Tax Avoidance and Evasion — House of Commons, 2016-04-13
Topic: Macroeconomics
Stewart Hosie (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): May I make a number of small observations on what we have heard so far and gently say to the Minister, whom I like, that success is not measured merely in monetary terms? There are many, many successful people who will forgo stashing cash in the attic, the bank or the offshore tax haven On HMRC, we have no problem with efficiency or with organisations being fit for purpose. We have no qualms about genuine waste being eroded, but we look askance at 17 out of 18 tax offices being closed and only one being reopened, and the argument that somehow that will deliver more for substantially less The shadow Chancellor spoke about wealth inequality now rising to a level that we have not seen since the days of the Rockefellers or, as he said, the robber barons. I would not put the Prime Minister in the category of the super-rich, such as the Rockefellers. We know, however—the Prime Minister has been very open about this—that he bought shares, as he described it, in a trust or a fund as part of Blairmore Holdings. He sold them some years later. He did nothing illegal at all. That episode shone a very bright light in a very murky corner of offshore tax havens. One thing that struck me was that he bought the stock in 1997 and sold it in 2010. Those dates were familiar to me. It was the entire duration of Blair, Brown and new Labour. On the underlying issue, which I know the shadow Chancellor is genuinely concerned about, and on many of the points that the Minister made at the end of his speech, the Labour party did nothing for 13 years. I am glad that this is now on the agenda in a proper and cogent way My hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin) made a number of telling points on this subject in his speech on the Second Reading of the Finance Bill on Monday. He said: "you cannot build economic success on the back of social injustice."—[Official Report, 11 April 2016; Vol. 608, c. 115.] He also said, quoting Adam Smith: "No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable." He argued that creating such division does not bring progress, and he went on to describe how much of this division is characterised today by people in certain quarters being able to park large sums of money offshore, and the rest—the vast majority—being unable to do that My hon. Friend suggested that, according to Jason Hickel of the London School of Economics, tax havens hide one sixth of the world’s total private wealth—in excess of $20 trillion. Some estimates put that as high as $32 trillion, and CNN described it on Monday evening as about 6% of total global GDP. There are higher estimates. We can probably all agree that it is around $20 trillion, or 15 times UK GDP, parked offshore in tax havens—money and assets which very wealthy people and criminals can hide from the relevant tax authorities The revelations in the millions of documents in the Panama papers from Mossack Fonseca are but the tip of the iceberg. I am told that it is the fourth biggest law firm in Panama providing these services, which means there are three larger firms, and I presume that there are dozens, scores or hundreds of smaller firms doing the same. And it is not simply in Panama. Indeed, Panama does not even make it into the top 10 tax havens. Taken together—I do not think this situation has changed yet, notwithstanding the measures that the Government have announced—the UK and the overseas territories collectively are No. 1, outstripping even Switzerland by some margin, it is argued It is worth reminding ourselves that at a single address in the Cayman Islands, Ugland House, there are 19,000 registered businesses. I am certain that some of them will be legal, but many will not be. Many will be companies whose beneficial owners remain hidden from the tax authorities there, here or elsewhere. That means that income that should be the subject of taxation will go untaxed, to the detriment of public services here and elsewhere We have, in essence, an international system of finance that enables tax avoidance on an industrial scale, a system that hides from scrutiny the owners of vast wealth while the ordinary man, woman or business in the street does not have, and does not want, that luxury. They pay their fair share, and they simply want others to do the same. What makes it most unfair—I think this is why people are so angry—is that when assets or income are hidden and go untaxed, we all suffer as the resources we need for vital public services are reduced and squeezed It is also the case that much of the tax stashed in tax havens is looted from developing countries, so this is not simply an issue for the west. It is a matter of fundamental importance to those developing economies, which frankly are in even more need of the tax receipts that are effectively stolen from and then parked in tax havens around the world. That is why part of the solution must involve a global agreement on country-by-country reporting to ensure that tax authorities and others can follow the money The question from my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Callum McCaig) was absolutely right. We are moving to having data shared between the Crown dependencies and overseas territories and the law enforcement and tax authorities here. We think that should be public—there is absolutely no doubt about that—but it should also be shared elsewhere. If miscreants are identified by the Revenue or the police here, I hope that there will be a very swift phone call to the appropriate authorities elsewhere so that they, too, can follow the money.