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Panama Papers: Labour says David Cameron has 'lost trust' over revelations David Cameron faces growing clamour for full account of his tax affairs
(about 1 hour later)
David Cameron is facing mounting pressure to make a statement to parliament about his tax affairs after his admission that he did hold shares in the Panama-based offshore company owned by his late father triggered calls from senior figures in the Labour party, the SNP, Liberal Democrats and Greens for more details. David Cameron is facing mounting pressure to make a statement to parliament about the controversy surrounding his tax affairs after his revelation that he owned 5,000 shares in his father’s Panama-based offshore trust.
The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said the prime minister had “misled the public” and “lost the trust of the British people” after a week in which Downing Street initially dismissed the issue as a private matter and then put out five different statements before Thursday’s disclosure. At the end of a torrid week, the prime minister – who sold his shares in 2010 for £30,000 – was accused by a series of opposition leaders of having misled the public, betraying trust, delivering half-truths and leaving his credibility in tatters.
Related: Cameron's offshore tax conduct was 'ethically wrong', Labour's Tom Watson says - Politics live Many seized on the fact that his admission came after a week in which Downing Street had first refused to answer questions over what it called a “private matter” and then issued a series of statements.
Cameron defended his father, Ian Cameron, arguing that Blairmore holdings was not set up to avoid tax, and insisted that he and his wife, Samantha, had paid all the relevant money owed following the sale of the shares in 2010 for £30,000. Jeremy Corbyn called on Cameron to give a “full account of all his private financial dealings” and address MPs when they returned to parliament next week.
But on Friday evening Corbyn said: “It is now clear that the prime minister has misled the public about his personal involvement in offshore tax avoidance schemes. It took five weasel-worded statements in five days for the Prime Minister to admit that he has personally profited from an undeclared Caribbean tax haven investment deal. “It is now clear that the prime minister has misled the public about his personal involvement in offshore tax avoidance schemes. It took five weasel-worded statements in five days for the prime minister to admit that he has personally profited from an undeclared Caribbean tax haven investment deal,” the Labour leader said late on Friday.
“Once again the message has gone out that there is one rule for the wealthy and another for the rest of us.” “After years of calling for tax transparency and attacking complex offshore tax arrangements as ‘morally wrong’, the prime minister has been shown to have personally benefited from exactly such a secretive offshore investment.”
The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said there had been a “significant erosion of trust in the prime minister because he wasn’t straight and he didn’t answer straight away and responses, as others have said, had to be dragged out of him”. A senior government source hit back by arguing that it was unfair to associate everything offshore with tax avoidance. He said that Blairmore Holdings, set up by Ian Cameron, was not “not a vehicle for tax avoidance”.
Owen Smith, the shadow work and pensions secretary, told the Guardian that the prime minister was guilty of double standards and must now explain to MPs why he had to be dragged “kicking and screaming” to provide details of his shares. The source defended Downing Street’s handling of the crisis, which included a series of statements denying that the prime minister, his wife or children held any shares or would benefit in the future from offshore funds or trusts.
“The prime minister has been speaking out of two sides of his mouth on this issue,” said Smith. “On one hand supposedly calling for greater action on tax avoidance, while on the other clearly having benefited from an investment scheme that is essentially a tax avoidance vehicle.” They said Cameron decided to make a fresh intervention on Thursday night because of concerns about how the controversy was affecting his family, and his especially his mother.
‘Frankly implausible’ “There is the human factor. David Cameron was watching the television and so was his mother and brothers and sisters and every time they look up there was an image of his father.”
Smith described Cameron’s insistence that his father’s holdings were not there to avoid tax as “frankly implausible”. The source said they were alarmed to see Ian Cameron in amid coverage of people such as Vladimir Putin, dictators and despots, and feared that people would assume “guilt by association”.
Other opposition parties have issued similarly strong statements, with the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, arguing that the “tortuous” way the information came out had left Cameron’s “credibility in tatters and completely betrays public trust”. But Downing Street’s attempts at damage limitation appeared to be in trouble as some of the prime minister’s assertions came under further scrutiny on Friday.
She added: “David Cameron must now be completely transparent around his tax affairs. After four days of ducking and diving it is now clear that he personally benefited from offshore investments.” On another fast-moving day:
The SNP’s Westminster leader, Angus Robertson, called for a statement to parliament on Monday, echoing a call from the Green MP Caroline Lucas. The Lib Dem leader, Tim Farron, said the public deserved better than “half-truths and qualified statements”. The Guardian broke the story on Monday that Ian Cameron’s offshore investment fund had over three decades paid no British tax. The documents were among 11.5m files from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca which were leaked to the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. It shared them with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Guardian, the BBC, and other media partners.
The situation has even drawn criticism from Conservative MPs, some of whom are already angry about Cameron’s handling of the EU referendum debate. Over the past week the story has caused reverberations in China, Russia, Argentina, Iceland, Pakistan and many other countries.
Related: Mossack Fonseca: inside the firm that helps the super-rich hide their money In spite of Downing Street’s explanations, it was still unclear whether Cameron’s direct relatives, including his mother, Mary Cameron, held money in offshore trusts, and whether his £300,000 inheritance included money accrued from tax havens.
Bernard Jenkin the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons public administration and constitutional affairs committee, told the World at One that Number 10 had handled the offshore trust story badly. “It clearly would have been much better if a much cleaner breast of all the facts had been made right at the outset,” he said. There also has been no further clarification from No 10 about what investments the prime minister and his family may have held in Jersey.
