What the media says about me...

"the admirably independent minded Gordon Prentice"

Quentin Letts, Daily Mail, 12 February 2009

Lib Lord and Lab MP in Rare Double Act

Tags: Parliament | Press Release | tax exile

Monday, 17 March 2008 00:00

A move to rid Parliament of tax exiles is being engineered by a Lib Dem peer, Lord Oakshott, and Pendle MP, Gordon Prentice, in an unusual double act. Both say they will support the other’s Bill if and when it comes to their own Chamber. The Oakshott Bill [the House of Lords (Members' Taxation Status) Bill] received its second reading in the Lords last Friday and will now go into Committee. The Prentice Bill [the Disqualification from Parliament (Taxation Status) Bill] has already been discussed in the Commons but the debate was adjourned until May. Speaking from Westminster, the MP said: “There should be no representation without taxation. No-one should make the laws of the land when they are not paying UK taxes. There is already one documented case involving the Conservative peer, Lord Laidlaw, who was ennobled in 2004 on the recommendation of the then leader of the Conservative Party. Laidlaw has given millions to the Conservatives. Most interest, however, centres on Lord Ashcroft, another big Conservative donor who is bankrolling the Party's campaigns and who has refused to say if he pays UK taxes. He spends most of his time in Belize in central America. Prentice is seeking information about the secretive peer under the Freedom of Information Act forcing disclosure. The MP quipped: “Every time I see a Pendle Conservative newsletter flutter through my letterbox, delivered by the Royal Mail to 37,500 households across the constituency, I think of Belize, the tax haven bolthole of Michael Ashcroft.” See Lords Hansard for Friday 14 March for the debate on the Bill.