Taxpayer Confidentiality

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I do not need the Minister who is sitting next to me to believe that what the noble Lord has said is correct. The fact is that HMRC has a principle of confidentiality. It is obliged under a law passed by the Labour Government in 2005 to respect confidentiality. The only time that it is able to divulge information is when it has statutory authority to do so as passed by Parliament.

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not incumbent on the Government to recognise that the public are losing patience with the fact that large companies, in particular multinationals, are getting away with paying minuscule amounts of tax in relation to their turnover in the United Kingdom? This issue needs to be tackled. Surely the Government should be addressing why HMRC was unable to get more than £130 million out of Google over a decade when the company had a turnover of more than £4 billion in any one year. As we know, Google is not the only case. Starbucks and of course Amazon were brought to book by public response, when the public set about boycotting those businesses as they were being so unfair. The Government must recognise that just hiding behind the doctrine of confidentiality will not do and that the tax authorities have to be much more efficient than they have been in the past.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I do not think that it is true to say that the tax authorities are hiding behind the doctrine. The doctrine of confidentiality that the noble Lord mentioned was passed by a Labour Government under the 2005 Act. As for Google, which is not the subject of this Question, the noble Lord should know, if he does not know already, that the tax that Google paid was based on taxable profits, not on turnover.