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Companies Bill [Lords]

I shall speak briefly in support of new clauses 1 and 2, but I also want to speak to some other amendments tabled by myself and my hon. Friends. They further the same principle of keeping companies accountable by reporting—in other words, by asking them to say what they have done in certain areas. The sort of reporting envisaged in amendments Nos. 801 and 820, which we are proposing, cannot be subject to the usual Tory accusation that while companies spend millions on public relations, telling us what they have done, any expenditure on reporting to tell us what they have done is likely to put people out of work and cause companies to flee to some other jurisdiction. The amendments escape that criticism. Amendment No. 801 tackles a basic issue, on which I would have hoped the Department of Trade and Industry would have collaborated with the Inland Revenue and Treasury, as they both want to restrict the use of transfer pricing to launder profits into other jurisdictions either for avoiding tax or for money-laundering purposes. It is an important fact that FTSE 100 companies have 1,500 subsidiaries through which profits can be laundered. Indeed, 60 per cent. of world trade goes through multinationals. Bearing that in mind, something has to be done about transfer pricing and amendment No. 801 actually does it. There is considerable concern about this problem in the United States, where several inquiries have been conducted. UNESCO has also had some inquiries. From tax inquiries and congressional hearings in the US, it has emerged that the more flagrant examples of transfer pricing include, for instance, importing plastic buckets from the Czech Republic at $972 each, fence posts from Canada at $1,800 each and a kilo of toilet paper from China at $4,121. That shows how trade is used to launder money out of one jurisdiction into another. Lower prices, going the other way, include prefabricated buildings to Trinidad at $1.20 per building and bulldozers to Venezuela at $387. In that way, tax obligations in one jurisdiction can be avoided and money can be laundered through to another jurisdiction, so it is important that we know what is going on. The Treasury and tax authorities are now grappling with the problem. They are already tackling royalty payments by I beg to move, and Vodafone is currently locked in a transfer pricing discussion. We should get companies to declare what transfer pricing policies they are using and to report at constant market prices so that we know what is being done. It is public information and not a great burden on companies. Indeed, Henderson Global Investors, one of the largest institutional investors, has openly called for transfer pricing disclosures so that investors can know where the money is coming from, what is happening to it, where the profits are being generated and where tax has been paid. As I say, it is an important piece of investor information. I do not have time to speak to all the amendments—to the House’s great regret, I am sure—but I want to deal with another amendment in detail.