoidance and Evasion
Debate between John McDonnell and Robert Jenrick(8 years, 7 months ago)
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John McDonnell
My hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House made that point last week, giving example after example of cases in which Orders in Council had been issued. They have been used very effectively by successive Governments, and it bewilders me that this Government are not taking that opportunity now.
John McDonnell
May I press on for a little while? I am only on the third page of my speech. This is getting ridiculous. I will give way to the hon. Gentleman later, but I have already given way a fair amount. As you know, Mr Speaker, I am generous, but I do not want to speak for too long.
Even today, we have not seen the Prime Minister’s full tax return or that of the Chancellor, and it is important that that should happen. The Prime Minister established the principle, which I advocated three months ago, that the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor should publish their tax returns—not summaries; their full tax returns—but that has not happened.
However, what confronts us today is an issue far bigger than any individual. At the centre of the allegations is a single issue. The fundamental problem is not tax avoidance by this individual or that company; those are symptoms of the disease. The fundamental issue is the corruption of democracy itself. At the core of our parliamentary system is the idea that those who levy taxes on the people are accountable to the people. If those who make decisions about our taxation system are believed to be avoiding paying their own taxes, that undermines the whole credibility of our system.
John McDonnell
I had better give way to the hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) first; otherwise, he will be disappointed.
Robert Jenrick
I am grateful to the shadow Chancellor. May I hark back to the point about Orders in Council? Was the shadow Chancellor surprised to learn that his friend and leader, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), once described the use of Orders in Council by the last Labour Government as “extremely undemocratic” and, in fact, “medieval? Does he think that the Leader of the Opposition is a johnny-come-lately on this issue?
John McDonnell
It depends on the issue that is being addressed. Sometimes harking back to the medieval period may be the most effective way of dealing with these problems.
John McDonnell
Let me deal with the tax threshold issue. The IFS has said that the biggest gains from the shift in the lower tax thresholds come for the higher earners. They are the ones who get the most and they benefit from the tax threshold moves. It describes the shifting of the tax thresholds as
“very much a giveaway to the better off”.
John McDonnell
I gave way earlier to the hon. Gentleman. I will press on because I know that others want to speak and I am sure he will want to speak himself.
This is a world that the super-rich inhabit. They live by different rules and it is an alien world for the majority of the rest of us.
Tax Avoidance and Multinational Companies
Debate between John McDonnell and Robert Jenrick(8 years, 9 months ago)
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John McDonnell
I know that the hon. Lady was not here at the time, so perhaps she should check my voting record throughout my 18 years in this House. I do not want to keep on repeating this. I wanted both Governments to go further, but an independent assessment has shown that the legislation introduced by the previous Labour Government will drag in 10 times more in tax than the current Government’s legislation, and even then I wanted to go further. We should at least accept the independent assessment that has been made.
John McDonnell
I am going to press on, because time is short.
I have written to the Competition Commissioner to request a formal investigation of this deal. There was a visible flicker of life from the Chancellor a few days ago. In the pages of Monday’s Financial Times he let it be known that he might, after all, favour country-by-country reporting for multinational corporations. Tax experts and campaigners and I have long argued that this is a vital step towards transparency, and therefore towards fair collection. By revealing in their accounts in which tax jurisdiction their revenues were earned, a proper rate of tax can be applied to multinational companies. If the Chancellor now supports country-by-country reporting, I welcome that. However, the impression was given that even without international agreement the Government would act. Is this the case, or was it just a publicity stunt that has now been dropped?
My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) referred to Bermuda. On the “Andrew Marr Show” on Sunday a senior Google representative revealed that the company has £30 billion of profits resting in Bermuda, a British overseas territory. This is in order to avoid US tax rates. We now know that the Chancellor has been lobbying the EU and instructing his MPs to vote against anti-avoidance measures against Bermuda. It is a disgrace.
It was also revealed last week that Government Ministers have met Google 25 times over the past 18 months. I note that the Prime Minister himself has spoken at Google’s conference not once, but twice. If Ministers are to meet anyone, my advice is that they go and meet the trade union representatives of HMRC staff. With almost half the workforce having been laid off, and with offices having been closed across the country, it is widely known that morale is at rock-bottom, especially with the loss of highly experienced and expert staff. [Interruption.] Madam Deputy Speaker, a reference has just been made to declaring an interest. I have no interest to declare. I think that was a reference to the Public and Commercial Services Union and part of its trade union group. It does not fund the Labour party or my constituency. There is no interest to be declared.
We cannot allow the Government to go on like this. Trust and confidence in our tax system is being undermined. Every pound in tax avoided by these large corporations is a pound taken from the pockets of honest taxpayers. It is also a pound not spent on our schools, our NHS and our police. We need a real tax reform agenda, based on the principle of complete openness and transparency. First, that means, as a start, the publication of the details of this deal in full, so that we and our constituents can judge whether it is fair enough. Secondly, we need real country-by-country reporting of a company’s activities, and not just a secret exchange of information between tax authorities, but full publication so that we can all judge.