Prime minister proposes to make facilitation of evasion illegal as pressure grows on leading politicians to reveal their tax affairs

Companies will be held criminally liable if they fail to stop their employees from facilitating tax evasion, David Cameron will tell MPs on Monday, as he uses a parliamentary statement to defend himself after one of the most difficult weeks of his premiership.

The prime minister has been under pressure over his handling of revelations about Panama-based companies, including an offshore trust set up by his late father, Ian Cameron.

He will insist that Blairmore Holdings was not set up to avoid tax, and will say that his government “has done more than any other to take action against corruption in all its forms”.

But Cameron is likely to come under further pressure from the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who will say that he still has more questions to answer.

On Sunday, Corbyn piled pressure on other cabinet ministers and MPs to follow in the prime minister’s footsteps as he suggested that full disclosure from politicians was the direction that things were moving in.

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Angus Robertson, the SNP leader in Westminster, turned the pressure on to the chancellor, George Osborne, calling on him to be more open with his finances.

Osborne is now considering whether to follow Cameron’s lead and publish his tax returns. He could release some information within days.

A Treasury source said in response: “We have been clear that the chancellor has never had any offshore shareholdings or other interests. His income and interests are straightforward and declared publicly: his salary, rental income from a property in London and a shareholding in his father’s firm, Osborne and Little. He is always happy to consider ways to ‎offer even more transparency.”

The intervention came as Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, became the latest political figure to publish her tax returns. The SNP leader was paid more than £104,000 for her role as first minister last year, and paid more than £31,000 in tax.

She joined two other Scottish political leaders – Labour’s Kezia Dugdale and the Conservatives’ Ruth Davidson – in releasing the personal information. The two opposition leaders released their tax schedule on Sunday morning, revealing they were each paid £52,000 for their roles as MSPs last year.

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, suggested that he could see no problem with a rule compelling all MPs to provide such information.

Even a cabinet member conceded that it ought to be considered. The energy secretary, Amber Rudd, said it was not the right move in her opinion, but it was worth looking into.

The defence minister Penny Mordaunt went further, conceding that public pressure might make the move inevitable. “Although I understand arguments about privacy and security, if that is what the electorate require of their elected officials I think that is what will have to happen.”

Labour said it was calling for an immediate public inquiry into the revelations in the Panama Papers, and called for a change in parliamentary rules to make it mandatory for MPs to publish details of all offshore holdings.

The pledges were part of a tax transparency enforcement programme published by McDonnell, who said urgent action was needed after a week of “half-truths and spin”. He said it was a matter of national shame that half the companies named in the leak were registered in UK-governed tax havens, and questioned why Cameron had lobbied to prevent more regulation of offshore trusts.

Corbyn said the prime minister ought to also face questions from the parliamentary standards commissioner over the shares he held in an offshore trust set up by his late father, after a Labour MP made a complaint that could trigger an investigation.

John Mann referred Cameron to the commissioner, Kathryn Hudson, saying that his failure to declare £30,000 made from the sale of shares in the trust may have broken the ethos of the rules.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest David Cameron accepts blame over mishandling of Panama Papers questions.

Downing Street has pointed out that the money Cameron invested was well below the threshold that requires a submission, and said its rules suggested unit trusts were not normally listed.

Moreover, they say that a number of tax experts have made clear that the prime minister paid all the tax that was owed on his shares, and reject any suggestion that Blairmore was set up to avoid tax.



Corbyn, however, said: “There is a question for parliamentary standards … There has been a series of changing stories coming out of Downing Street. There has been a statement roughly every 18 to 24 hours since last Monday.”

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, he said Labour would propose tougher parliamentary registration rules that would mean overseas assets had to be declared at a much lower value.



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Asked whether more MPs and even political journalists should publish their income tax returns, he said: “I think we are moving in that direction. I think it is a good thing so everyone knows what influences are at play.”

The questions for Cameron, he added, were whether he benefited from the offshore trust before 2010, and why the money was placed in an overseas tax haven in the first place.



On Saturday Cameron took an unprecedented decision to release his personal tax records, revealing that his mother had transferred two separate payments of £100,000 to his accounts in 2011, in lifetime gifts that will not be liable for inheritance tax after 2018.

One Conservative minister hit out at Corbyn for his attacks on the prime minister. The justice minister Dominic Raab said the Labour leader had promised a “kinder politics” but was now “whipping up a mob mentality”.

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Raab told Sky News’s Murnaghan show: “Amid all the froth and frenzy of the media debate, it seems crystal clear not only that he has not done anything illegal, but that he has not behaved improperly in any way. And he has gone further than any prime minister previously in publishing these tax returns and I think he wanted to show he has got nothing to hide.

“Frankly, some of the personalised attacks on him and his father have been deeply unsavoury,” he added, saying some Labour MPs were “behaving like hyenas”.