Michelle Mone case shows why UK must act over tax loopholes

The realisation in March 2020 that there was a critical shortage of PPE led to panic-buying with the Westminster Government’s fast-track purchasing scheme open to cronyism and the awarding of expensive contracts. One such beneficiary of the scheme was MedPro, a company linked to Baroness Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman. It is reported that the company stood to make a 30% profit of some £62 million from the deal.

What makes this situation all too typical is the fact that MedPro is a company that is registered abroad with the profits for the Mone family going to overseas trusts, thus avoiding the payment of UK tax. The methods such as these by which wealthy UK citizens can legitimately avoid paying tax are frankly scandalous. When you add in the £3 billion-plus lost to HMRC by the continuing non-dom regulations, then it is little wonder that the UK National Debt is out of control.

Successive UK Tory governments have turned to borrowing rather than shutting the tax loopholes and introducing taxes on land and wealth. The UK may have high taxation but the National Debt, which now stands in excess of £3 trillion, is increasing by £5,000 every second. It is estimated that the servicing of this debt is costing each of us £2,000 a year. This eye-watering burden will be inherited by our children and our grandchildren.

There is no magic money tree. If we want to rescue our beleaguered public services, let along improve them, then we need honesty from our politicians both at Westminster and at Holyrood. Here in Scotland, this test of honesty must also be demonstrated by our opposition parties who rush to criticise any moves by the Scottish Government to increase the available funding. It is no use tinkering with income tax bands. Rather, the HMRC loopholes must be closed; the non-dom status abolished and we should follow the example of our Scandinavian neighbours and apply a tax to wealth.

Eric Melvin, Edinburgh.

• ONE aspect of the £200 million worth of contracts awarded to Medpro for the supply of PPE gowns and masks which I find concerning and which demands further investigation is the £60m profit taken from it one way or another by MedPro, which is linked to Baroness Mone's family. That is a huge, to my mind obscene, profit margin of about 30%, which calls into question firstly whether there was any critical scrutiny before these contracts were awarded to MedPro, and secondly how MedpPro itself could justify such apparent greed when responding, apparently altruistically, to a national emergency.

The only attempt to justify such a huge profit margin I have heard was a half-baked mumbled mention by Lady Mone's husband Douglas Barrowman, in the recent TV interview, of the “risk" involved, without clarifying the nature of that risk, if any, as none is immediately obvious.

If 30% is a standard profit margin known to and considered acceptable by the NHS in contracts awarded for supplying it with its needs, it is little wonder it consumes annually such vast amounts of our tax pounds. Surely it is time for change in the NHS to at least try to achieve some measure of value for money?

Alan Fitzpatrick, Dunlop.

Read more: Mone was naive in thinking that telling lies would protect her family

Tories have played this right

SOME in the SNP must have seen the Michelle Mone row as their get out of jail free card. It emerged just at the point the party was crumbling in the polls as well as in the PR war. This, they surely thought, would ease the pressure on the Michael Matheson and other ongoing and impending scandals.

And so, their remaining dogs of war were released on the Baroness; they had the bonus of their victim being a Tory, a Scottish Tory at that, and it was no doubt a glimmer of hope for the SNP in these dark days.

Unfortunately for them, the Tories do not appear to be taking the traditional SNP way out in this kind of situation. There was no wagon-circling round the beleaguered Baroness. It is in the SNP DNA to hide, deny, protect, obfuscate, cover-up its malefactors, as it did with Michael Matheson and others.

But the Tories have not played ball. In effect their virtual hanging out to dry of Baroness Mone makes the SNP look worse than ever.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh.

Why Holyrood needs more power

ONCE again Union-supporting correspondents ignore all points about the Scottish Government's powers, and simply repeat all their previous points.

Angus MacEachrean and Graeme Arnott (Letters, December 18) need to understand that Holyrood either doesn't have the powers or, where it has the powers, doesn't have the resources, to do many of the things they seem to think that it can achieve. They consider that absent of fully doing them, complete failure is the only way to assess its performance.

The Scottish Government, for example, can mitigate poverty (it has, many times) but it can't cure it. That is why people like me want greater powers for Holyrood. Of course in discharging the powers that they do have, Holyrood is not above criticism. Independence may lead to worse decisions.

Your correspondents' stance, however, is akin to a trainer refusing to untie his boxer's other hand, on the grounds that the boxer has been doing so badly with one hand tied behind his back that to untie it would only lead to a poorer performance.

Iain Cope, Glasgow.

Read more: SNP should stop the pipe dreams and focus on helping the poor

The benefits of independence

READING Angus MacEachran's letter (December 18) I realise I must have missed a few contributions to the Letters Pages over the last few months, because I have always found Alasdair Galloway's epistles structured, informed and well-argued.

I am sure that he and other supporters of independence would not claim that the change would "fix everything", but they would claim that it could free us from an unelected second chamber of Prime Ministers' place-people, from a first-past-the-post election system that has gone beyond its sell-by date, from a long-established democratic deficit between Scotland and the United Kingdom and perhaps might even begin to reduce the need for food banks.

I am also sure that the work of Scottish Modern Studies teachers, college and university lecturers in social science and politics these past few decades has ensured more understanding of the election system now used at Holyrood than many people might claim.

James M Arnold, Whiting Bay, Isle of Arran.

Finance Secretary Shona Robison delivers her Budget speech (Image: PA)

Kicking the can down the road

WHAT Scotland desperately needs is a growing economy. What Scotland is actually getting is stagnation and almost inevitably recession. Economists know you cannot tax your population to the extent that work no longer pays. Shona Robison missed that bit ("Scottish Budget: Shona Robison and the 'tax and axe' budget", heraldscotland, December 19).

If taxation is not reflected in better public services then there is neither incentive nor desire to contribute when, if needed, there is nothing to take back out. This is basic. The Greens obviously don't understand this but it appears neither does the SNP. What happens next year when the extra taxation either doesn't materialise or has little to no effect? Ms Robison is simply kicking the empty can a little further down the road. Is this progressive government in action?

Dr Gerald Edwards, Glasgow.

Sign up for our Letter of the Day email.

England, the new tax haven

AN SNP MP at Westminster will earn £92,731 per annum from April 1, 2024, taking them into the newly-announced Scottish higher rate tax band. Will their tax be calculated on the English rate or the Scottish rate?

I never thought I would see the day that England would became a tax haven and would not wish to see a SNP MP becoming a tax exile.

Peter Wright, West Kilbride.