Steve Baker, a Tory MP and co-chairman of Conservatives for Britain, said: “I don’t blame the prime minister but I think his communications team have let him down. We need a credible, certain tax system that needs public confidence. We clearly haven’t got it and this story has played into the worst fears of those who think there is a racket going on.” Cameron has promised to publish his tax return and the Guardian understands that he will do so in the coming days.
However, ministers tried to defend their leader. Nick Boles, the skills minister, suggested Cameron had not spoken up sooner because he was busy with a nuclear security summit and the referendum. Downing Street highlighted the prime minister’s own work in driving forward action against tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance, which includes his plans to host a summit on the issue next month.
“Second, you have had sustained attacks on the reputation of his father who is dead and who he was very close to and it is a natural reaction to jump to the defence of your father and try and prevent any further intrusion into your family life,” Boles told Sky News. It also rejected a claim by Labour MP John Mann that Cameron had broken the parliamentary code of conduct by not registering the shareholdings back in 2005, pointing out that the amount was far below the threshold required and that MPs were told “unit trusts” would not normally be listed.
The business minister Anna Soubry insisted the prime minister “hasn’t done anything wrong”. She told BBC1’s Question Time: “Understandably the spotlight was put on his late father after he was dragged into it and there were smears made against him. If it had been my father I would have pulled back and frankly not want to talk about any of it because I would have found it rather hurtful.” Cameron did receive support from ministers within his government.
Nevertheless, pressure has been mounting on Cameron – not least because of the way the situation has been handled. Downing Street began by trying to dismiss the questions about Ian Cameron’s holdings as an old story. A spokeswoman told the Guardian that questions about whether the prime minister would benefit from the fund were a “private matter”. The skills minister, Nick Boles, told Sky News that the prime minister was facing “sustained attacks on the reputation of his father who is dead and who he was very close to and it is a natural reaction to jump to the defence of your father and try and prevent any further intrusion into your family life”.
But over the following days Downing Street released a series of statements, first denying that Cameron had any shares in offshore funds or trusts, then issuing the same denial about his wife and children, then adding that they would not benefit in the future. It was only on Thursday that Cameron disclosed the information about having held the shares previously. The business minister Anna Soubry insisted the prime minister “hasn’t done anything wrong”, while another senior minister told the Guardian that he was being treated as “guilty before being proven innocent”.
The controversy has even made its way on to the Twitter feed of the hit series House of Cards, which is about the dark and deceitful behaviour of a fictional US president, Frank Underwood. But the pressure on Cameron is likely to rise following Corbyn’s remarks, which came alongside strongly worded statements from the leaders of the SNP, Liberal Democrats and Greens.
It replied to a tweet from Cameron that said : “I have a simple view that if you have done the right thing - worked, saved and paid your taxes - you should be rewarded, not punished” with a gif of Underwood texting. Nicola Sturgeon argued that the “tortuous” way the information had come out had left Cameron’s “credibility in tatters and completely betrayed public trust”.
.@David_Cameron pic.twitter.com/BrgljZmAHu “David Cameron must now be completely transparent around his tax affairs. After four days of ducking and diving it is now clear that he personally benefited from offshore investments,” she added.
It also responded to an article about the controversy with the message: “The road to power is paved with hypocrisy and casualties.” The SNP’s Westminster leader, Angus Robertson, called for a statement to parliament on Monday, echoing a call from the Green MP Caroline Lucas.The Lib Dem leader, Tim Farron, said the public deserved better than “half-truths and qualified statements”.
Netflix’s House of Cards is based on an original programme about a British prime minister. Meanwhile, a YouGov poll, carried out just before Cameron’s admission, found that his approval ratings were now at the lowest level since July 2013, and below Corbyn’s.
The Labour leader went on to accuse Cameron of having a “determination to conceal” his financial arrangement for many years – and pointed to criticism of how the prime minister had acted in 2013 . “It is extraordinary that after pocketing the profits from his offshore investment trust, the prime minister was lobbying the European Union against transparency in the ownership of trusts,” he said.
The former business secretary Vince Cable told the Guardian that his concerns were around Cameron’s commitment to policies he had put in place while in government to tackle tax avoidance. In particular Cable pointed to a pledge to make offshore companies sign up to a register that was supposed to be open to the public, but which was now only going to be accessible by law enforcement agencies and tax authorities. “This suggests a lack of commitment to the principles he had been setting out – around transparency,” said Cable.
Robert Palmer, head of Global Witness’s money laundering campaign, said: “The government has a big opportunity to break our links to tax evasion, crime and money laundering, but what’s proposed so far won’t cut it. Unless the UK’s tax havens publicly declare the real owners of companies registered there, as will happen in the UK itself from June, we’re just exporting the secrecy offshore.
“David Cameron needs to show leadership on this issue by making that happen at his anti-corruption summit next month.”
The comedian Jimmy Carr compounded Cameron’s woes with a dig at the PM. In 2012 Cameron publicly criticised Carr for using a Jersey-based offshore scheme, describing it as “frankly and morally wrong”.
Carr retaliated on Friday via Twitter:
I'm going to keep it classy. It would be ‘morally wrong’ and ‘hypocrytical’ to comment on another individual’s tax affairs.