Wednesday, January 22

Cabinet Should Publish Tax Haven Links: SNP


 

 

The SNP has said David Cameron’s Cabinet should follow in his steps and publish any links they have with tax havens.

Angus Robertson, Westminster leader of the Scottish National Party, told Sky’s Murnaghan programme: “We have heard absolutely nothing about other members of the Cabinet.

“Where is the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne? Has he made a declaration that he has never ever benefited from offshore trusts?

“What about other Treasury ministers? Have they ever benefited from offshore trusts?

“I think the publishing of the tax returns by the Prime Minister is welcome, but it doesn’t answer these wider questions and it is something that this week they are not going to get away from.

“If the Prime Minister doesn’t make a statement to Parliament tomorrow the SNP is going to apply for an urgent question so he is brought before Parliament to update MPs of what he has done, what his Cabinet have done and what his government intends to do in the future.”

His comments come after details of Mr Cameron’s income and tax affairs were released by Downing Street.

The documents detailing revealed he had been given a gift of £200,000 by his mother in 2011 – in addition to the £300,000 his father left him after he died in 2010.

The two payments of £100,000 each by Mary Cameron to her son in May and July 2011 were given tax free and will only become liable to inheritance tax if she dies within seven years of the money being handed over.

The UK Government Cabinet with Cameron, Osborne and Javid Had Mr Cameron received the half a million pounds in one lump sum he would have been liable to pay the inheritance tax because it would have been over the tax threshold of £325,000.

It was also revealed the PM earned £90,000 in rental income from his family home last year.

Mr Cameron on Saturday admitted to Tory activists that he could have handled the tax row about his financial affairs better and that he was to blame for the handling of the revelations about his profitable stake in his late father’s offshore fund.

Ian Cameron, who ran a fund under the name Blairmore holdings, was one of thousands of individuals worldwide named in the Panama Papers data leak.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn suggested it would be a “good thing” if the UK moved towards a position where everyone in the public eye revealed their financial affairs – politicians and journalists included – “so that everybody knows what influences are at play”.

“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,” he told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show.

Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell told Murnaghan: “I think people want openness and transparency”.