Tax Avoidance and Evasion — House of Commons, 2016-04-13
Topic: Macroeconomics
Deborah Angela Elspeth Marie Abrahams (Labour, Centre-left): Such a comment adds to the dissatisfaction with politics and politicians as a whole, as I have said. I thought it was a very insulting statement As Members on both sides of the House have already said, the Panama papers provide more evidence of the existence of a powerful and indifferent elite, for whom the accumulation of personal wealth at the expense of their fellow citizens is paramount. The evasion and avoidance of tax means that less money is collected by the Exchequer for our pensioners, disabled people and the vulnerable, as well as for doctors, nurses, teachers and all the other public servants funded by public money. Fundamentally, dodging paying a fair share of tax is contributing to growing inequality in this country and across the world, and tax havens are at the heart of this Many Members will have seen Oxfam’s report last month. It says the UK heads the world’s biggest financial secrecy network, which spans its Crown dependencies and overseas territories, and is centred on the City of London. Collectively, it is estimated to account for nearly a quarter of global financial services provided to non-residents within any given jurisdiction. The UK takes prime position out of all jurisdictions across the world in the Tax Justice Network’s financial secrecy index, which is hardly something we should be proud of The National Audit Office has estimated that the tax gap is £34 billion a year, which is £1 billion more than in 2009. That is equivalent to a third of the NHS’s national budget. About half of the tax gap is accounted for by tax fraud, which includes tax evasion, criminal activity and the hidden or grey economy. When we consider the cuts proposed in last month’s Budget in relation to the personal independent payment for disabled people, we can see that figure for half of the tax gap would pay the whole annual budget for people on the disability living allowance and PIP HMRC’s compliance units, now merged into the fraud investigation service, tackle all aspects of non-compliance. According to the NAO, they do not record how much of the revenue they successfully recover relates to tax evasion, but the NAO estimates that the figure is about 30%. One of the issues that HMRC has to face is the need to balance what it can get in quickly, as low-hanging fruit, from low-risk, low-visibility and lower-gain operations with what it can get in from the high-risk, high-visibility and higher-gain and more complex criminal cases. This is where political leadership comes in. Such leadership has been seriously absent, as I shall mention later In spite of the 2013 G8 commitment to a common reporting standard at a global level, the Government have dragged their feet and obfuscated on comprehensive action on such measures. I welcome what the Government have proposed this week, but why—six years later—is that happening now? As I asked in an intervention, I would be grateful to the Financial Secretary if he responded on how much of the £266 million that has been specifically allocated to address tax fraud is to deal with tax evasion HMRC now has additional staff, with 670 new staff acting on tax evasion, but why were nearly 6,000 HMRC staff let go between 2013 and 2015? Has the 10% reduction in the number of HMRC staff since 2008 actually affected the collection of the moneys owed because of tax evasion? As I say, I welcome the additional measures that have been taken, but the absolute outrage at this is clear from my mailbox, which I am sure is the same for other Members. There is palpable public anger. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) summed it up perfectly: when people are really struggling, it is shocking to see such absolute abuse by a tiny minority We need to look at this in the context of the Government’s other benefits and tax measures. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the regressive Budgets during the past six years have left people on low and middle incomes proportionately worse off. That is a result of the tax and social security measures. Projections for the next five years show that there will be increasing poverty and inequalities. All of that compounds the anger that people are feeling. In such a context, the vast accumulation of wealth by the wealthiest is very shocking. In the past 15 years, those in the top 1% have increased their wealth by 79%, which is £3.7 million per person, while someone in the bottom 10% has seen a rise of just 45%, which is £1,600 per person In addition to the Prime Minister’s admission in his statement last week that he had benefited from an investment in an offshore trust based in a tax haven, he intervened in 2013 to oppose the beneficiaries of offshore trusts being named in proposed EU money laundering rules. This is what I mean by the need for political leadership. There has been an absence of political leadership, contrary to what can be deemed fair. I am conscious of the time, so I will not pursue that point. Our proposals will make a real difference, and I hope that Members will look at them.