Today’s report by the Public Accounts Committee hasn’t so much been released as detonated onto the Westminster
scene. The Exchequer is owed around £25 billion, it suggests, from major companies that have been handled too leniently, or just plain wrongly, by HM Revenue & Customs. And much of the
blame is attached to Dave Hartnett, the outgoing civil servant in charge of revenue collection. Interviewed on the Today Programme earlier, the chair of the committee, Margaret Hodge, implied that Hartnett had too ‘cosy’ a relationship with big
business. She went on to add that, ‘you’re left feeling that the sort of deals that are made with big business — “sweetheart” deals in some cases — are different from
the way in which corner shops are treated, small businesses are treated, or hard-working families are treated’. It’s a combustive claim, not least because it will lend parliamentary heft to
the arguments put forward by all those Occupy and Uncut types.
There is an argument, albeit one I don’t find entirely persuasive, that big businesses such as Goldman Sachs actually deserve special treatment — they do, after all, contribute huge amounts to the nation’s coffers, and perhaps their tax status is complicated enough to warrant negotiation and horse trading.
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