David Cameron and his family will not benefit in the future from any offshore funds, his spokesman has revealed following repeated failures to provide a full account of the prime minister’s links to a controversial overseas company set up by his late father.



Cameron has come under increasing pressure to give a clear explanation of how and whether he, his wife and children stood to benefit from Blairmore – the company set up by his father, Ian, in Panama and the Bahamas, and which has avoided ever paying tax in Britain.

The prime minister and his office gave three partial answers about the fund on Tuesday but crucially failed to say whether Cameron and his family would gain in the future from Blairmore, an investment fund.

On Wednesday, his spokesman provided further clarity. “There are no offshore funds/trusts which the prime minister, Mrs Cameron or their children will benefit from in future,” he said.

A senior Labour source said the party was still not satisfied with the latest statement and it was not 100% clear whether Blairmore was covered by the denial. Cameron also needs to be more specific about the origins of his savings, he added.

Labour highlighted that the statement still does not directly mention Blairmore or deny that the Cameron family could still have some links to it.

The fund was moved from its Bahamas base to Dublin in 2012, so it is possible, critics say, that Downing Street may not be defining it as an offshore fund - even though Ireland is still a low tax jurisdiction for corporations and has many of the same benefits as territories more commonly thought of as tax havens.



A Downing Street statement on Tuesday had said only that Cameron, his wife and children were not currently benefiting from any offshore funds.

Downing Street sources then reacted defiantly to questions about whether the prime minister and his family could benefit from Blairmore in future through any inheritance, saying it was time for his critics to “put up or shut up”.

Wednesday’s statement is the fourth from No 10 on the issue of Cameron’s links to offshore funds, showing he is under intense pressure despite Downing Street’s efforts to close down the story.

George Osborne, the chancellor, was also asked about whether he had any offshore interests while touring an Ocado site in Hatfield. He said: “We’ve made very clear the arrangements that we have. They are all declared in the register and the like ... All of our interests, as ministers and MPs, are declared in the register of members’ interests.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The chancellor, George Osborne, (left) during a visit to an Ocado site in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Photograph: Dylan Martinez/PA

Treasury sources later confirmed that neither Osborne nor his wife had any offshore interests, in the form of shares or anything else.

The Panama Papers, 11.5m documents leaked from the offshore agent Mossack Fonseca, reveal the details of how Cameron’s father sheltered Blairmore’s profits with a series of expensive and complicated arrangements.

After details of the leak were published by the Guardian, the prime minister’s spokesman initially told journalists that Cameron’s finances were a private matter.

But as pressure increased on Cameron to further explain himself, including a direct challenge from the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, the prime minister addressed the issue on Tuesday at a Q&A in Birmingham.

“In terms of my own financial affairs, I own no shares,” he said. “I have a salary as prime minister and I have some savings, which I get some interest from and I have a house, which we used to live in, which we now let out while we are living in Downing Street and that’s all I have. I have no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds, nothing like that. And, so that, I think, is a very clear description.”

Row picked up pace

Following complaints that this did not answer the question, a No 10 spokesman released the following statement: “To be clear, the prime minister, his wife and their children do not benefit from any offshore funds. The prime minister owns no shares. As has been previously reported, Mrs Cameron owns a small number of shares connected to her father’s land, which she declares on her tax return.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn attacked Cameron at the launch of his party’s local election campaign. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images

The row embroiling Cameron picked up pace on Tuesday morning when Corbyn responded to Downing Street’s assertion that the matter was private by telling reporters: “Well, it’s a private matter insofar as it’s a privately held interest. But it’s not a private matter if tax is not being paid. So an investigation must take place, an independent investigation, unprejudiced, to decide whether or not tax has been paid.”

As well as pressing Cameron, the Labour leader called for a cleanup of Britain’s overseas territories and dependencies, including the British Virgin Islands, which accounts for about half the companies named in the Panama Papers.

Corbyn said the government should consider imposing direct rule on British overseas territories and crown dependencies, which lie at the heart of the allegations.

The government had already scheduled a meeting of G7 countries in London on 12 May to discuss the overseas territories and crown dependencies. Tax campaigners, however, said government officials had been downplaying expectations for months, telling them that tax would not be high on the agenda and that instead the main item would be corruption, such as the low-level bribery of officials.

The Panama Papers were leaked to the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, which shared them with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Guardian, the BBC and other media organisations.