Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman and congratulate him on his new appointment as an adviser at the Home Office on counter-extremism and counter-terrorism—a role that I know he will perform very effectively.

We do not comment on operational matters, as the hon. Gentleman will know. We welcome the removal of Baghdadi, but there is a much broader counter-Daesh strategy that we need to pursue. We need to keep all our partners together—which is why, frankly, some of the latent anti-Americanism that is preached by Opposition Front Benchers is deeply unhelpful.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

T6. It is great to have a no-nonsense northerner in the Chair, Mr Speaker.

Google turns around over £10 billion in the UK, making a typical profit margin of 22%, so it should pay about £420 million in corporation tax, yet it pays only about £70 million due to profit shifting. Will my right hon. Friend do all he can to press for international action to end this kind of disgraceful tax avoidance?

[Andrew Stephenson]

The UK is a world leader on tax compliance, with one of the lowest tax gaps in the world. The UK was a major sponsor of the OECD’s base erosion and profit shifting project and has adopted many of the recommendations. The Government also introduced the diverted profits tax, which came into effect on 1 April 2015 and counters the contrived arrangements used by some multinationals to divert profits from the UK.