Tax Avoidance and Evasion

Margaret Hodge Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the systemic issues enabling tax avoidance and evasion uncovered by the Paradise Papers.

The actions and the culture of powerful large corporations and of the wealthiest in our society, as revealed in the Paradise papers, constitute a national and international disgrace. What we have learned is that tax avoidance is not just a trivial irritant practised by a small number of greedy individuals and global corporations; it is the widely accepted behaviour of too many of those who are rich and influential. It is clearly taking place on an industrial scale and it has become a scourge on our society. The Paradise papers reveal the enormity and scale of the problem and that is what makes this emergency debate on the issue so important.

Our debate is also urgent and timely because the Chancellor, who sadly is not in his place to hear the debate, is putting the finishing touches to his Budget. I hope that he will read very carefully the views expressed today by Members and reflect them in the proposals he brings to us next week.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

There is no such thing as a magic money tree: that is what the Prime Minister told a nurse who had not had an increase in eight years. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is, and that they grow on the Cayman Islands, in Bermuda and Jersey; and that were the ill-gotten gains salted away by tax dodging to be picked and put into our public services, police officers and teachers would not be facing the sack and we would not be facing a crisis in the health service?

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend’s remarks, which are very pertinent to what we will be discussing in the debate.

Paying tax is an essential part of the social contract into which we all enter as members of a community. As members of society, we agree to abide by a set of rules and regulations that make all our lives better. One of those rules is that we agree to contribute through taxation into the common pot for the common good.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

I would like to ask the right hon. Lady why her family firm, Stemcor, is famous for paying virtually no tax.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I am really pleased the hon. Gentleman has given me the opportunity to explain the circumstances to the House. My father and his cousins were refugees from Germany. My father was then a refugee from Egypt, so he was a double refugee. I remember as a child that he often said to me, “You will never feel safe in this country. Always have your suitcase ready.” He did keep money abroad. When we discovered that after he died, we closed those funds and put them into a charity.

The level of taxation and who pays is decided by us here in Parliament through our democratic processes. That is how we create a system that is democratic and trusted by all. When a minority choose to ignore and deliberately bypass our rules and regulations and get away with it, they undermine confidence in the fairness of the system. Some people and some Members claim that tax avoidance is okay because it is lawful. Indeed, one of the Government’s Ministers from the other place, the noble Lord Bates, said on Monday that tax avoidance

“continues to be part of the international system and we recognise and value it.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 13 November 2017; Vol. 785, c. 1611.]

He and others are simply wrong, and they misunderstand the issues. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’ own definition of tax avoidance is clear:

“Tax avoidance involves bending the rules of the tax system to gain a tax advantage that Parliament never intended. It often involves operating within the letter, but not the spirit of the law.”

Those are the words of HMRC. Even it says that tax avoidance is wrong.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

Does the right hon. Lady agree that a feature of a strong tax system is having a proper network of HMRC offices, and that centralisation and the closure of offices such as the one in my constituency is a disgrace that will do nothing to help the situation?

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I agree with the hon. Lady that resourcing HMRC is absolutely central to the fight against tax avoidance and evasion.

Tax avoidance is completely different from tax planning, whereby, for example, Parliament intended to encourage people to save for their pension by introducing ISAs with tax breaks. Tax avoiders, on the other hand, thwart the intention of Parliament. Their action means our collective will is ignored. We should not tolerate it and we must act urgently to eradicate it.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the best ways of trying to deal with this increasingly serious issue is to have openness and transparency in all funds held offshore, so that those who are doing this have to face the legitimate scrutiny of taxpayers in this country?

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

My hon. Friend makes an absolutely central point to what we will be asking for today.

