17. What recent steps he has taken to tackle tax evasion and reduce tax avoidance. (126536)

The Government are investing over £900 million in strengthening Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’ response to evasion and avoidance and are on course to bring in around £7 billion in additional tax each year by 2014-15. HMRC is increasing the number of staff working on compliance and using innovative approaches to improve how it identifies and tackles evasion. The Government will soon introduce the UK’s first general anti-abuse rule while also strengthening avoidance disclosure rules and publicity.

I am a strong supporter of lowering direct tax rates on individuals and companies, but hard-working families in my constituency want to know that companies and high-worth individuals are paying their fair share of tax. What is my hon. Friend doing to ensure that individuals and companies pay their fair share of tax rather than avoid it?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why we are taking action to strengthen HMRC’s compliance capability, why we are introducing a general anti-abuse rule, why we want to ensure that everyone pays their fair share of tax, and why the Chancellor made it clear yesterday in Mexico that we are working at an international level to ensure that the system that applies to multinational companies does just that.

The Minister talks—it might be wishful thinking—about bringing in an extra £7 billion a year, but the tax gap is at least £120 billion a year, and some people think it is more. Is it not time that the Government took chasing billionaire tax dodgers more seriously and stopped cutting public spending and squeezing the poor?

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the figure of £120 billion does not have much support from anyone who knows much about statistics. The actual figure is £32 billion. That is the number we inherited from the previous Government and we are determined to bring it down.

The Minister will be well aware of the anger of many of our constituents about the activities of companies such as Starbucks and Amazon to minimise their tax rates through aggressive tax avoidance. Is not part of the answer more international co-operation, perhaps among OECD countries, to restrict the ability of those multinationals to siphon off profitable activities into low tax havens?

My hon. Friend is right to point out that we need to be vigilant about aggressive tax avoidance and the diversion of profits from where genuine economic activity occurs. That is why the Chancellor of the Exchequer is leading the way on that, working with the German Finance Minister, and why we had the announcement from Mexico yesterday that the G20 is focusing on that and encouraging the OECD to progress its work so that we can deal with this as soon as possible.