Draft Double Taxation Relief and International Tax Enforcement (Algeria) Order 2015 Draft Double Taxation Relief and International Tax Enforcement (Sweden) Order 2015 Draft Double Taxation Relief and International Tax Enforcement (Senegal) Order 2015 Draft Double Taxation Relief and International Tax Enforcement (Croatia) Order 2015 draft Double Taxation Relief and International Tax Enforcement (Bulgaria) Order 2015 Draft International Tax Enforcement (Brazil) Order 2015

Mark Field Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2015 General Committees

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I wish to make a brief contribution. I will leave it to the Minister, of course, to answer the issues raised by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West, but in part it is an EU convention to use this particular template, rather than an exercise of British fiscal power. One could almost ask—from my slightly different political standpoint—a somewhat different question, as I am someone who favours the idea of tax competition. I can see the advantage of having double taxation treaties, particularly given the importance of the UK as a global capital. There are a significant number of entertainers, artistes, sportsmen and others from Sweden, Croatia, Algeria and elsewhere, many of whom are constituents of mine but some may, of course, be constituents of the hon. Gentleman.

[Rob Marris]

The hon. Gentleman is not an Abba fan, is he?

[Mark Field]

I should perhaps say that, in my latest role as vice-chairman of the party, I spent this weekend in a place I suspect I will never go to again, Karlstad in the middle of Sweden, attending our sister party’s party conference. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the exports of Sweden are not limited to Abba and it has to be said that the Swedes have a great love for our country. Something that I know will impress the hon. Gentleman is that there is a great passion from the Swedes that we should stay in the European Union—

[The Chair]

Order. I appreciate that consideration of such instruments sometimes benefits from some lighter interventions, but I would not wish those to take a disproportionate amount of time from the debate.

[Mark Field]

I take on board your view, Mr Chairman, and you can be assured that the light interventions will be light in time terms as well.

There is also an argument that having these double taxation treaties militates away from the idea of tax competition. In other words, we are standardising our tax across the globe. It makes a hell of a lot of sense, particularly in the three of the four cases we are dealing with of EU nations, that we should be looking to try and do that. It would be wrong in my view to assume that we are playing the whip hand and utilising our relative economic strength in this regard. It is healthy that we try to standardise these documents as far as possible. It is a good argument to Croatia and to future members of the European Union that they have similar treaties to those that apply to Sweden and I suspect to many other nations where we have double taxation treaties. This is a healthy development. I will now sit down and hopefully this will be my last contribution on this afternoon’s matters.