Oral Answers to Questions

Margaret Hodge Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. I think I can answer positively on all the points she made. At the Perth Commonwealth conference, I chaired a meeting of the Prime Ministers of all the different realms and we agreed we should bring forward legislation to deal with this issue. All the realms have now agreed to do that. We will introduce legislation into this House very shortly. It will write down in law what we agreed back in 2011: that if the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s first child is a girl, she can one day be our Queen. That is the key point. But it is important to explain that the changes will apply to a child born after the date of the Perth announcement of last year even if the birth is before the legislation is passed. I hope it will not take long—certainly not nine months—to pass this legislation, but, just in case, there would not be a problem.

[Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

Q9. I welcome the Government’s commitment to increasing their efforts to tackle tax avoidance. Starbucks has now caved in to public pressure and announced that it will review its tax arrangements in the UK, so naming and shaming clearly works. Surely it is time to stop companies engaged in tax avoidance hiding behind taxpayer confidentiality. Will the Prime Minister now commit to publishing the names of the companies found by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to have avoided paying their fair share of tax?

[The Prime Minister]

I very much welcome the right hon. Lady’s initiative on this and her Committee’s work, and I thank her for her warm words of support for what the Government have done thus far. We have recovered £29 billion of additional revenues from large businesses in the last six years, including £4 billion in the last four years from transfer pricing inquiries alone, which is one of the issues the press has covered in detail. I am certainly committed to doing everything we can to look at all the options to make sure that companies pay their taxes properly, and I agree with what the right hon. Lady said about public, and even some political, pressure. On some occasions I myself have made one or two remarks on this subject that were seen as rather controversial. It is important that people feel that companies meet their responsibilities and pay their taxes.