Draft International Tax Enforcement (Bermuda) Order 2017 Draft Double Taxation Relief and INTERNATIONAL TAX ENFORCEMENT (KYRGYZSTAN) ORDER 2017

Peter Grant Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 General Committees

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I will not repeat what the hon. Member for Norwich South said in relation to the inadequacies or incompleteness of the legislation. We all welcome any move that makes it harder for people to hide their gains—ill-gotten or well-gotten—from the rightful tax authorities. I believe that it is a fundamental principle, particularly for people who are making money out of developing countries, that any tax that is due on those profits should be retained within the country where the money has been raised, so that it can be invested to help it to develop its economy.

Although the exchange of information is a big help in that, such information can be used only to demonstrate whether somebody is acting within the existing legislation. If that legislation allows a country to be used as a tax haven, exchanging information so that HMRC knows that somebody is using it as a tax haven does not get us an awful lot further forward. Although I welcome the intention of the legislation, I am puzzled, like the hon. Member for Norwich South, as to why it has taken so long. If it is such a good piece of legislation, why have Bermuda and Kyrgyzstan not had the benefit of it much sooner? Why have we not had the benefit of it much sooner?

As well as enforcing the legislation that we have, I hope the Government will do a lot more to ensure that we use every means at our disposal to tighten up tax loopholes. That is not so that people can be taxed beyond what is reasonable, but so that tax revenues from the labours of developing countries are reinvested in their schools, hospitals, housing and communities. They cannot afford to subsidise the City of London—let us be brutal about it—but their resources, the skills of their people and the efforts of their local populations very often work on behalf of UK-owned companies. I welcome the legislation and I hope we will see much more being done in future.