{"id":31708,"date":"2015-12-19T11:56:21","date_gmt":"2015-12-19T11:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=31708"},"modified":"2015-12-19T11:56:21","modified_gmt":"2015-12-19T11:56:21","slug":"if-the-conservatives-are-so-keen-on-tackling-tax-abuse-why-did-they-vote-against-doing-so-in-the-eu-parliament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2015\/12\/19\/if-the-conservatives-are-so-keen-on-tackling-tax-abuse-why-did-they-vote-against-doing-so-in-the-eu-parliament\/","title":{"rendered":"If the Conservatives are so keen on tackling tax abuse why did they vote against doing so in the EU Parliament?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week <a href=\"http:\/\/www.europarl.europa.eu\/sides\/getDoc.do?type=TA&amp;reference=P8-TA-2015-0457&amp;language=EN&amp;ring=A8-2015-0349\" target=\"_blank\">saw a major motion on measures to be taken to tackle tax abuse<\/a> passed by the EU Parliament. I do, of course, welcome that.<\/p>\n<p>I welcomed the size of the vote: 500 for, 122 against and 81 abstaining.<\/p>\n<p>What surprised me was the single biggest opposing group by a long way were the ECR group, which is dominated by the UK's Conservative MEPs, none of whom seem to have voted for the motion (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.europarl.europa.eu\/sides\/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2f%2fEP%2f%2fNONSGML%2bPV%2b20151216%2bRES-RCV%2bDOC%2bPDF%2bV0%2f%2fEN&amp;language=EN\" target=\"_blank\">page 35, here<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Why is it that right across Europe political parties could find common ground on this issue and the problems it causes but the UK's Conservatives could not do so?<\/p>\n<p>What is it about our Conservatives that makes them oppose transparency, coordination and convergence in corporate tax policies?<\/p>\n<p>Surely they're not on the side of the avoiders, are they?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week saw a major motion on measures to be taken to tackle tax abuse passed by the EU Parliament. I do, of course, welcome<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2015\/12\/19\/if-the-conservatives-are-so-keen-on-tackling-tax-abuse-why-did-they-vote-against-doing-so-in-the-eu-parliament\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/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":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tax-avoidance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31708","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=31708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}