Tax Avoidance and Evasion

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy]

rose—

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

rose—

[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?

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Dowd]

You are looking at me with those eyes and with a smile, Mr Speaker, so I will move on.

While tax avoidance is a global problem, it is also a UK problem. The UK accounts for 17% of the global market for offshore services. We are considered one of the biggest—if not the biggest—players in the global offshore system of tax havens. We account for some of the world’s key tax havens, including Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Bahamas, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Bermuda and the Turks and Caicos Islands, all of which are either Crown dependencies or British overseas territories and all of which are afforded the support and the protection of the British Government. Despite our prominence as a country at the heart of a network of offshore tax havens that aids and abets tax avoidance across the globe, the Government refuse to lead the way in global tax transparency. I keep on using that word “transparency” and I will keep on doing so.

[Mike Amesbury]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the purchasing of a private jet at nearly £17 million and then setting up an offshore leasing company with the sole aim of saving £3 million in VAT is an affront to our public services?

[Peter Dowd]

My hon. Friend is quite right. That is shocking.

Government Members’ denial about their record on tax avoidance is not new. In 2013, while the G8 was pushing ahead with stricter rules that would clamp down on tax avoidance, the then Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, was busy undermining them, writing to the President of the European Council demanding that offshore trusts were excluded. The Government’s record on tackling tax avoidance is not all that they would like it to be.