Ed Miliband repeatedly challenged David Cameron at Prime Minister’s Questions recently to close a tax loophole that allows hedge funds and others to dodge the stamp duty they should pay on share transactions. Last week in parliament a report was launched by former senior banker Avinash Persaud which shows that by tightening such rules we can raise a potential additional £2bn year. In both cases the Conservatives have looked the other way. Perhaps it’s something to do with the Conservative party receiving a large wedge of their funding from the financial sector?
It fits a pattern. The government has bitterly fought European legislation designed to keep financial services in check; the ringfencing of investment and retail banking has been delayed until 2018, a decade too late; and no individuals have been convicted for their part in the crisis. The list goes on: an anaemic bank levy has raised little revenue; financial sector corporation tax receipts are dwindling and financial sector remuneration is so out of sync with the rest of the economy it took senior bankers just the first week of January to earn what the average Briton will take home for all of 2015.
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