06 March 2006 Blog Home : March 2006 : Permalink
If the Treasury operates in the way it did when I was a secretary of state, senior civil servants spend a great deal of time working out ways of closing “tax loopholes”. Mr Mills occupies his days opening new ones. We must assume that Ms Jowell, being an honourable woman, finds no conflict of interest in her husband working to frustrate the wishes of the Chancellor with whom she shares the Cabinet table. But she will, I hope, accept that the situation is a paradox.
Forthermore his point about how old Labour would have had a problem with a so-called comrade working at this trade does seem right on the money:Mr Mills, I understand, was himself once a Labour councillor and he retains his party membership. Does he, I wonder, believe that his party should welcome the rich making arrangements to reduce their tax liability? Or does he draw a distinction between David Mills the sharp lawyer and David Mills the social democrat? Whatever his answer, the most fascinating aspect of his position concerns not him but the party he supports. Twenty years ago — despite the legality of Mr Mills’s business and his wife’s apparent ignorance of his affairs — Labour would have been outraged by the way in which the Jowells pay their grocery bills. We, the cry would have gone up, can have no truck with tax avoidance. How times have changed.
Who is prepared to say that the change is for the better?
There is indeed a lot of hypocrisy inherent in the idea that a person who believes that the state should distribute wealth according to need also working to help his clients keep the state's grasping hands off their lucre. However, having said that, the problem here is not the profession of Tax Lawyer, a profession apparently only slightly above Pimp and below 2nd-hand car salesman in terms of public acceptability, per se but that it is being practiced by a socialist.