David Cameron shifts focus with tax evasion law for firms

Today David Cameron will seek to shift attention away from his personal financial affairs by unveiling plans to prosecute companies which allow their employees to facilitate tax evasion.

The British prime minister will tell MPs that his government will introduce a new criminal offence for companies which fail to stop employees from helping clients to evade tax.

“This government has done more than any other to take action against corruption in all its forms, but we will go further. That is why we will legislate this year to hold companies who fail to stop their employees facilitating tax evasion criminally liable,” he said.

Panama Papers

The announcement follows Mr Cameron’s unprecedented decision to release details of his tax returns since 2009, after he admitted that he benefited from an offshore investment fund run by his late father, which was identified in the Panama Papers.

The tax returns show that Mr Cameron received two separate payments of £100,000 in 2011 from his mother, on which no inheritance tax will be due if she survives at least seven years from the time of the gift.

The two payments were made a year after the prime minister inherited £300,000 from his father. No tax was due on any of these sums.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said that, although Mr Cameron had become the first prime minister to release summaries of his tax returns, he needed to give more information to allay public doubts about his behaviour.

"We need to know what he's actually returned as a tax return. We need to know why he put this money overseas in the first place, and whether he made anything out of it or not before 2010 when he became prime minister. These are questions that he must answer," Mr Corbyn said on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.

As the leaders of all Scotland's political parties published their tax returns, the Scottish National Party's leader in Westminster, Angus Robertson, called on the prime minister to oblige all cabinet ministers to make statements about their tax arrangements.

"David Cameron has serious questions to answer and must provide full disclosure of his cabinet: how many government ministers have benefited from tax havens? We have yet to hear from George Osborne, or others," he said.

Addressing Conservative activists in London on Saturday, Mr Cameron admitted that he had handled questions about his financial affairs poorly after the release of the Panama Papers last week.

“It has not been a great week. I know that I should have handled this better, I could have handled this better. I know there are lessons to learn and I will learn them. Don’t blame number 10 Downing Street or nameless advisers, blame me,” he said.

He said that his emotional response to the revelations and his eagerness to defend the reputation of his father, who set up the offshore fund from which the prime minister later profited, had clouded his thinking.

‘Very angry’

“I was obviously very angry about what people were saying about my dad. I loved my dad, I miss him every day. He was a wonderful father and I’m very proud of everything he did. But I mustn’t let that cloud the picture. The facts are these: I bought shares in a unit trust, shares that are like any other sorts of shares, and I paid taxes on them in exactly the same way. I sold those shares. In fact, I sold all the shares that I owned, on becoming prime minister,” he said.