{"id":13514,"date":"2012-01-08T16:52:33","date_gmt":"2012-01-08T16:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=13514"},"modified":"2012-01-08T16:52:33","modified_gmt":"2012-01-08T16:52:33","slug":"tony-blairs-opacity-is-a-long-way-from-anything-good-capitalism-would-demand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/01\/08\/tony-blairs-opacity-is-a-long-way-from-anything-good-capitalism-would-demand\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Blair’s opacity is a long way from anything good capitalism would demand"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Telegraph<\/a> and\u00a0Observer<\/a>\u00a0both have commentary on the publication of Tony\u00a0Blair's\u00a0accounts today and I'm quoted in both. That's\u00a0because\u00a0a couple of years or so ago I won a prize from the Guardian for fathoming out why he structured\u00a0his\u00a0business\u00a0affairs in seemingly bizarre and\u00a0inexplicable fashion and so I a seem to have become the person to\u00a0quote\u00a0on the subject.<\/p>\n

My original analysis is here<\/a>. It's not light reading. The key\u00a0point\u00a0was a simple one though, and that is that Blair adopted a massively opaque structure to ensure that much of his activity is hidden from\u00a0view\u00a0in an\u00a0arcane\u00a0and rare\u00a0corporate\u00a0structure\u00a0called a limited partnership (which is not the same as a limited\u00a0liability\u00a0partnership) and by\u00a0exploiting\u00a0legal but dubious legal loopholes he has ensured contrary to the\u00a0spirit\u00a0of the law that it does not need to\u00a0file\u00a0its accounts on public record even though all its members are\u00a0limited\u00a0liability entities. It is the clear intention of the law that they should be published in that situation, but his lawyers or\u00a0accountants\u00a0found a way round that.<\/p>\n

That has always raised the question, why does he need that secrecy?<\/p>\n

Now further questions have arisen since in the pile of companies he owns is a management services company - which seems to supply most of its services to the limited partnership and is paid more than \u00a310 million for doing so. Its total income in its 2011 accounts was \u00a312 million, it had costs of \u00a310.9 million and paid tax at a fair rate on the resulting balance of profit. But what papers have\u00a0picked\u00a0up on is the fact that in a management\u00a0services\u00a0company you would logically expect most costs to be for people - since they're the\u00a0management\u00a0that's being supplied, after all. But as the The Observer notes, largely quoting me:<\/p>\n

Windrush Ventures Ltd spent almost \u00a33m on staff, rent and other services but had total administration costs of almost \u00a311m. \"Just what is this company doing?\" Murphy asked. \"You would expect total costs to be around double the costs of employing staff. But in this case total administrative costs are \u00a310.9m. That's a very high ratio indeed.\" He added: \"We have no idea where this money is coming from or how it's being spent. The structure seems designed to impose a veil of secrecy over its accounts.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More than \u00a37 million of those admin costs seem hard to explain in a management company. It\u00a0would\u00a0be a might lot of consultancy if that's what's being bought. And if it is - why is that the case, and who is\u00a0benefiting? I think those are fair questions for a person in the public eye making his money as a result of public office.<\/p>\n

As the Telegraph notes Blair's defence is:<\/a><\/p>\n

The Windrush accounts are prepared in accordance with the relevant legal, accounting and regulatory guidance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It's\u00a0profoundly\u00a0disappointing\u00a0that he relies on such a legalistic defence. It's up to him how much\u00a0transparency\u00a0he provides and he has op[ted for the\u00a0absolute\u00a0minimum he can get away with. When the debate now is about good capitalism he shows he is a long, long way from being anywhere near the demands for\u00a0accountability\u00a0that\u00a0imposes. And that is why it's fair to raise the issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Telegraph and\u00a0Observer\u00a0both have commentary on the publication of Tony\u00a0Blair’s\u00a0accounts today and I’m quoted in both. That’s\u00a0because\u00a0a couple of years or so ago I won
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,16,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accounting","category-ethics","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}