Lord Tugendhat
Main Page: Lord Tugendhat (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Ashton of Hyde
The noble Lord is absolutely correct that in the last resort we could do so, but these are democracies and we think it is better that they agree to do things rather than we dictate to them, which is a rather 19th century attitude. At the same time, we acknowledge that we would like to have public registers and we are trying to persuade them on that. As I say, 12 countries have agreed so far, so we are making progress.
Lord Tugendhat (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it is slightly ungracious of the noble Lord opposite not to recognise the great progress that has been made under this Government by comparison with the complete lack of progress made under the previous Government? Does he also accept that while there is much that we can do, and no doubt more that we and other rich countries can do, there is a great burden of responsibility on poorer countries? If they would tighten up their regulations and clamp down more on corruption, this problem would be a great deal less great than it is.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I agree with my noble friend. It is important to make the point that we would like to help developing countries to facilitate this, and we are spending money and resources doing that. DfID, for example, and the HMRC are capacity-building, and we are spending more money. We agreed to double our expenditure on that under the Addis tax initiative.