Revealed: Top firm funding Labour is the one savage for promoting tax avoidance!

Labour took £386,000 from PricewaterhouseCoopers in last quarter of 2014

Accountancy company accused of helping clients slash tax bills

Former Labour minister says it was ‘inappropriate’ to accept donation

Ed had said donors accused of tax avoidance not allowed on his watch

Labour was accused of hypocrisy last night as a company criticised for promoting ‘industrial-scale’ tax avoidance was revealed to be its biggest non-union donor.
Ed Miliband’s party took £386,605 from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in the last quarter of 2014, according to the Electoral Commission.

This is despite the fact the accountancy company was accused by a senior Labour MP of devising ‘complex strategies and contrived structures’ to help clients slash tax bills.
Margaret Hodge, the former Labour minister who is chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, said it was ‘inappropriate’ for Mr Miliband to accept donations from the company.

Her cross-party committee accused PwC of helping big firms avoid tax ‘on an industrial scale’ and ‘artificially diverting profits’ overseas.

Mr Miliband’s acceptance of donations from PwC sits uneasily alongside his claim in the Commons earlier this month that Labour donors accused of tax avoidance had not been allowed to give ‘a penny on my watch’.
And it is the latest in a string of embarrassing blows to Labour’s campaign against what Mr Miliband has branded the Tories’ ‘dodgy’ donors.

He has already faced questions about his family’s use of a ‘deed of variation’ to minimise potential inheritance tax payments, while Ed Balls’s suggestion that he always asks tradesmen for a receipt was ridiculed by his window cleaner who said the Shadow Chancellor had not asked for one in 17 years.

Labour defended its links to PwC, insisting other parties had accepted support from it – particularly when in opposition.

The company has paid for staff and research in the offices of several shadow ministers, including Mr Balls and business spokesman Chuka Umunna.

Conservative Party vice-chairman Bob Neill said: ‘Labour’s hypocrisy is laid bare. They are only too happy to publicly lambast companies but in private are happy to benefit from donations from them.
‘Once again, Labour say one thing and do another – and it’s hardworking taxpayers who would pay the price for the chaos of an Ed Miliband government.’

Mrs Hodge attacked her own party leadership earlier this month for ‘inappropriate’ links with PwC.
‘The Conservatives took money from PricewaterhouseCoopers when they were in opposition, the Labour Party does and probably the Liberal Democrats too. I think that’s inappropriate – I wouldn’t do it,’ she said.

A Labour spokesman said: ‘Given the complexity of government decisions in areas such as tax policy – and that opposition parties do not have significant access to civil servants – the support provided by organisations such as these helps ensure that there is better scrutiny of Government policy.’

PwC said its staff provided ‘limited and fully disclosed technical support to the main political parties’.
A spokesman added: ‘We do not develop policy on their behalf.’ Separately, Labour received almost £80,000 in support from another accountancy firm, Deloitte, which Mrs Hodge has previously accused of using ‘insider knowledge’ from Treasury officials to help wealthy clients avoid tax.

Yesterday’s Electoral Commission figures showed that despite the private donations, Labour remains heavily reliant on trade unions. In the last quarter of last year, Labour received £7.2 million in donations, with the Conservatives receiving £8.3 million, the Lib Dems £3 million and Ukip £1.5 million. Unison gave Labour £1.4 million, while Unite donated £1.3 million and the GMB £1.1 million.

Out of £58.5 million in donations received by Labour since Mr Miliband became the party’s leader, £40.4 million (69 per cent) has come from the trade union movement.

Robin Birley, the half-brother of Tory MP Zac Goldsmith, donated £55,000 to Ukip, while Ko Barclay, the property developer son of Daily Telegraph owner Sir Frederick, gave the party £80,000, and Richard Desmond, the owner of the Daily Express and Daily Star newspapers, donated £300,000.
Tories blasted over donations from hedge fund firms

Labour branded the Tories ‘the political wing of the hedge fund industry’ as the latest figures underlined their dependence on donations from City figures.
Almost £2 million of Tory donations in the last quarter of last year came from hedge fund donors – and three Tory donors were named last week as having previously held accounts at the Swiss branch of HSBC.
Hedge funds have defended themselves against criticism from Ed Miliband, arguing that they contributed £4 billion in British taxes last year. But Jonathan Ashworth, the Shadow Cabinet Office Minister, said: ‘The Tories are now the political wing of the hedge fund industry.

‘The Tory election campaign is increasingly reliant on those who dine exclusively at the Prime Minister’s top table and a select few from the world of finance. The Tories’ plan is failing working families because their priority has been to help a few at the top.’
The biggest Conservative donors were Michael Gooley, founder of travel company Trailfinders, who gave £500,000; Lord Glendonbrook, the former owner of BMI (£334,000); and David Rowland, a property magnate (£322,000). The three donors named as having had accounts with the Swiss Branch of HSBC were Georg Von Opel, who gave £105,900; Edward Lee (£17,200) and Anwar Pervez (£8,000.

Being a client of a Swiss bank is not against the law, and does not prove tax avoidance or evasion. There is no suggestion that any of the individual donors did anything unlawful.

The Electoral Commission figures also reveal that former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has donated more than £500,000 to the three main political parties through one of his companies.

Bloomberg TradeBook, a British-registered financial markets broker, has given £240,000 to Labour, £210,000 to the Liberal Democrats and £100,000 to the Conservatives since January 2011. Including gifts in kind, the company has almost doubled its political donations in the past four years to £640,704, compared with £369,567 in the four years ahead of the 2010 election.

Mr Bloomberg, whose ex-wife is from England, has called Britain his second home. Mr Bloomberg declined to comment last night.