Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con): May I tell the Prime Minister that he should not be ashamed that he had the good fortune to be born into a well-off family, and that it is not a sin for his parents, quite naturally, to want their savings to be cascaded down through the generations? He has nothing to be ashamed about, but may I warn him that, no matter how much information he wants to divulge, nothing will satisfy some of those on the Labour Front Bench?
The Prime Minister: I am very grateful for what my hon. Friend says. I think there is a point at which you have to say that I have published the information that I think is relevant—I have gone back over the last six years —and that is the limit of what I am going to release. Some people say, “Well, what about your wife’s tax return and your mother’s financial affairs?” I really think that there comes a time when we should say that we have a register of Members’ interests. Prime Ministers and Chancellors and Opposition leaders and shadow Chancellors have done more than that, and we should rely on the register of Members’ interests to police the rest of our affairs.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab): Given that more than half of the companies implicated in the Panama leaks are registered in UK overseas territories and Crown dependencies, does the Prime Minister regret telling this House in 2013:
“I do not think it is fair any longer to refer to any of the overseas territories or Crown dependencies as tax havens”?—[Official Report, 9 September 2013; Vol. 567, c. 700.]
Could he try to rebuild some of the public trust he has lost in the last week by making sure that, particularly in terms of publishing information about beneficial ownership, Crown dependencies and overseas territories follow the UK’s example, and will he take concrete action by putting that at the centre of his own anti-corruption summit next month?
The Prime Minister: The reason why I made that statement in 2013 was that we had got the Crown dependencies and the overseas territories, for the first time, to share automatically tax information with the United Kingdom Government. That is something that did not happen under the last Labour Government. It is something that we achieved. It was a different approach. Now—the hon. Gentleman is right—we want to go further, and the announcement today set out that not only will they share that information and follow the common reporting standard, but they will give us access to their information about beneficial ownership.
Just so the hon. Gentleman knows how different things were under the last Government, the then Financial Secretary to the Treasury, in response to questions about the overseas territories, said this:
“The negotiation of tax information exchange agreements with other jurisdictions, including the UK, is essentially a matter for the Crown Dependencies themselves.”—[Official Report, 19 May 2009; Vol. 492, c. 1370W.]
He was saying, “Nothing to do with me, guv; it’s up to them.” That is the Government that we replaced. We took a different approach, and we have made a lot of progress.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con): Forgive my lack of voice. May I say that I totally understand the Prime
Minister’s predicament and his instinct to protect his father? I would have done exactly the same. His father did nothing wrong whatsoever.
The Prime Minister mentioned the long and thoughtful debate that is to come. May I say most gently that, when public figures get into trouble, there should be no more knee-jerk reactions, and that a long and thoughtful debate should be had to avoid unnecessary consequences for everybody else?
The Prime Minister: I thank my hon. Friend for his support. He makes an important point, which is that we should try to make decisions about these things calmly and rationally after debate. I felt, after all the questions that I was being asked, that the right thing to do was to publish the information, but I could not have made it clearer today that I do not want to see that as some precedent that every Member of this House, or indeed every member of my Cabinet, has to follow. We should think very carefully. We have always had a system in this country based on full disclosure to the Revenue but taxpayer confidentiality. Some other countries have complete publication of all tax returns and all tax information. That has not been our way. We have had a different system, and I do not think that we should give it up lightly.
'Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab): It saddened me that the right hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan) seemed to suggest that, if someone was not a millionaire, they were a low achiever. Speaking as a low achiever—[Laughter.] The biggest multinational company earns more in a single week than the incomes of all MPs combined. The Prime Minister has spoken before about transparency, and he did so again today. Many of us across the House, from all parties, want to make sure that the country-by-country information that multinationals will be obliged to provide to HMRC will be put in the public domain. Will he or a Minister meet me and other members of the Public Accounts Committee to discuss that proposal?
The Prime Minister: I have always thought of the right hon. Lady as a high achiever. She certainly put the boot into my predecessor more effectively than I ever did. I remember that very well.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab): Michael Howard?
The Prime Minister: No, not that one. The point about country-to-country reporting is that what we are trying to achieve, as I said in my opening statement, is a common reporting standard, so that companies report to tax authorities in the same way; and the sharing of that information, so that we can see whether company A is paying x amount of tax in one jurisdiction and y amount in the other, and if that is not right, we can do something about it. That, at the moment, is the most powerful way of achieving what we want to achieve. There are those who say that we need to go even further in public declarations of tax. That is a very interesting argument, but let us not make the best the enemy of the good. We have got a very solid way now of making sure that these companies pay tax properly, and I want to see that completed.
