Taxation: Evasion and Avoidance

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I appreciate the magnanimity of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, in not grudging me four minutes out of the 40 minutes in today’s gap before he rises for the Official Opposition.

In his opening, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, regretted my party’s lack of participation, but I have been in the Chamber throughout, just as I was for all but 40 minutes of the 12 hours we devoted to the same-sex marriage Bill this week, which diminished temporarily my appetite for argument. I did think of speaking because of having participated in the debate on the Second Reading of the Finance Bill, following the Question for Short Debate last December on international tax implications, in which the noble Lord, Lord Browne, also took part. Unlike the noble Lord, I do not think that I received a briefing from ActionAid this time, so I make a plea, which no doubt will be read outside, to the charities and lobbyists on this subject that they keep a full list of the usual suspects in this area and send us a briefing on future occasions, even if we have not put our names down to speak, as we might thus be encouraged to do so.

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, said that the debate concerned the present Administration and not the 13 years before. I intervene to express a hope that the Minister will be prepared to say a word or two about the Charity Commission and its willingness to challenge the charitable credentials of a handful of black sheep where the charities have spent far less on charitable purposes than they have received in tax compensation, as has recently been reported in the press. This Government have taken some actions in this area already, whereas I think that the previous Government were less involved. It would also help if the Minister would indicate whether the Charity Commission needs any technical help with which the Treasury or Inland Revenue would be able to furnish it.

On a final, more light-hearted word, when my late noble kinsman was the Financial Secretary to the Treasury between 1954 and 1957 and was thus responsible to the other place for the Inland Revenue, he alleged that he once received a large anonymous banker’s draft from an equally anonymous taxpayer accompanied by a brief note, which said:

“I have not been sleeping well. I hope the enclosed tax contribution will cause me to sleep better. If it fails to do so, I shall send you some more”.