Finance Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

The Finance Bill is not the ideal way in which to address this issue fully. I make no criticism whatsoever of the right hon. Member for Don Valley, who has shown much ingenuity in managing to ensure that her amendment is in order, but this is essentially an issue for company law.

We are keen to implement public country-by-country reporting, and we want to do it on a multilateral basis. As I have said, if there was a lack of progress the Government would obviously want to return to the issue, given the concerns that I think are felt by Members in all parts of the House. However, I think that we are in a position to aim for what I am sure we all agree would be the best result: achieving our aims on a multilateral basis.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Gauke]

I will certainly give way to the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.

[Meg Hillier]

It is clear that the Minister has some sympathy with the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) and most of the Public Accounts Committee, along with many other Members in many parties. Rather than requiring my right hon. Friend to come back to the House, will he therefore commit the Government to looking at this matter unilaterally if multilateral agreement is not achieved? Or will he go even further today and agree to a sunrise clause to add to the proposals that my right hon. Friend and I, and others, have put forward, so that this can come into action if the multilateral agreement that he is hoping for does not come to fruition?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gauke]

I do not want to put a precise number on this. There is a threshold, and it depends on which countries those might be, but if I thought that three or four significant economies were going in the same direction, the case for doing this would be much stronger. Or, to put the reverse argument, if I were standing here next year and two or three other countries had gone down this route, the concerns that I am expressing from the Dispatch Box today would clearly carry less weight than I think they do today.

[Meg Hillier]

Perhaps I can help the Minister. On behalf of the Public Accounts Committee, I sent an open letter to the chairs of European finance and public accounts committees or their equivalents. The Minister might have picked up the fact that, to date, the letter has been signed by the chairs of parliamentary finance committees in Germany, Hungary, Finland, Norway and Slovakia, as well as by senior MPs in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria. We also know that the French Finance Minister, Michel Sapin, is doing some interesting work in this area, as are many others. Does that help to push the Minister in the right direction and enable him to make us more of an offer today?

[Mr Gauke]

Well, it supports my optimism that we are on the cusp of a multilateral deal, and that will enable us to work out the legislation in the most comprehensive and effective way. As I have said, our preference would be to do this through company law rather than through a Finance Bill, but the hon. Lady’s intervention supports what I was saying earlier about the comments of the relevant EU Commissioner at the last ECOFIN meeting in Luxembourg, which I attended 11 days ago. He was optimistic that we would reach agreement by the end of this calendar year. If that is the case, it is hugely encouraging, and the point that the hon. Lady has just made supports that proposition.

--- Later in debate ---

[Meg Hillier]

I rise to speak briefly to amendment 1. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), many members of the Public Accounts Committee, and Members across the House who have signed this simple but important amendment, which, as others have highlighted, would require a clear public register of company activity. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), whose expertise on this issue in the Public Accounts Committee has been particularly useful. As he rightly said, this information is mostly public, but one would need to have his qualifications, and there are not many with those, in order to track it down internationally. We on the Public Accounts Committee want a register where it is readily available to the “citizen auditor”. We want to put powers in the hands of the citizen to enable them easily to see where the taxes paid by companies are put.

The Minister spoke of the amendment being defective, but I do not believe that it is. It covers the same large-turnover companies that are covered by other Government reporting requirements. If it is defective, however, I again challenge him to bring back an improved version on Report. He has access to Government lawyers to do this. My right hon. Friend, though a very able woman, perhaps does not have at her fingertips the same expertise in legislative drafting. The power is in the hands of the Government on this issue.

I want to highlight another aspect of our work that I mentioned to the Minister. It is not UK parliamentarians alone who support this measure. In May, I went out to the OECD on behalf of the Public Accounts Committee to lobby and speak to parliamentarians of other nations around the world. We had a very useful and important discussion about the need for greater disclosure for the public benefit, with our citizens pushing our Governments to act decisively. As I said, I subsequently wrote an open letter that I sent to European partners, urging Governments to support the measure that is summarised in the amendment. The letter was signed by the chairs of parliamentary finance committees in Germany, Hungary, Finland, Norway and Slovakia, as well as senior MPs in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria. Rather than detain the Committee, I draw Members’ attention to the Public Accounts Committee website, which has full details of the letter and information about how we went about it.

My right hon. Friend’s amendment is a really important first step. I appreciate that the Minister is willing to look at a multinational agreement. Unfortunately, however, much to my disappointment and the huge disappointment of my constituency and borough, which had the second-largest vote in the country to remain, we voted to leave the EU last Thursday, and Britain is going it alone, so why not do this now?

New clause 9, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), follows the same principle. It also follows a theme pursued by the Public Accounts Committee, when she chaired it and currently, on registering the extent of beneficial ownership in tax havens. I do not need to add a great deal to what she amply amplified. She and I, other hon. Members, and, I think, the Minister agree that transparency—sunlight—on activities affects behaviour. Public trust on tax is at an all-time low. We do not have a level playing field. As she says, the Government have the power to act on this very swiftly. The Prime Minister has supported it and the Minister has supported it, so why not act now?