Tax Avoidance and Evasion

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

I say that I should make some progress, but I look around the House and everybody is standing up. I will give way to the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan).

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

I thank the Financial Secretary for giving way. He referred to the Government’s record, but that record also includes changes to the controlled foreign companies rules, which in effect cost Exchequers here and, more importantly, in developing countries.

[Mr Gauke]

I do not accept that. The hon. Gentleman and I have debated the issue on several occasions. When we came to office in 2010, the controlled foreign companies regime was outdated and was driving businesses out of this country. Since our reforms, more businesses have located in the United Kingdom and more businesses have located their European headquarters here. The change has added to the UK’s attractiveness as a place to do business. As for developing countries, I have said to the hon. Gentleman before that the UK has been at the forefront of building the capacity of tax authorities in developing countries to ensure that they are able to collect the tax that is due under their laws.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

I want to take up the point made by the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) about enforcement. He mentioned the closure of tax offices in Northern Ireland. I know that a tax office in my constituency is due to be closed in the next few years, which means the loss of work that it was doing on matters including the recovery of overseas taxes.

However, I do not want to join those who have used the debate to make points about the Government’s general tax policy or taxation record, because I think that the public would expect us to be debating the enormous implications of the Panama papers. I do not wish to conflate questions about the syndicated global grand larceny that is revealed in those papers with questions about personal taxation involving the Prime Minister or, indeed, anyone else. I would prefer us to concentrate—in this and other debates that will take place between now and the global anti-corruption summit that the Prime Minister will host—on the sort of issues that we would have been discussing anyway.

We have heard much from Conservative Members about the Government’s record of changing tax thresholds and about what is happening to the taxes of the wealthier people in the country, and we have heard the views of Opposition Members as well, but let us now address some of the global implications of the Panama papers. When we consider the larceny that is represented in those papers and the people who have avoided or evaded taxes, we should bear it in mind that this is not a victimless duplicity or deceit, because other people have been left to pay those taxes. Other firms are having to pay taxes in order to meet the needs of exchequers worldwide, not least those in developing countries. Other people are missing out on services or salaries, because the tax is not there to maintain services at the levels necessary to improve the development of infrastructure or to pay salaries. People are losing out. These are not the politics of envy, but the politics of reality and social justice. These are the politics that say that, in the 21st century, we should live in a world where we are all in it together. That is why fairness in taxation worldwide is so important.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is, as usual, making a powerful speech. Christian Aid noted recently that an oil company in Uganda had approached Mossack Fonseca in an attempt to avoid paying £400 million worth of taxes there. That is equivalent to the budget of the entire Ugandan healthcare service. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the avoidance of such taxes is not a victimless crime?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Durkan]

Absolutely. That example amplifies the point that I was making. I want to acknowledge the work of not just Christian Aid, but Oxfam, ActionAid, Global Witness and Transparency International. Those organisations have worked with many Members of Parliament for years to make us more aware of these issues. Not least, I want to acknowledge the work of the all-party parliamentary group on anti-corruption, including the contributions of the hon. Members for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) and for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills). The hon. Member for Amber Valley cannot be with us today, but he has taken a keen interest in many of the issues that have now surfaced in an even more dramatic form in the Panama papers.

It would have been interesting to hear from the Minister whether the Government were actually shocked by the Panama papers. We know about all the attention and fuss about the Prime Minister, but did the Government regard the other issues as par for the course? Did they know they were going on? Were they therefore informing their various measures against corruption, or did the revelations tell them that the issue was bigger than they were aware of? Given that Mossack Fonseca is not the biggest firm in Panama, what worries have they about what else is going on there?

We heard the Prime Minister say earlier, “The agencies that deal with this are independent and we cannot deal with them.” Someone somewhere should be asking them, “Is this what you knew? Has this shocked you? Are you doing anything more in response?” Journalists are being asked to provide the information. Is anyone else being pursued for the information? Is anyone having their door knocked or collar felt? It seems not. That seems odd.

As the Prime Minister is hosting a global anti-corruption summit, he should be showing himself to be much more active in response to the papers. Now that he has perhaps in his own mind dealt with the issues that arose about himself, he can address the wider issues. Perhaps if he had addressed the wider issues last week, people would have thought that that was misdirection and that he was trying to avoid the issue on his part. However, he needs to address those issues now if the summit is to be worth while.

It is particularly disappointing to hear the Prime Minister being the spin doctor for the Crown territories and their role. I cannot believe they are not a tax haven. He is trying to say that, because they have moved a bit following what he said in 2013 about what he was going to compel and ask them to do, that is enough. There has been progress. There are indications of possible progress, but he should not be lessening the pressure on the Crown dependencies in the lead-up to the summit. He should be ratcheting up the pressure on them and everyone else. He should be doing so by showing a stronger response here in relation to our own agencies.

In the debate, there has been much discussion by Members about the difference between avoidance and evasion. Let us be clear. A syndicated effort has gone into the artifice that is involved in some of these shells, shams, scams and schemes. We know that the architecture of avoidance is fitted with the engineering of evasion, so there is not that much of a difference. We need stronger global action.

That is why I again ask the Government to consider their attitude to some global measures. In the past, when they said they wanted to lead against corruption and were putting taxation central stage at the UN summit and beyond, they also set their face against any notion of a financial transaction tax. If there were a financial transaction tax at a global level, it would at least ensure that there was more marking of what was going on in all these different schemes and moves, where companies appear to trade with shadow versions of themselves and shells are registered in different places. The very existence of a uniform global transaction tax would bring some tracking and tracing to some of those schemes and bring more transparency, which people say is needed.

The Panama papers represent discovering what has been done in terms of the recovery of tax. The Government seem to have a pretty pedestrian attitude to that at this stage. They seem to be more concerned about the media flap last week about the Prime Minister being embroiled in some of this. They think that that is over, but they seem to be taking a fairly pedestrian approach to an issue that is scandalising many still and is burdening people in poor countries.