PwC gave PM free advice

PricewaterhouseCoopers offered free accountancy services to Gordon Brown’s
leadership campaign, it has emerged.

The PM’s entry in the
register
of members’ interest discloses the gift.

A spokesman for the firm told Accountancy Age this week: ‘We provided tax and
financial advice to his leadership campaign fund. It was provided purely on a
pro-bono basis.’

The spokesman added that the firm provided advice to parties ‘across the
political spectrum.’

‘We remain apolitical,’ he added.

PwC and other big firms’ closeness to government has long attracted interest
from left-wing critics who say they do work for parties to win lucrative
consultancy deals from Whitehall.

PwC has advised extensively on PFI deals, and senior partner Kieran Poynter
is currently carrying out a review of HM Revenue & Customs’ e-security for
the chancellor, after the loss of the child benefit data discs.

But the relationship has not all been plain-sailing. In 2000, during a heated
debate over controlled foreign companies tax rules, Brown’s Treasury publicly
dismissed the firm as a ‘tax avoidance adviser’.

Austin Mitchell, Labour MP for Grimsby, said: ‘I think PwC has done so well
out of this government in terms of contracts and consultancies that they should
have provided accountancy services not only to Gordon Brown but to all of the
leadership and deputy leadership contenders. Then some of them would not be in
the mess they are in.’

Further Reading:

Go
to the Register of Members’ Interests

Tories
call in PwC to advise on tax