Business of the House

Further to the comments of the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), may I make a bid for a topical debate on early-day motion 1108 on the private finance initiative and tax havens, co-sponsored by myself? [That this House is concerned to discover that the ownership of billions of pounds worth of public assets, which are reported to include the Treasury offices in Whitehall, the new Home Office, the Inland Revenue's estate, 42 per cent. of the Colchester Garrison building, 90 per cent. of the Stoke Mandeville Hospital, 85 per cent. of the Central Middlesex Hospital as well as schools in Gwynedd, the Health and Safety Laboratory in Buxton, Exeter Crown Court, 50 per cent. of a project for new schools in the Highlands and 26 per cent. of the Norwich and Norfolk Hospital have all been transferred to offshore tax havens in order to avoid tax obligations; urges HM Treasury to require the return of all such assets to ownership in the UK where tax obligations can be properly enforced; and suggests that all private finance initiative (PFI) contracts which do not return assets to the UK should be abrogated, and that all future contracts should specify that neither the ownership nor the company operating the PFI can operate from a tax haven in order to avoid their legitimate tax obligations in the UK, and that this policy decision should be supplemented by a requirement that all competitors for Government and local authority contracts should be registered in the UK and pay tax in the UK.] Our early-day motion demonstrates clearly that PFI contracts are prohibitive in cost, flawed in concept and intolerable in consequence for the taxpayers, citizens and public sector workers in this country. Could we have a debate on that, to explain why, at least from the Government's point of view, those who bid for Government and local authority contracts should not be registered in the United Kingdom or pay tax in the United Kingdom, which is not happening anywhere near often enough?