Paymaster general Dawn Primarolo told MPs in the House of Commons it was ‘not possible to assess with any degree of accuracy the amount of tax saved as a result of anti-avoidance measures’.
She was replying to a question from Buckingham Tory MP John Bercow seeking a list of measures over the past four years designed to counter avoidance and details of how much has been saved in revenue terms as a result.
Primarolo could only say that such measures were a regular feature of the annual Finance Bill, but that it was not feasible to measure the difference between the amount of tax paid and the amount that would have been paid had the measures not been in place.