CHIEF Minister Allan Bell has hit back at Ed Miliband after the Labour Party leader launched a new offensive on offshore tax jurisdictions including the Isle of Man.
It was reported in the UK press at the weekend that Mr Miliband would demand that the UK Government forces Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man to reveal the identity of British tax ‘evaders’ with money hidden on the islands.
The Labour leader will this week call for negotiations to begin with the governments on the three islands.
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And he will also demand ministers follow up the talks with threats to shame the islands on the international stage by placing them on a globally recognised blacklist drawn up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
‘It’s obviously a very disappointing statement to come from Ed Miliband which primarily is based on a lack of understanding on his part of the progress that the Isle of Man has made over the last decade, and its current status of being on the OECD White List,’ Mr Bell said.
‘It seems the statement has more to do with his battle to establish himself as a credible leader of the Labour Party than a concern with the Isle of Man as such.’
When asked whether he thought the reports were damaging for the island, he said: ‘I don’t think it’s damaging at all at the moment.
‘It’s a statement of a politician made while the UK is in some domestic difficulty. At times like this politicians pick scapegoats.
‘It’s happened in the past with the Labour government and it’s continuing now.’
While he said he didn’t believe there would be any ‘underlying problems’ for the Isle of Man as a result, he said he expected ‘some negative comment from the Guardian group’ on ‘what they see as a dysfunctional capitalist system generally’.
The Guardian’s sister newspaper the Observer reported that Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man had not been co-operating with UK authorities’ requests for the identity of people with money on the islands.
Mr Bell hit back at this claim, saying: ‘The Isle of Man is fully co-operative with the UK. We have an automatic tax exchange agreement with the UK and we were the first jurisdiction to agree to an automatic exchange agreement with the whole of the EU.
‘We work very closely with the UK authorities and that level of co-operation was confirmed with the OECD at the G20 meeting in Cannes in September when were put in the top 10 of co-operative jurisdictions.’
Mr Bell has no plans to respond directly to Labour at this stage.
But he said the government would continue its programme of having regular meetings with UK politicians: ‘We will be meeting Labour politicians alongside those of the Coalition to explain the Isle of Man’s position and correct misconceptions that exist.’
He described the Isle of Man’s relationship with the current UK administration as ‘good’, saying Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg told him just last week he had no concerns with the Isle of Man.
‘His only issues are with the fulfilment industry, which are now being resolved through the courts and only affect Jersey and Guernsey,’ Mr Bell said.
Meanwhile KPMG director Greg Jones has criticised Mr Miliband.
He said he was a ‘little dismayed that Mr Miliband has chosen to jump on a bandwagon that departed a long time ago’.
‘Even for someone desperate to deflect attention away from poor leadership ratings, having a go at the offshore islands is a bit obvious and unsubtle,’ he said.
‘Particularly if you can’t get your facts right.’
Tax Justice Network campaigner Richard Murphy has said the move could recoup £2.4bn.
In a recent blog he said: ‘I do, of course, welcome this move by Labour. My hope is it’s the start of a whole campaign on the tax gap.
‘That though is for time to tell. For now it makes very clear that the claim by the Crown Dependencies that they are transparent and all is now well with them is but a hollow sham: that is far from the truth.
‘Now it is time for them to offer real reform if they are serious in their claim that they do not want tax evaders to use them, something that is all too easy at present.’
The Isle of Man Examiner asked the Labour Party central office whether Ed Miliband genuinely believes the Isle of Man is not as well regulated as the UK, and asked the party to provide figures showing the number of people/amount of money that has been put into the Isle of Man illegally and what evidence it had of the island’s non-co-operation with UK authorities.