Draft Double Taxation Relief and INternational Tax Enforcement (Turkmenistan) Order 2016

Robert Flello Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 General Committees

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

I will not delay the Committee too long, but I wish to clarify a couple of points and build on some of the questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde.

It would be very helpful to have some information on the scale of UK involvement in Turkmenistan. My hon. Friend asked about the potential loss or gain to the Exchequer. As the Minister said in her comments, Turkmenistan wishes to expand its own economy. It would be helpful to understand what that means in terms of how many British businesses and individuals are in Turkmenistan and, conversely, how many members of the Turkmenistan population in the UK are active in business or commerce more generally. How many of their companies are here? That would give us the scale of the issue. It would also be helpful to understand the trend. Has that number remained static for a few years or has there been an increase?

How confident is the Minister that the Turkmenistan tax authorities are as rigorous as we generally hope and expect Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to be? The statutory instrument deals with enforcement around compliance. Are we confident that the Turkmenistan tax authorities will be strict in ensuring that businesses and individuals will be compliant with their requirements?

A point already discussed at some length, but which bears repeating, is that of the words that we use every day. It seems very strange that the last line of the explanatory memorandum on a piece of legislation that is by its very nature regulatory would state:

“An Impact Assessment has not been prepared for this instrument because double taxation agreements are not regulatory in nature.”

It is regulatory—that is its nature—and therefore an impact assessment would have been a very good thing to have, if only because it would provide a little bit more of that bright sunshine that disinfects things and shows them up. I look forward to the Minister’s answers on those issues.