I assure the right hon. Lady that I have asked civil servants about this particular issue—she will not be entirely surprised to learn that there have been fairly extensive conversations with civil servants about it. We believe that the amendment as drafted would not apply to foreign multinational entities. The challenge is that the information is, essentially, held in the UK and relating to UK-headquartered companies, so only
UK-headquartered companies are well placed to provide it. She has highlighted one of the problems with a unilateral approach.
I have a huge amount of sympathy with the right hon. Lady’s argument, as she knows. We have discussed this before. I am pleased that the United Kingdom is leading the way in making progress on this at a number of international forums. I urge the House to consider that we do not need to go it alone at this point. We can work with other countries, given the progress that is being made, quite often at the UK’s instigation.
Another important point was touched on by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) as well as the right hon. Lady, namely developing countries. I have a lot of sympathy with that point. It is worth noting that 39 countries, including the United Kingdom and developing countries such as Nigeria and Senegal, have signed the OECD mechanism for country-by-country reporting. That means that the information produced by companies and provided to tax authorities—not published, but already produced and provided to authorities—is shared with every one of the 39 signatories. I want to encourage other developing countries to sign that agreement, so that they have access to the information. The right hon. Lady made the point earlier that the EU proposals could go further on ensuring more information. I agree. That is the UK position and we have been arguing that case at EU level.
I never want to miss the opportunity to highlight what we do as a country to help developing countries’ tax authorities build up their tax capacity. That work does not get the coverage it deserves. The previous Labour Government also did such work, but we have built on that. The Department for International Development and HMRC do considerable work on helping developing countries ensure that they have the information they need and the capacity to do something with it.