Tax Evasion

1. What steps she is taking to help tackle tax evasion.

Closing the tax gap and ensuring that everyone is paying the tax they owe is one of the Government’s top priorities. The autumn Budget marked a step change to close the tax gap with the most ambitious package ever. The Government built on that in the spring statement, taking the total additional gross tax revenue raised per year to £7.5 billion by 2029-30.

The UK tax gap grew by a shocking £5 billion in 2023, in the dying days of the Conservatives, and former Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi was sacked for failing to declare an investigation by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs into his tax affairs. I welcome the Treasury’s crackdown on tax avoidance. Does my hon. Friend agree that Labour’s prudence with a purpose will be shown by investing those taxes in the child poverty strategy this summer?

I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks. He is right to say that the £7.5 billion of additional revenue from closing the tax gap is a huge boost to the public finances, which enables us responsibly to fund public services and deliver key priorities. Those priorities include free breakfast clubs at all primary schools in England. The first 750 of them are beginning this month via our early adopters scheme, which is worth £450 to parents and carers. To go further the Government will bring forward their comprehensive child poverty strategy as soon as possible.

What steps are the Government taking to address the concerns of overseas companies that are evading VAT and online sales by fraudulently registering UK addresses?

At the spring statement the hon. Gentleman will have seen the Government set out progress on measures in the autumn Budget to tackle a range of sources of tax avoidance and the tax gap. That includes prosecuting more fraudsters, introducing a new HMRC reward scheme for informants, tackling phoenixism and tackling the offshore non-compliance tax gap.