HSBC’s luckless Stuart Gulliver could go down in history as the last tax avoider to get pelted by the vicious Public Accounts Committee.
A quiet corner of the Budget paperwork suggests tax policy will never again stray into the auspices (some might say “bloodlust”) of the PAC, which became so over-reaching under former chairman Margaret Hodge.
Instead, it will rest forever in its rightful place under the Treasury Committee run by Andrew Tyrie MP.
It’s all hidden in the Chancellor’s decision to make permanent a trial organisation called the Office of Tax Simplification, firmly housed under the Treasury.
Tyrie, initially suspicious of its quango characteristics, had made strong recommendations for what the OTS should look like. These have now been adopted.
Business news in pictures - July 9
That should suit the new Public Accounts Committee gang, led these days by Labour’s Meg Hillier, who wants to focus back on Whitehall procurement scandals rather than corporate dodgy dealings.
For City bankers with complicated tax arrangements, the regime of terror is over.
Silence of the banks
If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
HSBC and Standard Chartered proved this as the Chancellor sweated hard to stop the hard-lobbying duo from fleeing our shores.
The trouble is, while reducing the hit for foreign-dominated banks like them, he has ratcheted it up on the big UK-focused players like Lloyds and, worse still, the very challenger banks he’s been trying to nurture.
They must learn to shout louder.
