Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: HM Treasury

Oral Answers to Questions

Justine Greening Excerpts
Tuesday 21st May 2019

(4 years, 10 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Mel Stride Portrait Mel Stride
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If we include the loans, the average earnings of those who have been involved in this egregious tax avoidance is twice our country’s national average wage. There is no need for people to get involved in these schemes, the sole purpose of which is to avoid tax. Some Members have raised amounts of some £700,000 or £900,000 that HMRC is pursuing in this context; that would equate to a couple of million pounds going through these schemes. I remind the House that these are schemes that take loans from the UK out to an offshore trust in a low or no-tax jurisdiction and route it back into the UK as a loan that is never due to be repaid, simply for the purpose of avoiding tax. We do not believe that is right.

Justine Greening Portrait Justine Greening (Putney) (Con)
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If the Minister is right when he says that the loan charge is not retrospective, how come we have examples like the situation faced by my constituent, who was pursued with an accelerated payment notice back in 2015, in relation to a loan charge scheme? He paid the amount that HMRC asked him for, but now suddenly, out of the blue, a request has been sent to a wrong email address that means he will probably have to pay more money. Does that not show that HMRC has shifted the goalposts and therefore that the loan charge is retrospective?

Mel Stride Portrait Mel Stride
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I entirely stand by my earlier remarks about the measures not being in the least retrospective. Of course, I cannot comment on the tax affairs of the individual that my right hon. Friend has just referred to; it would not be right or proper of me to do so.

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Elizabeth Truss Portrait Elizabeth Truss
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Royal Fleet Auxiliary personnel are part of the civil service, so this is a matter for the Cabinet Office, alongside the Ministry of Defence, but I am sure that it will have heard the hon. Gentleman’s representations.

Justine Greening Portrait Justine Greening (Putney) (Con)
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As the questions today have demonstrated, the Treasury needs to take a much longer-term view of investing in people and their human capital, just as it does in relation to physical capital. When is the Office for National Statistics’ human capital review finally going to report? It was announced in March 2018, but I cannot even find out whether its consultation has been published yet.