Oral Answers to Questions

Karl McCartney Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We ended the spare room subsidy because we did not think it was fair to give to people in council houses a subsidy that those in private rented accommodation did not have. There is now a question for the Labour party: if it is to have this welfare cap, will it now tell us whether it will reverse this change? Will you? [Interruption.] The shadow Chancellor is shaking his head. Is that a no? That is right. After all the talk of the last few weeks—the iron discipline we were going to hear about, the welfare cap they were telling us about—they have failed the first test.

[Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)]

Q15. Tax avoidance is rightly at the heart of the G8 agenda. Will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister tell the House what advice he might have received on this issue from either the leader of the Labour party or the international, pizza and expensive curry-loving shadow Chancellor?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is this Government who are putting aggressive tax avoidance at the heart of the G8 agenda, and what do we hear this week from the Labour party? It gives tax avoidance advice to its donors. That is what it has been doing: £700,000 of tax has been avoided because of what Labour advised its donor to do.