Not only does the behaviour of a few damage trust in the system as a whole, but it damages the public services our taxes are used to fund. At a time when the NHS is under such pressure, when public sector workers have had their wages held down for years and our schools are struggling to deliver the best start for all our children, for the super-rich and the powerful to think that they can opt out of their duty to contribute fairly through paying taxes is completely and utterly and totally immoral and wrong, and it is our responsibility to put an end to it.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

I have been very helpfully provided with some facts that I think should be put to the House. I am told that since 2010 the Government have secured £160 billion from tackling avoidance, evasion and non-compliance and £2.8 billion from offshore tax evaders, and invested £1.8 billion in Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to tackle avoidance and evasion. I am very proud of this record. Does the right hon. Lady agree that it is an excellent record from a Conservative Government? How does it compare with the record of the Labour Government that she has always been so keen to support?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I hope that the right hon. Lady will listen to the whole of my speech. I think she will acknowledge, as we move forward, that a little progress has been made but not enough. I agree that the previous Labour Government’s record on tackling tax avoidance was not as good as I would have wanted, but the record and actions of this Government are inadequate and somewhat hypocritical. Their rhetoric is mostly fine, but the reality is badly wanting.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

When ordinary people hear the Budget next week and have to think about their taxes against the background of inflation in food prices, will they not wonder why the Members opposite are hellbent on avoiding any inquiry into aggressive tax avoidance?

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. Indeed, I was about to say that those who pay their taxes are completely fed up. By 8 o’clock this morning, nearly 156,000 people had signed a petition going to the Prime Minister. This is an issue that angers people across the country, men and women, supporters of all political parties, people of all ages and people in every income group.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

Obviously the right hon. Lady is making a very good point—everybody wants tax evasion clamped down on—but I, too, have some statistics. The Government have invested £1.8 billion in HMRC to tackle tax avoidance and reduced the tax gap by 2% more than Labour did. We are on the right track.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

If the hon. Lady looks at the HMRC figure on the tax gap, which is about £34 billion to £36 billion, and then at the figure that tax campaigners talk about, which is a gap of £120 billion, I think she will share my determination to see much more action to deal with this ill in our society.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does she share my concern about the complacency being shown today? Cutting down on global tax abuse clearly requires international co-operation. As we exit the EU, does she share my concern that this ambition not be damaged by our exit but be strengthened by our actions domestically and internationally?

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I completely concur with my hon. Friend’s important remarks.

It is our job, as the elected representatives of those who are angry, to do what we can to put a stop to tax injustice. Tax avoidance should be not an issue that divides us, but one on which we work together in the interests of all taxpayers and in order to protect our public services. The Paradise papers are the latest in a series of leaks unmasked by the international press. I salute the professional investigatory journalists involved in making sense of the millions of documents passed to them, especially those at The Guardian and on “Panorama”, who have been working on the papers for a year, and I salute the public-spirited courage of the whistleblower who first passed the papers to the German newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The Paradise papers contain 13.4 million files from just two offshore providers of tax advice and the company registries of 19 tax havens. The scale of the data is what makes the leaks so important.

We have had the Panama papers, the Luxembourg leaks, the Falciani leaks, the so-called Russian and Azerbaijani laundromat revelations on money laundering, and now we have the Paradise papers. We will continue to see new leaks splashed over our papers and filling our television screens until the Government act firmly to clamp down on the avoidance that is so blatant and yet so wrong.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

The right hon. Lady has said several things I agree with—for instance, that everybody should pay their fair share into the tax system, which helps fund our vital public services, and that everyone should work together on tax avoidance—but, given that, does she not feel ashamed at her party’s actions to block steps, before the election, that would have reduced tax avoidance?

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I am trying not to make this overly partisan, but I feel more ashamed, as a Member of Parliament, at the hon. Lady’s party’s reluctance to adopt the clear and simple measures that could really tackle tax avoidance.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I want to make some progress, because a lot of people want to speak in what is a two-hour debate.

Last week, our papers were filled with scams and scandals concerning celebrities, from the self-appointed philanthropist Bono to the popular actors in “Mrs Brown’s Boys”: stories that tainted the reputation of our much-loved royal family; revelations about establishment figures in politics, such as Lord Ashcroft and Lord Sassoon; and further evidence that corporations such as Apple deliberately establish artificial financial structures that have no other purpose than to avoid tax. I want to focus, however, on the systemic issues that these stories illustrate. It is the systemic issues that we need to consider if we are to make progress.

