As I’ve already mentioned, I spoke this lunchtime at a debate organised by the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation.

Three speakers — Mark Field MP, Tory MP for the City of London, David Harvey, the CEO of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners and Richard Hey, a US lawyer working in London with Stikeman Elliott and a frequent advocate for secrecy jurisdiction locations in their fight against regulation, all spoke in favour of secrecy jurisdictions — or international financial centres as they prefer to cal them.

I admit all the usual, and utterly discredited, ideas were rolled out to a receptive City and tax haven audience assembled in the hall of the Farmers and Fletchers City Livery Company (which is a farce in its own right if you ever heard of one). So we had the usual “oiling the wheels of international commerce” and “ facilitating the flows of international capital” and “ providing essential conduits for funds into London” stuff. That was then, they claimed, coupled to the need for stable locations with strong rule of law and client confidentiality all of which are essential to making investment happen, apparently (and all of which, they failed to note are available onshore).

And then Mark Field added the almost inevitable “The Chinese clearly aren’t going to abide by international regulation in Hong Kong and Macau so we must compete with them on the regulatory front”. So yes — the race to the bottom is alive and well and living in the Conservative Party.

All of these arguments have, of course, either been discredited by data — reproduced here, often - or are simply wishful thinking.

But since the debate was not, supposedly about the past history of these locations I concentrated instead, as I was asked to, on their future. And in doing so I was supported by William Brittain Catlin who I had not met before — but whom it was a pleasure to meet. He is the author of a 2005 book “Offshore: The Dark Side of the Global Economy”.

We both, without any prior agreement, concentrated on why the secrecy jurisdiction model as it has existed is now dead in the water. And in making my comments Mark Field gave me the perfect opening. He said he saw a new age of capitalism coming, where more people had access to capital, enterprise grows and innovation is high if — all of it if we have a sufficiently high standard of education in the UK (which he forgot to mention is entirely predicated on the tax take).

And I agreed with him, overall: as an accountant, as an entrepreneur, as a believer that private sector enterprise is as vital to the future well being of the world as is strong effective government then I too want to create the environment in which that could  happen. And my point, made here recently, is that the arguments of tax justice with regard to secrecy jurisdictions are a pre-condition to that happening.

I won’t repeat the arguments from that previous blog. Suffice to say secrecy jurisdictions create opacity and that undermines the necessary transparency for effective markets. It also undermines the tax needed to ensure governments can effectively regulate those markets — without which they cannot function, and creates the world of make belief where people are so deluded that they believe booking a transaction that really takes place in one location can be recorded in another and have real substance in that second place that is a secrecy jurisdiction.

But worse — secrecy jurisdictions deny free access to capital by ensuring that funds are held off shore far from locations where they can be used creatively. And they increase risk, so increase the required rate of return on capital and that reduces the amount of investment and so well being.

But those who promote tax havens deny all this. And that’s because they have no interest in creating entrepreneurial markets. Their interest is in preserving privilege and increasing the division in society — at which, as I pointed out, they are very successful.

But what really amused me was that in the face of logical argument, backed by established economics, supported by many respected commentators, they could only claim they were “misunderstood” especially by “many parliamentarians” who seemed “unable to comprehend the complexity of the issue” and “preferred banker bashing” to understanding secrecy jurisdictions. Throughout they played the role of victims being misportrayed by the forces amassed against them. People could fly from all over the world for this one event, it seemed. But apparently the vast resources of their PR machines are, in their own opinion, no match to that of the Tax Justice Network and the others engaged in this debate. Haven’t they realised that’s because their arguments are bankrupt, like the model of capitalism they promote?

Poor little dears — misunderstood and without a future might be the conclusion of the meeting.

But don’t cry for them — they’ll continue to cause harm for some time to come.