Dispatches on Channel 4 this evening is on what it calls the Secrets of the Taxman. As the Mail noted about the programme yesterday:
When George Osborne attacked tax avoiders as morally repugnant last March, he must have thought this would bring him easy political gains.
It has not worked out quite like that. Rather a lot of Tory donors and sympathisers have turned out to be tax avoiders.
.....
Now, thanks to Channel 4's Dispatches programme, we learn that members of HMRC's board have links to companies which themselves face suggestions that they engage - quite legally - in tax avoidance.
If this is morally repugnant, as the Chancellor says it is, then it is quite clearly a conflict of interest for anyone connected with the tax system to be even remotely connected with such activities.
The public are entitled to wonder if HMRC, or the Government as a whole, really have their hearts in reducing avoidance to a bare minimum. Or are they merely pretending to be concerned, in the hope of diverting the anger and discontent of ordinary dutiful taxpayers?
Quite so.
I should add, I do appear in the programme for the good reason that regulatory capture seems to me one of the biggest threats to democracy that exists and it seems to me that it is happening at HMRC right now.
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HMRC’s non-executive board should be reconstituted. Ex KPMG boss Ian Barlow shouldn’t have any business chairing our Tax Authority.
If we’re going to talk about HMRC and tax avoidance, when are we going to hear about Mapeley Steps?
I agree entirely (about regulatory capture), Richard, as you’ll know from past comments by me. This has been going on ‘below the radar’, as it were, for a long time now without any serious challenge to be honest. But to get the full picture of the extent of this threat to democracy we have to recognise that regulatory capture is simply one side of a coin, the other being corporate capture of policy making pretty much across government, and, increasingly, other public services to (e.g. the NHS).
Again, this has largely happened out of sight – with most attention being paid to outsourcing/privatisation of service delivery. But under the auspices of providing ‘specialist advice’, or bringing so-called private sector skills and expertise into government – often through formal secondment arrangements – the policy making process has gradually been warped (corrupted?) such that in many policy areas the default setting is now always towards what’s preferable to big business/the private sector.The rhetoric from Cameron et al about doing what the public/customers want is exactly that, rhetoric which provides the necessary smokescreen for what is really going on.
We saw this trend (which had really taken hold under Thatcher thanks to her distrust of the civil service) speed up under New Labour, but that was as nothing to what’s happened since the ConDem government took power. Indeed, I have no doubt that the increase in the speed and extent of both regulatory and policy capture under this government is entirely intentional, with the goal being to ensure widespread systemic capture which will endure a change of government in 2015. I’m sure I don’t need to spell out what the intended result will be.
Every day that passes provides further proof that the “Conspiracy Theorists” are right and Cameron is not the empty head he pretends, but part of a treacherous élite intent on the total destruction of the UK.