I will start with two comments arising from what we have learnt from the Paradise papers—observations that help us to understand what is wrong with our system. Appleby, the firm of lawyers at the heart of the Paradise papers, is one of the few offshore law practices that belong to the “offshore magic circle” of service providers. Indeed, Appleby was named offshore firm of the year by “The Legal 500” in 2015. Yet the Paradise papers reveal that the firm was criticised no less than 12 times over a 10-year period in reports issued by regulators in UK tax havens: the British Virgin Islands, the Isle of Man, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.

Appleby was criticised for its failure to comply with regulations designed to stop the funding of terrorism and prevent money laundering. The reports talked of “persistent failures and deficiencies”, “severe shortcomings” and

“a highly significant weakness in the adequacy of the organisation’s systems and controls and a deficiency in meeting its regulatory requirements.”

Further documents reveal that Appleby simply ignored these critical reports and failed to change its procedures, despite strong words from the regulatory bodies. Even the authorities on the British Virgin Islands found, after an inspection of Appleby, that the firm had

“contravened financial services legislation…the anti-money-laundering code of practice 2008 and the anti-money-laundering regulations 2008”

and had

“severe shortcomings with a majority of the legislation, with prudential standards and good practice requirements not being met.”

Our regulatory frameworks are so weak that law firms can ignore or break the law with complete impunity. It is hopeless having self-regulation, national and international codes of practice and regulatory bodies with legal powers, if in practice they fail to secure compliance and good behaviour. The lawyers clearly just did not give a damn, and nobody held them to account.

[James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)]

The title of this debate is “Tax Avoidance and Evasion”. I thought I understood the distinction between the two, but I feel the line is being blurred. How does the right hon. Lady understand the distinction between avoidance and evasion?

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I agree that the line is extremely blurred. Schemes put forward as legitimate tax avoidance are frequently found to be unlawful when HMRC finally catches up with them. It is difficult to make distinctions.

Worse than that, Appleby helped to co-ordinate a well-funded and comprehensive lobby by the International Financial Centres Forum before a G8 summit that David Cameron chaired in 2013. The then Prime Minister had intended to insist that the UK’s tax havens publish public registers of beneficial ownership in their jurisdiction. Had David Cameron had his way, we might not be here today, but the IFCF lobbied fiercely to maintain secrecy. It lobbied the right hon. Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Gauke), the then Exchequer Secretary, it lobbied the permanent secretary at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, it lobbied the senior official who was then director of the UK’s G8 presidency unit, and it succeeded in weakening David Cameron’s commitment to transparency.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my right hon. Friend and neighbour for giving way. Is not the fact that the vast majority of these tax havens are British overseas territories the key question, and is it not time that this Government—or any other Government in the country—took seriously the fact that those places are not doing what is in the interests of British people all over the world?

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

It is also not in the interests of the many developing countries that lose more tax through tax avoidance than we do in proportion to their budgets.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

The right hon. Lady’s central contention is that those territories should publish open registers of beneficial ownership. First, does she acknowledge that the United Kingdom is now one of the only countries in the world to do so, as a result of action by this Government? That was a huge achievement on the UK’s part. Secondly, in an international context, virtually no other major developed country in the world has done it. The state of Delaware, in which 90% of US corporations are registered—

[Mr Speaker]

Order! When I say “order”, the hon. Gentleman must resume his seat. I do not wish to be unkind to him. He is always very fluent, but he usually takes too long, and that was not just too long; it was far too long.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I simply observe that the UK also has responsibility for the overseas territories and Crown dependencies, and I wish that its own tax code did not contain so many harmful elements that encourage tax avoidance.

Appleby’s lobbying illustrates another continuing problem. The Treasury, and other Ministers and Departments, listen only to a very small and exclusive group of tax professionals when making decisions on tax policy. It is one thing for the Government to consult stakeholders on issues, but it is quite another for the Government to be captured by the tax industry at the expense of the wider public interest. Tough and active regulation of the industry to ensure compliance with existing rules is therefore vital. Curtailing the influence of tax professionals on tax policy is essential, and making the advisers accountable for the schemes that they invent and market is central to the campaign to destroy tax avoidance.

