Judge Conservative tax avoidance record as well as Labour’s

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/feb/08/conservatives-tax-avoidance-record-labour

Version 0 of 1.

Your article (‘I will not back down’ – Miliband, 7 February) quotes a Tory spokesman as saying: “People should judge Ed Miliband by his record, not his rhetoric. For 13 years Labour … did absolutely nothing to tackle tax avoidance.” Please note your article of 18 February 2009 which began: “A worldwide crackdown on tax havens … will be spearheaded by Gordon Brown”, and pointed out that “Britain’s biggest companies have enjoyed secretive tax arrangements to reduce [their tax] liability … HMRC estimates the size of the tax gap between £4bn and £13bn”. After coming into government in 2010, the Tories ended progress on Brown’s work and, on 7 February 2011, you published George Monbiot’s comment that the coalition’s changes to the law allow that “all the money that has passed through tax havens remains untaxed when it gets here”. Should we not judge the Tories on their record, not their rhetoric?MR HeylingsMitcheldean, Gloucestershire

• It’s about time someone asked: “What did the Tories do during their 18 years from 1979 to 1997?” In the case of tax avoidance and evasion, the answer is not “nothing” but the very antithesis. The Tories set up mechanisms that gave an enormous boost to tax dodging. One of Thatcher’s first acts as PM was to abolish exchange controls, followed by the Big Bang in the 80s that deregulated so much of domestic and international finance, setting up the conduits for such antisocial if not criminal behaviour. Banks, accountants, investment advising firms and assorted others fastened on to these conduits at great profit to themselves and their customers but detriment to millions of other citizens. The inclusion of these dubious people in the wealth-creating class is a bad joke perpetrated by much of the media but notably the Tory toadying tabloids, the Times and the Telegraph.

Well done, Ed Miliband. They said they wanted some leadership.Nigel de GruchyLabour parliamentary candidate, Orpington, Kent

• “The new Jerusalem gets built only if the company that supplies the bricks and mortar is on side: that is the hard truth confronting any idealist” (Opinion, 2 February). For the writer, Matthew d’Ancona, the solution is simple: Labour must be more pro-business than it appears to be, and more explicit in relation to spending plans. But if Labour tries to please business, it alienates its core supporters, who have suffered enormously from job and service cuts, as well as an 8%-10% fall in real wages.

At a time of economic expansion it was possible to please to different degrees all sections of society at the top and bottom. That leeway has gone. For example, businesses like BP are demanding tax relief due to falling profits from lower oil prices. Tax relief means a fall in government income and therefore pressure to cut public spending even more, in order to reduce the budget deficit.

For Labour to succeed it has to decide who it represents – those at the top or the rest. To use d’Ancona’s language, if those who supply the bricks withhold that supply, or even stop producing them through a strike of capital, Labour must grasp the bull by the horns and take those companies into public ownership. If it doesn’t, it risks losing even more support from those who look to Labour to meet their needs. Such losses in electoral support and party membership could see Labour following its European partners like Pasok and PSOE into electoral oblivion. Darrall CozensCoventry

• It shows how bizarrely out of touch with the people national election politics has become when Ed Miliband makes what should be an uncontroversial comment that all should pay their share of taxes and every rich Tom and Dick and Harry wades in to complain. I lost interest in this election because all the parties spent ages reassuring business and finance that they were safe to govern – and no one was reassuring us, the people, except with standard Tory and Lib Dem bribes. But a politician insisting on a tiny bit of fairness for us! Not enough, perhaps, to stop me voting Green but enough to think that if Miliband carries on speaking to and for the people a little more, progressives may regain enough respect to consider a loose coalition.Olivia ByardWitney, Oxfordshire

• Lord Noon (Millionaire donor urges Labour not to alienate business, 6 February) needs reminding that it is business, particularly the large corporations and the international conglomerates, that is alienating the general public with its greed and tax avoidance.Russell SweeneyLeeds

• Heather Stewart (7 February) suggests at least three reasons for Labour’s “calculated” gamble in “picking a fight with big business”. There is at least one more. I have the same number of votes at the general election as one of our corporate bosses. Not sophisticated political analysis, maybe, but true in a democracy.Michael SomertonHull