I want to say a few words about the international dimension of what we have been discussing today, because I think that Opposition Members have been, at the very least, unkind about the Government’s record of tackling the issue internationally.
A real problem confronts most developed countries. Corporate tax receipts remain largely flat, and they face the challenge of raising tax in a global economy in which technology and the internet are upending old industries and old tax-raising methods. There is also the complexity of modern businesses and, indeed, modern
lives, with mobile entrepreneurs and people who live in, and marry, those from other jurisdictions. That is the reality of the modern tax landscape.
The issues we have discussed today are inevitably international, therefore, and the solutions will come from working with international partners and some of the processes and projects like the BEPS project we have heard about today. The question is how one could increase tax receipts, harnessing some moral and Government pressure to encourage businesses without damaging the perception of this country and other developed economies in the world as good places to do business—how, essentially, we can shrink the grey areas of tax, particularly for sophisticated businesses and entrepreneurs, without seriously compromising certainty for businesses and entrepreneurs of all sizes and incomes as they do business around the world. That is exactly what this Government have set out to do, and with a level of priority that we have not seen in any previous Government—certainly not in the previous 13 years of the Labour Administration.
All the international comparisons are extremely favourable. My old law school read, the Tax Journal, in its special report on tax avoidance, talked about the measures being taken by the OECD countries to tackle base erosion and profit sharing—the BEPS project. It said:
“The UK government is widely regarded as one of the more enthusiastic proponents of reform.”
That is a fair assessment of what the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor have set out to do. We only have to look at the position paper published by the Treasury with the Budget last year to see the Government setting out aggressively to tackle tax evasion and avoidance, alongside moves to make the UK a most competitive tax environment.