Miliband ducks challenge to repeat Tory smear
ED Miliband was taunted yesterday for ducking a challenge to brand a Tory donor a “dodgy” tax avoider outside the Commons.
Former Conservative Treasurer Lord Fink accused the Labour leader of smearing him in Parliament.
Mr Miliband focused on the peer as one of the wealthy Tory donors on a list of clients of a Swiss HSBC branch which allegedly helped its customers dodge tax.
Mr Miliband demanded to know what Mr Cameron would do to “fi nd out about the tax avoidance activities of Lord Fink”.
He claimed that Mr Cameron was “a dodgy Prime Minister surrounded by dodgy donors”.
Lord Fink challenged Mr Miliband under threat of legal action to repeat outside Parliament his “untrue and defamatory” slur. Mr Miliband had to be prompted by journalists yesterday to use the word “dodgy”.
He said he had not directed that word at Lord Fink but was making a “general comment about dodgy donors in the Conservative Party”.
Lord Fink responded: “This is a major climbdown by a man who is willing to smear without getting his facts straight.”
However, Mr Miliband seized on the hedge fund millionaire’s admission yesterday that he would not sue the Labour leader if he just accused him of “ordinary tax avoidance” as long as he did not dub him “dodgy”.
Lord Fink admitted taking tax avoidance measures in Switzerland “at the mildest … vanilla, bland, end of the spectrum”.
“The expression ‘ tax avoidance’ is so wide that everyone does tax avoidance at some level,” he said.
Mr Miliband said that was “an extraordinary U- turn”.