Panama Papers

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 11th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady. As the Clerk has just pointed out to me, however, this is all very well, but it is nothing to do with the responsibility of the Prime Minister. [Interruption.] Order. Do not argue with the Chair—that is not a wise course of action. The Prime Minister is not responsible for what the shadow Chancellor has said. I say that to the hon. Lady kindly but with some authority in these matters, believe me.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

No one in this House should have to feel that family members are being attacked unfairly, and, in that, the Prime Minister is absolutely correct. May I tell him, though, that it is not clear to me what he believes about holding shares in offshore trusts in tax havens? Does he think that that is perfectly okay, in which case, why would his holding them have been a conflict of interest, or does he think that tax havens are a problem that needs fixing, in which case, why did he have such shares in the first place?

[The Prime Minister]

That is a very good question. Let me answer it in full, because I think it is very important. Do I think it is okay to own shares in a unit trust that is registered in another country, whether it is in Dublin, Guernsey or elsewhere? Yes, I do. That is why trade unions, companies and pension funds hold such shares. Many people in our country hold unit trusts because—here is the key point—the unit trust does not exist to make money for itself; it makes money for the unit holders, and if the unit holders live in Britain they pay British tax, British income tax, British capital gains tax and all the rest of it. That is why these arrangements have been in place for many years and no Labour Government, Labour policy review or Conservative policy review has ever thought of getting rid of them. It is important that they are administered and run in the proper way. That is my answer to the hon. Lady’s first question.

The hon. Lady’s second question was why, if I thought there was nothing wrong with a holding like that, did I sell my shares because there might be a conflict of interest. I sold shares in every company that I owned, because I thought there were two options: you can either put things into a blind trust, as Ministers in Labour and Conservative Governments have done. There is nothing wrong with that—it is a very good way to go about it—but I thought it may be even simpler and more straightforward to just sell everything, because then I would not own any shares. So, if any of the companies in which I had previously had a shareholding had any dealings with the Government, there was no way that, even if somebody could look inside a blind trust, they could find any conflict of interest. That is why I sold the shares. I happen to think it was quite a sensible thing to do.