The measures in the Finance Act 2017 represent one small step in the right direction of holding advisers to account, but the small print suggests that very few, if any, will be caught by the legislation. The definitions are too narrow, and the penalties too weak. Those measures have been introduced so that the Government can claim that they are acting, but until advisers are really called to account and properly punished for inventing schemes that are purely aimed at avoiding tax, the army of lawyers, accountants and bankers will continue to prosper. If the Government are serious about tackling tax avoidance, they must act strongly to deal with the illegitimate practices of those who make a huge living from peddling tax avoidance advice.

[Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Does she agree that the approach of the prosecuting authorities in this country must also be improved? It is striking how seldom they proceed with the legislation that we introduce.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I entirely agree. I must now make progress, because otherwise I shall take up too much time.

More than half of the Appleby offices are located in British tax havens. More than half of the entities that were exposed in the Panama papers were incorporated in just one UK tax haven, the British Virgin Islands. Estimates of the wealth held in tax havens are by their nature difficult to verify, but they vary from $7.6 trillion to $32 trillion.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I will, for the last time.

[Rushanara Ali]

Does my right hon. Friend agree, in the light of what she has said, that Britain has a unique leadership role? Developing countries lose income amounting to between $100 billion and $160 billion a year. Imagine what we could do to tackle poverty if that money were available.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend’s very powerful point.

Unbelievably huge sums of money are hidden in these jurisdictions. It is impossible to measure accurately how much tax is lost through the presence of tax havens, but it runs into hundreds of millions of pounds every year. We do know that developing countries lose three times as much in tax avoidance as they gain from the global investment in international aid. Our tax havens, acting as secret, low or no-tax jurisdictions, are utterly central to much of the tax avoidance. We cannot continue to pretend that we are leading the international fight against tax avoidance and evasion when, by what we do and what we fail to do, we allow avoidance to prosper; and not just tax avoidance, but money-laundering, corruption, bribery and other financial crimes, which prosper through the secrecy that we allow to prevail. Our failure to tackle our tax havens, our weak regulatory regime and some of our tax rules means that we are now seen as the country of choice for kleptocrats and criminals as well as tax avoiders and evaders, as they seek to hide their money and minimise their tax bills.

We need our Government to hold to the commitments made by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor in 2013 and 2014. They understood that transparency was the key ask. We need public registers of beneficial ownership, showing who owns what and where. That, at a stroke, would undermine so much. Would Bono have invested in tax havens if he had thought that we would all know? Would Lewis Hamilton have created a complex structure of companies to avoid VAT? Would the actors in “Mrs Brown’s Boys” have hidden their earnings in artificial financial structures if they had thought that we would find out? The answer is no.

David Cameron understood that when he told the UK tax havens to rip aside “the cloak of secrecy” in 2013, when he urged them in 2014 to consult on a public register that was

“vital to meeting the urgent challenges of illicit finance and tax evasion”,

and when he proclaimed in 2015 that

“if we want to break the business model of stealing money and hiding it in places where it can’t be seen: transparency is the answer.”

However, in the last two years the Government have fundamentally watered down that commitment to public registers in British tax havens, and now we hear Ministers say that we must wait for other countries to go first. The proper call for international action on transparency has become the lame excuse for inaction in our own territories.

We should lead by example. We should demonstrate that transparency can and does change behaviour. We should compel our overseas territories and Crown dependencies to publish public registers. In the past, a Conservative Government used their powers to outlaw capital punishment in our Crown dependencies and overseas territories, and a Labour Government used the same powers to outlaw discrimination against gay people. Today we should work together to outlaw the secrecy of those jurisdictions, which leads to such massive tax injustices.

The Paradise papers show us that the problems created by secrecy are much bigger and more complex than we ever thought possible, and that is why we need to legislate for transparency in our tax havens. We should help them to transform their economies, so that they stop depending on hidden wealth, unsavoury people, and questionable financial practices. I cannot think of one good reason for us not to do that, and to do it now. Indeed, there is more that we can do, right now: it simply requires the Government to have the necessary political will. They will certainly have the support of the whole House, and the whole country, if they demonstrate by their actions, not their words, that they will work to stamp out tax avoidance.

