Business secretary concedes £130m Google tax settlement ‘was not a glorious moment’
Business secretary Sajid Javid has conceded that a £130m, 10 year tax settlement struck by HMRC with Google ‘was not a glorious moment’ – despite chancellor George Osborne labelling the very same deal as a ‘major success’.
Criticism of the deal has been mounting amidst suggestion that the sum significantly underestimates the amount of profit generated by Google within the country.
Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr show Javid acknowledged public concern over the perceived ‘injustice’ of the deal, remarking: “It wasn’t a glorious moment, when people look at these issues, but it is important, I think, to talk about also what the government is doing.
“I speak with thousands of companies, small- and medium-sized as well as of course large companies, and there is a sense of injustice with what they see.
“They do look at this and they say, ‘Look, I don’t operate all these multiple jurisdictions around the world, I can’t shift profits around, what about me, where’s the level playing field?’ and I share that sense and the sort of sense of unfairness that exists.”
On the same programme Peter Barron, Google’s head of communications in Europe, failed to give an answer to the amount of UK profit it had accrued over the past decade nor how many meeting the company had held with government ministers.