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Google today faced a probe by the European Commission over its alleged “sweetheart” deal with the tax authorities in Britain.

Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s Competition Commissioner, signalled that she could investigate the controversial agreement as Labour and the SNP called for such an inquiry.

“If we find there is something to be concerned about, if someone writes to us and says, ‘This is maybe not as it should be’, then we will take a look,” she told BBC radio.

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor today formally asked Ms Vestager to investigate the agreement that Google to pay £130 million to cover a 10-year period after a probe by HM Revenue and Customs.

He said: “After a week in which George Osborne has hid from our calls for transparency and scrutiny over his tax deal with Google… we need to ensure that the deal the Chancellor struck was not one that undermines our tax system and is not a deal that fires the gun on a new race to the bottom of corporation tax in Europe.”

He also highlighted reports this week that France and Italy are seeking to “claw back” more money from multi-nationals such as Google.

Stewart Hosie, the SNP’s economic spokesman, said: “We think she should investigate to make sure the tax paid is the tax due.”

He said that the Commission had told the tax authorities in Luxembourg to collect more tax from Fiat after an investigation and Dutch fiscal chiefs to do the same with Starbucks. “I’m sure those companies also said they pay the tax due,” said Mr Hosie. Last autumn, the European Commission announced that after in-depth investigations, it had concluded that Luxembourg had granted “selective tax advantages” to Fiat’s financing company and the Netherlands had done the same with Starbucks. “In each case, a tax ruling issued by the respective national tax authority artificially lowered the tax paid by the company,” its report said.

The influential Commons public accounts committee announced this morning that it will take evidence from senior officials at Google and HMRC on February 11.

Google, which has denied any wrongdoing, defended its position today. “Governments make tax law, the tax authorities independently enforce the law and Google complies with the law,” said Peter Barron, the US tech giant’s European public affairs chief.

But Google is at the centre of a growing storm over tax payments made by multi-national corporations, with many people believing they are avoiding paying millions in Britain.

One of Google’s biggest British shareholders today called on the company to pay “much more” in taxes in this country.

James Anderson, whose Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust owns £120 million of shares in Google’s parent company, Alphabet,- said it was in the company’s own interest to pay a “decent” rate of tax.

A poll by BMG Research for the Standard this week also showed that eight out of 10 people wanted multi-national firms doing business in Britain to be forced to reveal publicly if they are paying tax here.

Chancellor George Osborne has hailed the agreement with Google as a “major success”.