Finance Bill Debate

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Department: HM Treasury

Finance Bill

John Pugh Excerpts
Monday 12th July 2010

(14 years, 4 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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John Pugh Portrait Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
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Should we not recognise that tax avoidance and tax evasion are two very different things, and that although we can make a rational guess as to the extent of the former, tax evasion that is successful is not detected at all and therefore any estimate of it must be highly speculative?

John McDonnell Portrait John McDonnell
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I fully concur, which is why I think that HMRC must apply a lot more resources to tackling quantification. The estimates I have been given range widely from the £40 billion from the Treasury for both avoidance and evasion—its figures do not distinguish between them—to the £25 billion from the TUC solely for tax avoidance, to the higher estimates of anything between £70 billion and £150 billion for both evasion and avoidance. I know that Richard Murphy in particular has focused on evasion, which could account for anything between 40% and 60% of the budget deficit—the structural deficit as well—that this House has recently been debating, and dividing on almost unnecessarily it seems to me.