PARLIAMENTARY EARLY DAY MOTION
MISUSE OF OVERSEAS AID ON TAX HAVENS (29 June 1994)

That this House is appalled that hundreds of thousands of pounds from the British overseas aid budget is being used to pay financial advisers; to regulate tax havens in the British Virgin Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands; notes that the misuse of Overseas Development Administration aid for this purpose assists United Kingdom companies and wealthy United Kingdom citizens to avoid paying United Kingdom tax, and that it enriches bankers and lawyers in the Caribbean instead of aiding poor people in the region; notes that the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands governments collected ú14.2 million last year in fees and charges from their offshore finance industries, but spent less than ú1 million, including the British aid contribution, on regulating offshore finance, and could therefore afford to pay the cost of regulation from their own receipts; notes that each British Virgin islander received ú74 in British aid last year even though their per capita gross domestic product is three times Jamaica's, which received ú2 per person in aid, and 10 times higher than India's, which received 10 pence per person in aid; recognises that the policy of aiding tax havens directly contradicts the claim in the 1994 Foreign Office Departmental Report that aid is targeted on the poorest countries where the problems of development go deepest; and calls on the Government to stop misusing British aid on running Caribbean tax havens, and to redirect the money to development projects for poor people in poor countries.

Sponsored by:
Sir Hugh Bayley (Labour)