G8

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right and we will never solve that issue just through Governments reaching agreements, either nationally or internationally. We need a debate about this in every boardroom and business in the world, and we also need lawyers and accountants to think about their responsibilities, as well as the bottom line. I do not think that is an unreasonable thing to do. A positive suggestion made by the French and Americans, with my support, was that we ought to be asking accountants and lawyers to do more to help developing countries with their tax systems. Otherwise, there is an unequal struggle between businesses armed to the teeth with corporate lawyers and—this was one example given—a country where the entire budget of the department dealing with the company was far smaller than that of the army of lawyers sent to deal with it.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I welcome the G8 pledges on Syria and fairer taxes worldwide, and particularly the Prime Minister’s closing remarks at the summit when he said:

“If Britain weren’t in the EU you would not directly benefit from an EU/US trade deal”.

Is it right that Europe means jobs?

[The Prime Minister]

The point I was making—I hope the hon. Gentleman will quote me in full—is that if Britain were not in the European Union we could reach our own trade agreements with different parts of the world, but I believe we benefit from being part of the single market, and obviously part of bigger negotiations where we have a huge amount of heft in delivering these deals. The EU-Korea deal has been positive, and I think the EU-Canada deal will be positive and completed very shortly. The EU-US deal obviously has more potential than all the others put together.