Panama Papers

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 11th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support. We met our manifesto commitment on inheritance tax, which was to exempt the family home. My hon. Friend is right that we need to simplify, but there are things moving in different directions. We want to simplify taxes, but when we see abuses occurring, we sometimes need to write new tax code to make sure that those abuses cannot be used, which can lead to complications. However, I am well aware of his general point, and I think he is right.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Will the Prime Minister now answer a question that both he and the Chancellor refused to answer a few years ago, and confirm that they both benefited personally from their cut to the top rate of tax? On the day that universal credit cuts mean that part-timers could be over £1,000 a year worse off, does he think that the several thousand pounds a year from which they both benefited is fair?

[The Prime Minister]

The information is contained in my tax return, which is in the House of Commons Library, and everyone can go and look at it. The key point is not only that since we reduced the top rate of tax from 50p to 45p we have not only raised more revenue, which we can spend on the public services that the right hon. Lady supports, but that the richest 1% in the country pay a higher overall percentage of income tax at 27%.