Private Finance Initiative And Tax Havens

EDM number 1108 in 2007-08, proposed by Austin Mitchell on 04/03/2008.
Categorised under the topics of Public expenditure and Taxation.

That this House is concerned to discover that the ownership of billions of pounds worth of public assets, which are reported to include the Treasury offices in Whitehall, the new Home Office, the Inland Revenue's estate, 42 per cent. of the Colchester Garrison building, 90 per cent. of the Stoke Mandeville Hospital, 85 per cent. of the Central Middlesex Hospital as well as schools in Gwynedd, the Health and Safety Laboratory in Buxton, Exeter Crown Court, 50 per cent. of a project for new schools in the Highlands and 26 per cent. of the Norwich and Norfolk Hospital have all been transferred to offshore tax havens in order to avoid tax obligations; urges HM Treasury to require the return of all such assets to ownership in the UK where tax obligations can be properly enforced; and suggests that all private finance initiative (PFI) contracts which do not return assets to the UK should be abrogated, and that all future contracts should specify that neither the ownership nor the company operating the PFI can operate from a tax haven in order to avoid their legitimate tax obligations in the UK, and that this policy decision should be supplemented by a requirement that all competitors for Government and local authority contracts should be registered in the UK and pay tax in the UK.

This motion has been signed by a total of 32 MPs.