We can and should now implement the legislation requiring multinational companies to report their activity and profits on a country-by-country basis—legislation successfully steered through Parliament by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint). We can and should also introduce immediately the public register of property ownership that was enacted before the general election, promoted by Transparency International and Global Witness and supported by members of the all-party group on anti-corruption. Nobody knows why this legislation has not been implemented; it is a key element in the fight against corruption, avoidance and evasion. We can and should properly resource HMRC now so that it has the capability to pursue all who seek to avoid paying tax, not just the small businesses who form an easy target that can be hounded with little effort. Every £1 invested in HMRC enforcement yields £97 in additional tax revenues. It is a complete no-brainer that we should be strengthening HMRC and reversing some of the cuts.

The Paradise papers have helped place tax avoidance back at the heart of the political agenda and back at the top of the list of public concerns. The Government need to grasp this moment to act. They have an opportunity to do so in next week’s Budget. Britain will never get rich on dirty money, and our public services cannot function if the wealthiest individuals and the most powerful companies deliberately avoid paying their fair share towards the cost of those services. And this Government will not be forgiven if they fail to heed the lessons we can all learn from the Paradise papers. Proper transparency will come. The Government can choose whether they lead the changes needed or whether they want to be dragged kicking and screaming into implementing essential reforms. I hope they will listen, learn and act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mel Stride]

I will now make some progress. I am aware that this is just a two-hour debate and that many Members wish to speak.

We have covered the various measures that we have taken, and we have covered the huge investment that we have made in HMRC. Perhaps I can now turn to the international aspects. We all agree that we need to look closely at what is happening in the international sphere. On that, this Government have a record of which we can be proud. Through the OECD, we have been in the vanguard of the base erosion and profit shifting project. We have worked closely with the Crown dependencies and overseas territories.

We have brought in a diverted profits tax, which will raise £1.3 billion by 2019, and common reporting standards to ensure that information is exchanged in relation to around 100 countries. We have introduced a directory of beneficial ownership that is accessible by HMRC, the authority that needs to have that information. All this has happened in the last couple of years, and it is a game changer. Many of the issues arising from the Paradise papers go back very many years, but these measures are in place right now.

I also want to make an important point on transparency. In last week’s debate, I asked the right hon. Member for Barking, in relation to the 13 million files held by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, whether she would join me in calling on the ICIJ to release that information to HMRC so that we could go after anyone who, as a consequence of that data release, was thought to be abusing our tax system. Will she support us in that endeavour?

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

The Minister did raise that point last week, and the House should know that it is not in the gift of either The Guardian or “Panorama” to release those papers. They are not able to do that.

[Mel Stride]

What I actually asked was whether the right hon. Lady would join me in calling for the ICIJ to release that information. [Interruption.] That is a slightly different question, and I am happy to give way again if she will tell us, yes or no, whether she will do that. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Stop the clock. There is far too much noise in this Chamber. I say gently to the Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp): don’t do it! You may think you are being clever, but it does not enhance your reputation as a parliamentarian in the end. Please don’t do it. It is juvenile, the public despise it and I have no patience for it.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I will certainly join the Minister in seeking any documentation that HMRC requires to pursue those who are guilty of avoidance or evasion. I would say to him, however, that when I have given papers to HMRC in the past—whether relating to Google or from other whistleblowers—they have just disappeared and no action ever appears to have been taken.

[Mel Stride]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady. I will take that as a yes—we can work together to try to ensure that that information is provided to HMRC. I see no reason why that should not happen.

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[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for allowing this debate, and to all Members who have participated, particularly those who looked beyond narrow political party interest and more at the public interest.

We cannot allow the serious issues raised by the Paradise papers today simply to become the fish and chips wrappers of tomorrow. It is our responsibility as lawmakers to do all that we can, in the UK and with our international partners, to stamp out an injustice that is both unfair and offensive. The Government can take action that will make a difference, and it simply needs a strong political will to make that happen. I urge the Government to act in next week’s Budget.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the systemic issues enabling tax avoidance and evasion uncovered by the Paradise Papers.

[James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Have you heard from the Foreign Office of an intention for a Minister to come to the House to make a statement on what appears to be an ongoing coup in Zimbabwe?