Issue - meetings

On a motion from Councillor Tom Davies, seconded by Councillor Mark Elliott, it was

RESOLVED that

Our Council notes that:

1. The pressure on organisations to pay their fair share of tax has never been stronger.

2. Polling from the Institute for Business Ethics finds that “corporate tax avoidance” has, since 2013, been the clear number one concern of the British public when it comes to business conduct.

3. Two thirds of people (66%) believe the Government and local councils should at least consider a company’s ethics and how they pay their tax, as well as value for money and quality of service provided, when awarding contracts to companies.

4. Around 17.5% of public contracts in the UK have been won by companies with links to tax havens.

5. It has been conservatively estimated that losses from multinational profit-shifting (just one form of tax avoidance) could be costing the UK some £17bn per annum in lost corporation tax revenues.

6. The Fair Tax Mark offers a means for business to demonstrate good tax conduct, and has been secured by a wide range of businesses across the UK, including FTSE-listed PLCs, co-operatives, social enterprises and large private businesses.

B&NES Council believes that:

1. Paying tax is often presented as a burden, but it shouldn’t be.

2. Tax enables us to provide services from education, health and social care, to flood defence, roads, policing and defence. It also helps to counter financial inequalities and rebalance distorted economies.

3. As recipients of significant public funding, local authorities should take the lead in the promotion of exemplary tax conduct; be that by ensuring contractors are paying their proper share of tax, or by refusing to go along with offshore tax dodging when buying land and property.

4. Where councils hold substantive stakes in private enterprises, influence should be wielded to ensure that such businesses are exemplars of tax transparency and tax avoidance is shunned.

5. More action is needed, however, as current and proposed new UK procurement law significantly restricts councils’ ability to either penalise poor tax conduct (as exclusion grounds are rarely triggered) or reward good tax conduct, when buying goods or services.

6. UK cities, counties and towns can and should stand up for responsible tax conduct - doing what they can within existing frameworks and pledging to do more given the opportunity, as active supporters of international tax justice.

7. The Conservative government has failed to make meaningful progress on tackling tax avoidance despite international consensus reached at the G7 summit in June 2021, and has failed to push through key improvements that would have made the system fairer and more effective and would have netted the UK an additional £6.8 billion year.

8. Currently case law reinforces that a company’s tax status cannot be used as a reason to disbar them from a procurement process; the Lib Dems believe that a real opportunity was missed by the Government when it published new procurement regulations this year which failed to allow public sector organisations to consider the tax arrangements of potential contractors.

9. Government instructions  ...  view the full minutes text for item 26