Finance Bill

Theresa Villiers Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

I think the hon. Lady will have heard my—[Interruption.] The shadow Chancellor has arrived: the troops are in place, so let the insurrection commence.

The Bill will make our tax system fairer in a number of ways, but I want to focus now on how it strengthens our position in tackling tax avoidance and evasion. This is a Government who have already announced more than 75 measures to tackle evasion and avoidance since 2010, and we have secured almost £160 billion in additional tax revenue over this period. We have driven forward international action and will continue to do so. We have published one of the first public registers of beneficial ownership. We have reduced the tax gap to one of the lowest in the world. This Finance Bill introduces new policies to tackle aggressive tax planning, avoidance and evasion. It continues to crack down on disguised remuneration schemes, it introduces a new penalty for those who enable tax avoidance, and it clamps down further on online VAT fraud.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

Is it not deeply regrettable that clauses in the previous Finance Bill that would have cracked down on billions of pounds worth of aggressive and abusive avoidance had to be dropped from the Bill because the Labour party would not support them?

[Mel Stride]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely pertinent observation, as usual. We wanted this 650-page Bill to be considerably smaller so that more of it could be on the statute book already.