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

My Lords, that will be the thought going through the minds of people in Burton-on-Trent. I am not talking about the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, himself but about all the people around him who are not squeaky clean in the party of which he is a senior member. I look forward to debating this further. It is interesting to ask: what is the political profile of our party versus the Conservative Party? Where did they go to school? Where did they get their money? That will quite rightly rub off on their party. I am very pleased that certain friends in the Conservative Party will try to defend where we are. That will be remembered. Where are we with international financial reform? The G20 will be held in April in London or hereabouts and it will be attended by President Obama and leading statesmen from around the world. What will be the main item on the agenda? It will be the connection between worldwide regulatory reform of financial institutions on the one hand and what we can do together on fiscal expansion on the other. Regulatory reform has quite a lot to do with tax havens and multinational companies minimising tax—as we know, there are some very important merchant banks in the City of London that do not pay a penny of tax. That scandal will have to be opened up like the proverbial oyster—I believe that it is being opened up. When we met Swiss parliamentarians the other day, albeit in Davos and not off the west coast of Africa, we had very tough talks with them. They are well aware that the Germans, among others, are asking for those items to be put on the agenda. That is why the Swiss want to be invited to the G20 meeting, although they know that they do not have a chance of becoming members. The bottom line is that this applies to everybody, regardless of whether you live in the Cayman Islands with friends—we may hear more about the benefits of the Cayman Islands. When we look forward to the G20, it is important to ensure that we give fair-dos to people in their taxation and clarify how to deal with the financial services industry, whose abuse of power is 100 times greater than any other in the previous 50 years.