Clause 5
Finance Bill
12:45 pm
Greg Hands (Shadow Minister, Treasury; Hammersmith and Fulham, Conservative)
I thank the Minister for his explanation of what at first does not appear to be a particularly controversial provision. However, there is a lot of controversy embedded in this, and there are a large number of people to whom this country owes something of an obligation who are likely to be affected. I would be grateful to hear what estimate the Minister has of the number of persons likely to be affected.
As the Minister said, this will principally affect 14 different Commonwealth countries with which the UK does not currently have a dual taxation treaty. I understand those 14 countries to be the Bahamas, Cameroon, the Cook Islands, Dominica, the Maldives, Mozambique, Nauru, Niue—a country of which I have not heard, for which I must apologise to the citizens of Niue—Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Tanzania, Tonga and Vanuatu.