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House of Lords (Members’ Taxation Status) Bill [HL]

That relates to the noble Lord himself, and I am not necessarily talking entirely about British subjects. My concern here, which is probably not real but perceived, is that there is a groundswell of opinion that all foreigners working in London will have to be domiciled there and pay tax on their worldwide income. That is a real fear. It would be helpful if the Liberal party could perhaps give the assurance that that will never be the intention. Domicile is not necessarily a matter of fact. Certainly for non-British nationals that is not the case, and it depends on your marital status and where you come from. As President Sarkozy said the other day, London is the sixth or seventh city of France. There may be 750,000 French subjects in this country paying tax on their British income but not necessarily paying tax on their mortgages in France or other benefits. That has always been the case with the international community. Therefore, the employees have no objection to paying tax in this country and I do not think that any member of the international community objects to the principle of having a tax levy placed on him. Historically, it was a fairly simple matter. I speak from some practical experience. If you worked in this country and you were a foreigner, you had to show that you had an income of £25,000 a year and you paid tax on that. That was in the early days. When I was in the banking world and we employed people, that was the case, but you did not pay capital tax on other issues. Equally, if you were a British subject working abroad, you were allowed to have 25 per cent of your income paid tax free. The clear thing about taxation is that it should be transparent. My worry is that this Bill as presented to the external world may cause concern, because it might lead to a perfectly reasonable statement that this should apply to the House of Commons and possibly to those in elected Assemblies in the United Kingdom, who number in general 106,203—local authority is another level. The principle is there. The difference is that, other than a few of us in your Lordships’ House, no one is elected. The other difference is that no one here receives a salary in this field. My wish is that the Bill could be changed somewhat. I will speak later to the amendments suggesting that certain people should be excluded. Within that framework, we come to the existing 734 Members of your Lordships’ House. I would willingly read out all the writs of summons and provide everything, because in this world I have probably more information on your Lordships’ House than anyone else. I did the original report for the Labour Party and I have had this stuff for over 45 years. I feel quite concerned that, even in the 1999 Act, people ignored the Commonwealth. There are 1.8 billion members of the British Commonwealth, which represents 30 per cent of the population and 20 per cent of the land area of the world. The assumption here is that no member of the Commonwealth may become a Member of the House of Lords unless he becomes domiciled in the United Kingdom and leaves his country behind. Equally, within that framework, one must accept that one of the main revenue streams of the poorer countries, particularly in the Caribbean, is financial services. Those may not appeal and hold no interest to the Members in the Liberal party, who are assembled in serried ranks as though they must have a Whip on for something that is really not that important. That makes it look even worse; if it is presented to the outside world that the whole Liberal party believes that doms, or non-doms, or whatever, should be taxed, that is a worry. I can produce representations that have been made to me. At the moment, the money flowing out of London is very significant indeed, and other people are competing for it. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, may pull me apart, but I see that there is added value in the movement of that money and that, whatever money comes in, some remains and some goes out, and it is not purely in the City of London. We are now the second largest international investor in the world. My life has been in trade and I have dealt with many of the more difficult countries in the world—the second biggest being Algeria. Some of that trade is in oil. I want some reassurance from all Benches that it is not their intention to pursue further the taxation of people who are working in the United Kingdom as though they were domiciled here. Yes, they can be ordinary residents. Some people may be resident to an extent in several countries, or they may move. I often represent groups of pensioners internationally. Anyone in your Lordships’ House can represent whom they like. I represent the 19 million people who did not vote at the last election. I also represent many of the groups abroad in areas where I worked—roughly 12 million people.