THE DESIGNER Dame Vivienne Westwood has been rather unfashionably ditched.
Activists from the youth wing of the Green Party have voted to ban her from a recruiting tour of British universities in a row over her company’s tax affairs.
Dame Vivienne, the doyenne of the British fashion industry, had been billed as star speaker at a series of events following her donation of £300,000 to the Green Party’s election fund.
But the disclosure in The Sunday Telegraph that her company was avoiding paying UK tax by making multimillion-pound payments to an offshore company in Luxembourg prompted an internal inquiry by the party.
The most recent company accounts available show that Dame Vivienne’s main UK business is paying £2million a year to an offshore company set up in Luxembourg for the right to use her name on her own fashion label. Tax experts have described the arrangement as “tax avoidance” that would have deprived the UK Treasury of about £500,000 a year.
A central plank of the Greens’ election manifesto is a Tax Dodgers Bill that would outlaw payments to offshore companies in jurisdictions including Luxembourg.
How first reported the story
Dame Vivienne was billed to appear alongside the Green Party’s deputy leader, Amelia Womack, at events titled “We are the Revolution”.
But on the eve of the first of those events – at Kingston University in south-west London – on Thursday evening, the Young Greens voted to exclude her.
In a Facebook posting, Kingston University’s Young Greens said: “The Executive of the National Young Greens have since voted that as she has no plans to rectify her situation she will not be allowed to tour representing the Young Greens.”
The Green Party said: “Vivienne Westwood has agreed to suspend her involvement in the Young Greens ‘We are the Revolution’ tour because of their concerns that Vivienne Westwood has non-UK companies in her operation.”
Dame Vivienne said in a statement: “When we pay royalties to our Luxembourg company the tax on them is paid to the Luxembourg government… But overall our group does not save tax on this. Wherever profits occur all taxes on these profits are ultimately paid in the UK as I personally pay 45 per cent tax on any dividend I receive.
“I can confirm that full UK tax has been paid to HMRC on my personal donation to the Green Party.”