This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Labour has called for the tax office to investigate Conservative donor and Brexit supporter Lord Ashcroft after the revelation in the Paradise Papers of a secret Bermuda-based trust that sheltered his vast wealth.

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, also questioned whether the Conservative party had undertaken proper checks before accepting donations from Ashcroft.

Ashcroft, after declining to answer questions from the Guardian and BBC before publication, issued a response in which he denied he had ever broken the rules governing trusts or been warned that he might have done.

Much of his statement was directed at video footage of him being pursued by a BBC crew at a Conservative party conference earlier this year which ended with him taking refuge in the toilets.

Play Video 2:18 Lord Ashcroft hides in toilets to avoid questions on tax – video

In a statement, the peer sought to explain what he described as his erratic and undignified withdrawal in the face of what he called a BBC “ambush”.

Writing in the Guardian, McDonnell said: “Can the Conservatives assure us that he was paying taxes on his considerable wealth whilst he was a major donor to the Tory party? HMRC needs to investigate the amount of tax paid by Lord Ashcroft and clarify his non-dom status.”

The Paradise Papers, which detail the inner workings of Ashcroft’s Punta Gorda Trust from 2000 to 2016, show the value of the assets at one point was $450.4m (£341m) in 2006. It is not known how much tax he paid to HMRC.

McDonnell, speaking in an hour-long Commons session to discuss the Paradise Papers, raised Ashcroft with the financial secretary to the Treasury, Mel Stride, asking what information he had about Ashcroft’s domicile status and “whether he was paying taxes on his overseas wealth”.

Stride replied that with regard to Lord Ashcroft he was not going to “start getting into the individual tax affairs of any particular individual, regardless of their political allegiance or whoever they may be”.

Echoing McDonnell, Meg Hillier, chair of the Commons public accounts committee, the parliamentary watchdog that scrutinises government spending and revenue, urged HMRC to investigate Ashcroft’s tax affairs and non-dom status.

“The tax authorities need to look at his affairs to make sure he was paying his fair share of tax. HMRC should be looking at this. HMRC need to look at his non-dom status.”

Ashcroft rounded on the BBC over his pursuit at the Conservative conference.

He said his refusal to respond to questions was because he had previously written to the BBC director general after two previous Panorama programmes he regarded as one-sided and said at the time he was simply not going to deal with Panorama in the future.



“This time around, therefore, I was absolutely determined not to receive any further communication from Panorama. I was equally determined, therefore, not to fall victim to their ambush, hence the rather erratic and undignified withdrawal.”

He denied he had broken rules over the running of the trust. Leaked emails revealed the trustees, the offshore law firm Appleby, expressing concern that decisions were being taken without consultation with them.

On tax and residency issues, he said he had been resident and domiciled in the UK from 2010 to 2015 when he had been sitting in the Lords.