That is indeed a huge change. The Government have also supported entrepreneurs with entrepreneurs’ relief, which I greatly welcome.
Under this Government, the tax gap for 2012-13 is lower as a percentage of tax receipts than in any year under the previous Labour Government. Tax yield for HMRC has gone up by £7 billion since 2010-11. The Government have been very effective at dealing with the tax gap and bringing in receipts. The corporation tax gap for large businesses in 2009-10 was £2 billion, whereas in 2012-13 it was lower, at £1.8 billion. We see a lot of revisionism from Labour, but when it came to getting money through the door they had an atrocious
record. The Conservative party and this Government have had an effective record. Why? We understand that to up the take one must cut the rate. That is what the Government have done with corporation tax, with massive success.
Let me draw attention to another problem with the Labour party: its proposals are completely and utterly muddled. Labour talks about UK overseas territories that do not have a public central register for offshore companies being on some sort of OECD blacklist. The only problem is that countries such as America, Luxembourg, Ireland and the Netherlands and a whole stream of other countries do not do that. The chances of getting the OECD nations that do not do that to agree to blacklist a whole lot of other nations that do not do it are minimal, and that shows the absurdity of the Labour position.