The managing director of John Lewis has called on the government to tackle multinational companies that pay little or no tax in the UK before they damage the economy.

Andy Street warned that multinationals involved in overseas tax havens will "outinvest and ultimately out-trade" businesses paying full taxes in the UK, risking driving them out of business.

He called on the Treasury to look into the "principle" that underpins where earnings are taxed and suggested that customers wanted to see companies compete on a level playing field.

John Lewis managing director Andy Street.

Street said overseas companies had an unfair advantage over their British-based rivals because of their low tax bills.

"You have got less money to invest if you're giving 27% of your profits to the exchequer than, clearly, if you're domiciled in a tax haven and you've got much more," he said in an interview with Jeff Randall on Sky News.

"So they will outinvest and ultimately out-trade us and that means there will not be the tax base in the UK. So I do think it's an issue that needs to be examined."

Street said that the issue was wider than any rivalry between Amazon, the online retailer that was heavily criticised on Monday by MPs examining tax avoidance schemes, and John Lewis.

He said: "It's to do with what our customers expect around a fair and level playing field and I suspect our customers do think both companies should be treated in the same way."

Lord Myners, the former City minister who has accused multinationals of leeching tax revenue from Britain, said that the Treasury "should look at exactly what's happening" with companies such as Amazon.

The comments by Street and Myners come two days after senior executives from Amazon, Starbucks and Google were accused of diverting hundreds of millions of pounds in UK profits to secretive tax havens during a fraught exchange with a committee of MPs.

Members of the public accounts committee described a director of Amazon as being "deliberately evasive" and displaying "outrageous" ignorance after he failed to say how much profit is generated in Britain or who owns the online retailer's Luxembourg-based holding company.

All three repeatedly denied the accusation that they were engaged in aggressive tax avoidance but were met with derision from members of the committee.

A senior figure from Starbucks, which employs more than 7,000 staff in more than 800 outlets in the UK, was told he was not believed when he claimed the coffee chain did not make profits in Britain.

An executive from Google admitted that the internet company operates in Ireland because of a low corporation tax rate there of 12.5% and was later accused by the committee chair, Margaret Hodge, of "immoral" behaviour.

Hodge told the executives that UK taxpayers are increasingly frustrated by the use of tax havens and creative accounting by large firms trading in Britain.

"People want to know why companies which benefit from an infrastructure paid for by them and are paying people low wages who receive taxpayer-funded tax credits from the exchequer are not paying their fair share," she said.