Cameron admits benefitting from father’s offshore trust ∞
After days spent dodging the question (avoidance runs in the family), David Cameron finally admitted that he had benefitted from his father’s offshore trust and sold his shares for just over £30,000 before he became Prime Minister in 2010. He also acknowledged that some of the £300,000 he inherited from his father may have come from offshore sources.
Robert Peston has stressed that the sins of the father should not be borne by the son, and perhaps his sympathetic stance is why Cameron granted him an exclusive interview on the subject. Peston makes a fair point but only if Cameron takes the opportunity to distance himself from his father’s choices.
Richard Murphy deftly summarised the answer he hoped Cameron might give:
He could have said that much as he respects his father, much as he loves him and much as he is grateful for what he did for him he has to disagree with him on the use of offshore. This is what mature, responsible, children sometimes have to do: they have to say that they disagree with their parents. But Cameron has not done this. And now we know he won’t.
Cameron made a point of stressing the legality of his father’s offshore trust in his interview with Peston. But that avoids the issue. These offshore trusts are legal but they’re not moral. They help institutions avoid paying their fair share of tax. We need the law to change in order to clamp down on them and that requires the commitment of governments. This should be the role of our Prime Minister but for all his warm words on the subject, his actions speak louder.
In 2013 Cameron personally lobbied against EU efforts to reveal the beneficiaries of trusts. Other European politicians feared this left a loophole for tax avoidance. Why didn’t Peston ask Cameron about that?