Jeremy Corbyn has expressed his support for the Guardian and the BBC in the face of legal action over their reporting on overseas tax havens, which he described as “an immoral scourge”.

The Labour leader said the investigative reporting involved in the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers was essential to promoting democratic debate.



Senior MPs from the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties joined Labour in expressing support for investigative reporting and agreeing the disclosures were firmly in the public interest.



The Guardian is to mount a defence against Appleby’s action, which is seeking to force the disclosure of the documents that formed the basis for a series of articles.



Corbyn said: “The Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers shone a powerful light on the absolute scandal of tax dodging. Knowledge is power and investigative reporters and whistleblowers bring into the open information that strengthens democratic debate about the type of society we want to live in.

“The more we know about the scale of, and techniques used for, tax dodging, the more we can develop policies to tackle this immoral scourge.”

Andrew Mitchell, a Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister, also expressed support. “The Paradise Papers show that secrecy is the enemy of transparency and good governance, and that powerful people do not go straight because they see the light but because they feel the heat,” he said.

“A free media provides that heat by shining a light on those who are not paying the tax they owe in the jurisdiction where they live. As such, the Guardian newspaper has provided a public service for which they should be applauded.”

The Liberal Democrat leader, Vince Cable, said: “It was patently in the public interest that this evidence of industrial-scale tax avoidance was revealed. The traditions of investigative journalism, be it by the Guardian, the BBC or other outlets, must be maintained in the face of intimidation.”

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said the legal action was “rather alarming” and expressed hope that common sense and logic would prevail.

“The right of investigative journalists to pursue issues such as this, which are clearly in the public interest, should be sacrosanct,” he said. “I support the right of the Guardian and the BBC to report on the scandal of tax avoidance to shed light on these practices, which rob our public services of the resources they desperately need.”

Speaking before a House of Commons debate on a finance bill, during which the issue of overseas tax havens was expected to be raised, McDonnell said a Labour government would introduce changes to bring much of the currently secret information about tax havens into the public domain.

“As a result, it would force pressure on those who seek to squirrel away their money offshore to avoid taxation, and not those who expose such practices,” he said.

Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, who has been prominent on media issues including phone hacking, said the Guardian and the BBC performed a valuable public service and the “cynical attempt to silence them” by citing legal confidentiality and data protection laws should be “laughed out of the courts”.

“This legal action shows Appleby and its clients have nothing but contempt for the vast majority of people who fund the public services we use by paying their taxes in full. We have a right to know about the loopholes, accounting tricks and offshore scams used by the wealthy few to avoid doing the same,” he said.



Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP and former chair of the public accounts select committee, who has been one of the leading campaigners for transparency in the offshore tax industry, said: “This is an incredibly worrying assault on the freedom of the press.

“[It is] an attempt to try to stop dedicated investigative journalists, working for newspapers and television, from exposing the truth about the way in which advisers, companies, rich individuals and secret jurisdictions hide their money and avoid paying a fair amount of tax.

“This cannot and must not stop the brilliant work that showed ordinary people what was happening in the murky tax-dodging world.”

Wilf Stevenson, a Labour whip in the Lords and former adviser to Gordon Brown, who as prime minister used a G20 meeting to press for tax haven changes, said he was glad the Guardian was going to defend the legal action by Appleby.

The case to protect investigative journalism was apt when the House of Lords was debating a bill to update the UK’s data protection laws, he said.

“We have been working closely with the government to ensure that the existing public interest defence for investigative journalism is retained in the new legislation,” Lord Stevenson said.

Echoing the political reaction, the National Union of Journalists pledged to defend the right to report such stories. Its general secretary, Michelle Stanistreet, described the legal action, taken against two of the 96 news organisations worldwide that reported the Paradise Papers, as “an outrageous and cynical manoeuvre”.

She said it was typical of companies to use their financial muscle to try to bully media outlets in the hope of frightening those who seek the truth.

Alex Cobham, the head of the Tax Justice Network, said: “After seeing the extent of tax abuse uncovered, triggering a series of investigations around the world, nobody could seriously question the public interest in publication of the Paradise Papers. Well, nobody except Appleby, it seems.”

Eleanor Nichol of the campaign group Global Witness said: “If we want a world where the most powerful people have to play by the same rules as the rest of us, it is vital investigative journalism is not silenced.”