Tax Avoidance and Evasion — House of Commons, 2016-04-13
Topic: Law and Crime
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Well, it is some scandal, is it not, that has been leaked to us? Criminals, politicians and dictators have been hiding billions and billions of pounds in offshore accounts under the names of companies that do not actually exist. In fact, it is the scale and nature of the scandal that causes me to be so depressed about the nature of the debate we have had both in the Chamber this afternoon and in the run-up to this afternoon. It has taken us almost two weeks to actually start debating the issue. I did not quite buy everything that the hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) had to say, but I thought he at least gave one of the most incisive speeches among this afternoon’s contributions It is obvious that this issue is such a major hot potato for the two main parties in this Chamber: so hot that they seem to prefer to kick it back and forward—"You’re worse than us." "We’re better than you." Meanwhile, the public want us to debate the issues raised by the leaks. Forget the Twitter hashtags. Forget what has been written in the newspapers. Forget the sneering snobbery on one side and the braying mobs on the other. Let us actually deal with the issue. The issue is not about class; we can have an academic discussion about class later on. This is about criminality. That is what the motion seeks to address and what I think all of us in the Chamber really want to address It strikes me that there are two key ways in which we can tackle the problem: through the resources made available to the public agencies and through changes to legislation. As a lot of Members have mentioned, we can also look at beefing up international co-operation. I genuinely welcome the measures the Prime Minister announced in his statement to the House on Monday. The cross-agency taskforce and the funding that will come with it, and the other measures relating to legislation, are extremely important and to be welcomed. I would like the Minister, in summing up, to say whether Interpol will have a role to play. I have not heard anything about that at all. In fact, no public statement has been made on this issue on Interpol’s website. I would therefore like to know whether Interpol will be invited to the corruption summit the Prime Minister will be hosting I am concerned about the pattern that forms when big scandals break, whether it is this one, the Volkswagen scandal or the Google scandal. This is a very British pattern—a pattern of only ever responding to events. I had hoped to hear more about how the Government intend to beef up the resources of HMRC to deal with this, because it is clearly not working. We have had some back and forth about more money, fewer staff and more staff, and fewer centres. It is clearly not working, so somebody really needs to step back and look at the problem within the context that actually exists. I had also hoped to hear more about how we would be trying to recoup some of the tax we are owed. I go back to the point made earlier: this is about criminality. I can only hope that some of this will be getting talked about in the Paris talks today, at which, I understand, the UK Government are represented The Government made a lot of their ambition to secure economic security for Britain. They are absolutely right to mention that. The threats we face in terms of financial security are not to be taken lightly. In my view, they should be up there with the threats we face from terrorist organisations. There are different consequences, but both are absolutely serious. Just as the Prime Minister announced the recruitment of additional staff for agencies such as MI5 in the aftermath of attacks on our doorstep in Europe, he should seek to do the exact same thing for the public agencies dealing with criminal finance I do not have much time to go into the detail, but I would like the Government to reflect more about what happens in Australia with unexplained wealth orders. I shall not throw my full weight and support behind them, because I am hesitant about what they mean for the presumption of innocence and the right to silence. We should, however, look at the issue. Such orders are also being used successfully in Italy against gangs such as the Mafia The public require us to act and to stop the politicking that we have seen in some contributions today. This is a big challenge, and what we need to deal with it are the fine minds of this House—there are some, such as the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), the former Chair of the Public Accounts Committee—coming together on a cross-party or perhaps even a cross-parliamentary basis. We could tap in to some of the devolved Parliaments as well, and start to take the issue seriously. We should ignore all those who operate under a cloud of anonymity, who tell us, "You wouldn’t understand it; it is too difficult". That just allows them to carry on doing what has got us to this point. Failure to act will keep on feeding the cancerous way in which our politics is conducted. That will be to the detriment of us all.