Tax Avoidance

Robert Neill Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), whose contribution, as always, was thoughtful. I did not agree with every word, but I sympathised with much of it, and it was in marked contrast to the Opposition’s “Alice in Wonderland” approach to history and policy. Theirs is a topsy-turvy view of recent history that ignores their repeated failure over 13 years to do anything about tax transparency and efficiency, and ignores the work of this coalition Government—but perhaps we should not expect anything more.

Even worse is the Opposition’s remarkably cavalier attitude not just to the facts—I will come to that in a moment—but to the UK financial services industry. We ought to remember that it employs more than 1 million people. I represent a constituency in Greater London. Some 340,000 people in Greater London alone are employed in the financial services sector. It is a world leader for the UK, and the dismissive and scornful attitude shown by some Labour Members to this vital contributor to the tax revenues that fund our public services is pretty shameful.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

I also represent a constituency to which financial services are important, but should we not be defending and promoting the UK financial services industry, rather than those in offshore havens across the world?

[Robert Neill]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman raised that point. He and I agree about the importance of financial services, but ironically, the blunderbuss approach taken by the Leader of the Opposition in his extraordinarily inept intervention in relation to the Crown dependencies and overseas territories is a perfect example of the cavalier approach that we have seen from the Opposition. I noticed that the shadow Minister mentioned it only briefly towards the end of her speech, as if some kind of major triumph had been achieved by this statesmanlike international figure, the Leader of the Opposition. I might just dissect that a little in a moment. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) wants to intervene, I will give way.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. If the hon. Lady wishes to intervene, she should rise to the Dispatch Box and not shout across the Chamber.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker, you are quite right to admonish me. The policy of having a publicly available register of beneficial ownership is a policy of the hon. Gentleman’s own Prime Minister. Does the hon. Gentleman disagree with that policy?

[Robert Neill]

I am happy to quote the whole of the correspondence between the Labour Chief Minister of Gibraltar and the leader of the Labour party. I thought it amusing in this regard that the hon. Lady should claim that some success had been achieved. In fact, Gibraltar has already accepted the need to sign up for a register of beneficial ownership. There is an argument about the level of publicity, but this was conceded long before the cack-handed intervention of the Leader of the Opposition. Fortunately, the Chief Minister of Gibraltar was able to set the Leader of the Opposition right on a number of his other factual errors—never mind the fact that the OECD is not in a position to create a blacklist in itself. That is a pretty basic level of ineptitude in terms of policy, but it goes a little further than that.

This issue is important. Overseas territories Ministers were in London in December for the joint ministerial conference. Gibraltar’s Minister of Financial Services was meeting officials at the Treasury to progress the arrangements we need to make around tax transparency and a register of beneficial ownership. All the leaders of the overseas territories wrote to the Leader of the Opposition, asking if they could meet him to discuss this important matter. What did the Chief Minister of Gibraltar have to say? He said:

“We are unfortunately still awaiting a response.”

The Leader of the Opposition did not even have the courtesy to reply to the leaders of Britain’s Crown dependencies and overseas territories. What does that say about this man’s level of policy co-operation?

Let me turn to the matter that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood prayed in aid. She is quite right that the Chief Minister said that Gibraltar is

“specifically…committed to implement a Central Register deriving from the forthcoming adoption of the fourth Anti Money Laundering Directive...along with all Member States of the EU because, as you are aware”—

perhaps it was a mistake on the Chief Minister’s part to assume that the Leader of the Opposition was aware of something as basic as this—

the Treaties that form the EU apply to Gibraltar. As those advising you should be aware, we are unique in this regard when compared”

with other territories. He continued:

“only last week my Minister for Financial Services was at HM Treasury discussing”

this. The Chief Minister rightly went on to point out that this was important in Gibraltar’s case because we have responsibility for the defence of Gibraltar overseas. I shall come on in a moment to deal with the damage done by the Labour party in that respect.

The Chief Minister pointed out, too, that Gibraltar has

“a tax information exchange agreement…with the UK that is fully operational. Gibraltar has a further 26 TIEAs with other countries”

and that

“under Directive 2011/16/EU…Gibraltar has tax information exchange arrangements to the OECD standard”

with OECD countries, and

“132…exchange agreements with some 75 countries around the world…This was confirmed by the…Phase 2 report”,

and Gibraltar was given

“the second highest rating possible”

in its compliance, along with that well-known tax haven, Germany.

It is quite extraordinary that the Leader of the Opposition goes rushing forth into print without having checked facts as basic as that. He also forgot that

“Gibraltar has signed an automatic exchange of information agreement with the UK and the USA as well as its global counterpart being the Common Reporting Standard”,

along with some other 90 countries. The Chief Minister signed this in Berlin in October, together with our Chancellor of the Exchequer. I do not suppose that Google worked too well in the Leader of the Opposition’s office there.

Finally, the Chief Minister wrote:

“you should know that your remarks…have already been picked up by the Spanish press and are being used as a rod with which to beat us.”

The fact that the Leader of the Opposition, through a mixture of ignorance, bad manners and ineptitude, gave comfort to people who were persecuting the British citizens of Gibraltar economically in order to make a cheapskate and inaccurate political point is nothing short of a scandal, and is contemptible.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—