Tax Avoidance and Evasion

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

I will try to take that on board as a suggestion rather than a direction, Mr Speaker. The Minister identified what he thinks should be done, but I will tell him what should be done. In our “Tax Transparency and Enforcement Programme” document, Labour calls for an immediate public inquiry into avoidance, greater scrutiny of MPs, the creation of a specialist tax enforcement unit, and the public filing of large company tax returns and of the tax returns of wealthy individuals earning more than £1 million. We want no public contracts for tax avoiders, the repatriation of contracts parked in tax havens, public contract transparency, a register of beneficial ownership of companies and a register of trusts, and our programme would be enforced by working with the banking sector. We also call for a general anti-avoidance rule in principle, strict minimum standards for crown dependencies and overseas territories, the creation of an offshore companies levy and full country-by-country reporting. All that represents a comprehensive proposal from Labour.

[Catherine West]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is an army of tax avoidance facilitators that includes, sadly, the four big accountancy firms, which are often based just down the road in the square mile?

[Peter Dowd]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Transparency is at the heart of all this. I experienced a bizarre situation last week when I was on “Newsnight” with the chairman of the Cayman Islands stock exchange. What an insouciant attitude that man had to tax avoidance. He actually said that there had not been any wrongdoing—maybe not—and called for the journalists to be jailed. That is what he did, and that is the position in which we find ourselves.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

Will the shadow Minister give way?

[Peter Dowd]

I am going to take Mr Speaker’s suggestion and push on, because it will become an admonition otherwise. I will then take some interventions.

I hope that Members across the House will join me in condemning the irresponsible and offensive comments of the chairman of the Cayman Islands stock exchange. All of us owe a debt of gratitude to the journalists involved for their hard work and diligence. They have demonstrated the importance of a free press in holding the wealthiest and most powerful individuals and multinationals to account.

To be clear, we are talking about tax avoidance that covers activities that are within the law but work against its effective application. Most of the people involved in the cases have not broken any laws or acted in a criminal way, but that does not make tax avoidance acceptable or justifiable in the 21st century. After all, as has been identified, tax avoidance costs us all. Every pound avoided is one pound taken away from our children’s education, from our armed forces—the very people who protect us—and from the elderly and disabled. The conservative—and Conservative—figures that the Government have published on tax avoidance show that HMRC recorded from 2010-2015 that £12.8 billion was lost to the Exchequer through tax avoidance. That is unacceptable.

People have a view about what the previous Labour Government did. They think that it was much better than the Tories overall, but I am not going to go there. The question arises—[Interruption.] I refer the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge) to the Financial Times. With the greatest of respect, I am not his researcher, and I am sure he is more than capable.

[James Cartlidge]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that if the current tax gap was at the same level that it had been on average under Labour, our deficit would be £12 billion higher?

[Peter Dowd]

My hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) says, “Move on.” and I think she is absolutely right. I will reaffirm the point that was made in Labour’s tax programme document: we have to push on with this debate. It does no good for the Government to talk about the past; we want to talk about the here and now and the future.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Peter Dowd]

I will give way to the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge).

[James Cartlidge]

I had not expected—[Interruption.]

[James Cartlidge]

I will ask the shadow Minister a question. The tax gap is now 6%. It averaged 8% under Labour. Does he accept that if the tax gap was 8% now, the deficit would be £12 billion bigger?

[Peter Dowd]

The hon. Gentleman can extrapolate all he wants. I could extrapolate all sorts of figures, but I am not going to get into that. We will no doubt come back to the matter in due course at the Budget.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[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.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

The shadow Minister is being generous with his time. We all agree that this matter should be a priority, and the shadow Minister is focusing on our record, but why did the Labour party block the three measures that we brought forward in the wash-up that would have been worth £8.6 billion—vital for all the public services that he listed earlier? It is a joint priority, and we need both sides to work on this.

[Peter Dowd]

I am more than happy to give the hon. Gentleman the narrative of the wash-up proceedings. If he wants, I am happy to talk to him outside, because the information that he has been getting from his Front-Bench team is nonsense.

I am going to conclude to give others the opportunity to speak. First we had the Panama papers and now we have the Paradise papers; how many more tax avoidance leaks will there need to be before the Government act? It is clear that we desperately need a public inquiry into tax avoidance and the use of offshore trusts and tax havens. The Government should listen to the Opposition and, perhaps more importantly, to people outside the House and act by introducing a public register of offshore trusts and publishing the information already provided from overseas territories. They should also stop cuts to HMRC and ensure that HMRC has the staff and resources it needs to tackle tax avoidance at its core.

If the Government continue to ignore the problem and fail to act, I reassure the House that a Labour Government will act.