With friends like these...

ACCA held a pleasant evening recently in Portcullis House, that nice building where MPs have their offices and select committees meet to shout at powerful people.

In honour of ACCA’s new public policy unit (a lobbying outfit), Allen Blewitt and co were welcomed in by David Taylor MP, who sponsored the gathering.

The Labour MP from Leicestershire is a former accountant, hence his interest, but one other aspect of his record invites slightly more attention.

Taylor is close to Austin Mitchell, it seems, and a frequent signatory to Mitchell’s regular early day motions laying into tax avoiders.

ACCA’s head of taxation Chas Roy Chowdhury recently said that tax avoidance had become a ‘bogeyman’ and was thought of unfairly now as the cause of all evil in the tax system. A case of ‘with friends like these’?

‘We knew all about David Taylor’s background,’ an ACCA spokesman said, adding that they would be keen to talk to him on avoidance: ‘We would happily have a conversation with Austin Mitchell too,’ he said bravely.