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Labour has blasted Britain’s richest man over reports he is planning to shift his home and fortune to Monaco in a bid to avoid £4 billion in tax.

Billionaire Brexiteer Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who built up the chemicals giant Ineos, is understood to have been working with the accountant PwC on the tax avoidance plan.

Labour’s John McDonnell said: “This is a super-rich person. We’re not talking about someone who’s on his uppers.

“For every penny that’s avoided in this way in taxation, what does that mean? It means the NHS doesn’t treat patients, it means our children don’t get the full investment in their education and it means less safety on our streets.

“I appeal to people like this - this is a great country to live in, just make your contribution like the rest of us.”

Sir Jim was knighted less than a year ago for “services to business and investment.”

It comes after Sir James Dyson, another vocal Brexit supporter, announced he was moving the HQ of his vacuum cleaner company to Singapore.

The Sunday Times reports that Sir Jim's plan would see him and senior executives Andy Currie and John Reece legally share between £1bn and £10bn tax-free, depriving the Treasury of between £400m and £4bn.

Sir Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat leader, described Ratcliffe's planning as "deeply cynical".

He said: "There are thousands of our constituents who are being bankrupted by HM Revenue & Customs action over small-scale tax avoidance while big fish like Ratcliffe are just treating taxation as purely voluntary.

(Image: PA)

"The idea that we should be dishing out knighthoods to people who have no commitment to this country is rather shameful."

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said: "The greed of these super-rich tax avoiders seems to have no bounds.

"Don't they realise that every penny they hide away in their tax havens is a penny not spent on our NHS treating the sick, or social care looking after our lonely, isolated elderly, or the education of our children?"

Meg Hillier, the Labour chairwoman of the public accounts committee, said Ratcliffe was in effect "sticking two fingers up" at the country that had honoured him."

(Image: PA)

The 66-year old businessman was named the UK’s richest person in May 2018, after amassing a fortune of £21.05 billion.

He was born in Failsworth, near Manchester, and lived in a council house until he was 10.

He attended Beverley Grammar School in Hull, before graduating from Birmingham University with a degree in chemical engineering in 1974.

After working for Esso, he moved into finance, joining private equity firm Advent International in 1989.

He returned to the chemicals industry in 1998, when he founded Ineos, now valued at £35 billion.

A keen outdoorsman, who has made expeditions to the North and South Poles, Sir Jim also founded the charity Go Run for Fun, which encourages children between five and 10 to get more active by arranging celebrity events.

In 2017 he made a £25 million donation to the London Business School.

And he made waves in 2013 for the tough line he took with workers at Grangemouth in Falkirk, Scotland’s biggest industrial site.

After a dispute over the suspension of a shop steward, he closed the plant and vowed to walk away for good unless workers accepted major cuts to their pensions and conditions.

And he faced a furious reaction after it emerged he had conducted the operation while holidaying on his superyacht in the French port of La Ciotat.

The year after, Ineos benefited from a £230m government-backed loan guarantee to help it build a gas storage tank at Grangemouth.

Ineos told the Sunday Times it had 400 companies in 35 jurisdictions that regularly paid dividends within the group.

It added: "We currently have more than 10 major projects, including both acquisitions and new builds, worth over $1bn [£775m] each.

"We have just announced a €3bn [£2.6bn] investment in Antwerp [in Belgium] and the $1.1bn purchase of Ashland composites [a maker of resins for boats] with more to come. Ineos and its owners always fully adhere to all tax legislation and consistently use external professionals to verify that all procedures are correct and compliant."