Cameron to face a taxing time during grilling by angry MPs
DAVID Cameron will today face MPs’ anger when he defends his tax affairs in a Commons statement amid growing pressure for all his Cabinet colleagues, including Chancellor George Osborne, to follow his lead and publish their tax returns.
As the SNP and Labour called for full disclosure, the leaders of all of Scotland’s four leading parties published their tax returns in the wake of the Panama Papers scandal, thus piling pressure on senior UK Government ministers to follow suit.
Jeremy Corbyn, who has promised to publish his own tax return, suggested everyone in public life should be obliged to do so.
“Money and politics have to be treated with the greatest sense of openness possible so you know what influences are at work on any individual, on whatever political or any other decisions they make,” said the Labour leader.
He insisted the issue of tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance was one of “morality” given that public services suffered when people did not pay their taxes.
Angus Robertson, the SNP leader at Westminster, claimed the Prime Minister still had serious questions to answer and “must provide full disclosure of his Cabinet”, asking: “How many government ministers have benefited from tax havens?”
And while defence minister Penny Mordaunt argued her party leader’s credibility had not been damaged, she noted: “This is about trust and he has to now demonstrate and build up that trust and rapport with the general public.”
This afternoon at Westminster, Mr Cameron will for the first time face MPs’ questions since he revealed that he and his wife Samantha had profited by £19,000 from an offshore fund set up by his late father Ian, who was a stockbroker, albeit that they paid full tax on all their financial gains.
After accepting that last week had been a bad one for him politically, the PM will seek to get back on the front foot by announcing UK companies that facilitate tax evasion will be held criminally responsible for the actions of
their staff under legislation to be introduced in Parliament this year. The measure is expected to be in the Queen’s Speech next month.
“This Government has done more than any other to take action against corruption in all its forms but we will go further,” declared Mr Cameron.
“That is why we will legislate this year to hold companies who fail to stop their employees facilitating tax evasion criminally liable.”
The move comes ahead of an international anti-corruption summit in London on May 12 and follows the announcement at the weekend of a new task force aimed at investigating the evidence from the Panama Papers data leak.
While Mr Cameron will seek to use his statement today to talk about the Government’s crackdown on tax dodgers, his opponents will use the occasion to probe deeper into his own tax affairs.
Mr Corbyn insisted the PM still had “big questions” to answer, with Labour MPs focusing in particular on his inheritance; £300,000 from his late father, with an additional £200,000 from his mother Mary, which he could end up paying no inheritance tax on at all. Shadow chancellor John McDonnell told the BBC he did not personalise politics, stressing this was about the tax system.
“A system, whereby someone can inherit, effectively, £500,000 from his mum and dad and not pay a penny on it, there’s something wrong in the system that allows that to happen,” he said.
But Housing Minister Brandon Lewis pointed out that the gift from Mrs Cameron to her son was no different from similar arrangements that were used in other families; it just happened to be a “larger sum of money,” he said.