Ken Livingstone ‘is a tax dodger’, says Labour peer

LABOUR’S Lord Desai has accused his fellow socialist Ken Livingstone of being a tax dodger. The claim was made in a House of Lords speech in which Desai, the wild-haired former London School of Economics lecturer, said he thought it a good idea to raise taxes on the self-employed.

‘We know that self- employment is a tax dodge,’ he said, ‘and it has been since my friend Ken Livingstone became a company and started paying himself — a good socialist such as Ken Livingstone discovered 15 years ago that it paid to dodge taxes.

‘We have to stop pretending that the self- employed are the backbone of society and guarantee growth. They are no such things. They are just tax dodgers. Tax dodgers ought to be treated like tax dodgers.’

Former London mayor Livingstone, who has called tax avoiders ‘ rich b*******’ who should ‘not be allowed to vote’, was accused of hypocrisy in 2012 for channelling his earnings through Silveta Ltd, paying corporation tax at 20 or 21 per cent, rather than income tax at up to 50 per cent.

Livingstone could not be reached for comment, but it is hard to believe that a statesman of such well-known benevolence and sobriety would do anything untoward.