Lead story

The Panama Papers British state behind tax havens

by Daphne Liddle

WORLD leaders, their relatives and best friends all around the globe have been revealed as hypocritical tax dodgers by the leaked Panama Papers, which hit the headlines last Monday.

Since then there have been new revelations every day from the leak of 11 million confidential documents from the files of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca of fortunes hidden away in tax haven around the globe by the rich, famous and not so famous to dodge paying taxes on their accumulating wealth.

Among those mentioned in the Panama Papers several Tory peers and former MPs. Footballer Lionel Messi and his dad, the Prime Minister of Iceland (who has since resigned), the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan, the King of Saudi Arabia and President of Azerbaijan are named.

But on the first day, certain newspapers, including the Guardian and the Daily Mail focussed the whole story on just one world leader — Vladimir Putin — even though his name was not actually on the list of tax dodgers.

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The Panama Papers British state behind tax havens

Junior doctors’ fourth strike

JUNIOR doctors began a 48-hour strike action on Wednesday, their fourth strike in their long-running dispute with Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt over the new contracts he is trying to impose on them.

They still provided emergency life-saving cover but if the dispute is not resolved they will withdraw even that in a fifth strike planned for the 26th April.

This week more than 5,000 operations had to be rearranged as well as many more clinic appointments.

The British Medical Association (BMA) blamed the Government for the ongoing strikes. “We deeply regret any disruption this action will cause to patients, but it is because we believe this contract would be bad for the delivery of patient care in the long term that we are taking this action”, said Dr Johann Malawana, chair of the BMA’s junior doctor committee.

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Junior doctors’ fourth strike

Editorial

Leave the EU to save our steel

SAJID Javid, the Business Secretary, has been running round like mad going to India to plead with the giant company Tata to go slowly with its process of selling off the last remaining working steel plants in Britain. He has been talking about a “responsible sales process”.

And the big steel unions have also been pleading to Tata not to go for a fire sale to asset strippers, who will cherry pick the lucrative bits and ditch the rest, leading quickly to the complete demise of the whole industry.

Javid has also been considering “nationalising” the company’s pension debt to make the sale of the rest of the enterprise more desirable to the profiteers.

This is a scenario that has happened so many times, including during privatisations of various industries and utilities. Taxpayers have had to subsidise the profiteers by promising to pay the pensions of the workforce whilst the new owner can skip away with the lucrative assets — which include the wealth that the workforce has paid into its collective pension fund.

The one thing Javid — and his master Cameron — will not contemplate is the one thing that needs to happen: the full renationalisation of British Steel. This would save the jobs and the industry, and the taxpayers would get the assets as well as the pension liabilities.

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Leave the EU to save our steel