The Isle of Man has a new friend in Naomi Lawton.
And Naomi, consultant to the International Finance Centres Forum, believes strongly we should ‘man up’ against outside pressures.
Naomi, on a whistlestop visit to address the Appleby Spring Seminar , told Business News the island has a vital role to play in global affairs.
She said: ‘The offshore financial centres, the Isle of Man included, are under threatfrom various G8 and G20 initiatives that are not evidence driven in any form. They are political attempts to please, political crowd-pleasers.
‘All this stuff about transparency and regulation, in fact the crown dependencies and the overseas territories , have been regulated for more than 10 years and collect beneficial ownership which is far more than any of the so-called on-shore jurisdictions .’
She said moves by the UK government were ‘completely flawed’.
‘There is already a perfectly good system that is established and works . Really all of this is not about transparency, it a knee jerk political reaction to the financial crisis really. The idea that we have not go enough money and it must be somebody else’s fault. And the crown dependencies are an excellent scapegoat.
‘And they look like they have money, more than anyone else and to date the crown dependencies and overseas territories have allowed themselves, to some extent, to be bullied by these economies [such as the UK] into all sorts of policies that are damaging to their interests.
‘It’s about time they [the crown dependencies] clubbed together and createdtheir own agenda. Because at the moment they are defending themselves against other people’s agendas.
‘The Isle of Man, for example, does not need to do that. It’s financially independent in its own right and it creates development, it is not a recipient of aid.’
She told Business News: ‘My advice [to the Isle of Man] is to man up, set your own agenda.’ The island had to put its case against what was a one-sided debate, she said.
Naomi later joined Economic Development minister John Shimmin at the seminar, entitled The Isle of Man and the World Economy -Where Next?