LABOUR PARTY leader Miliband clashed with Prime Minister Cameron over political donors who held Swiss bank accounts with HSBC, during questions in the House of Commons yesterday.
Miliband accused the Tory leader of being a ‘dodgy prime minister surrounded by dodgy donors’.
Cameron accused Miliband of being controlled by trade union donations and said the Labour government had been the ‘friend of the tax dodger’.
The House of Commons row comes as a list of donors with HSBC accounts was released.
Lord Fink, who stepped down as Conservative Party co-treasurer in 2010 is among those named in documents seen by Panorama, as is Labour donor Lord Paul.
In a heated clash at Prime Minister’s Questions, Miliband asked Cameron how he would explain the ‘revolving door between Tory Party HQ and the Swiss branch of HSBC’.
He said none of the Labour donors named in the list had ‘given a penny on my watch’ and claimed Cameron was ‘up to his neck in this’.
Cameron said Conservative donors did not choose the party’s policies and candidates – unlike Labour who, he said, were controlled by trade union donors.
Shouting across the despatch box at the Labour leader, he said: ‘The only reason he is sitting there is that a bunch of trade union leaders decided he was more left wing than his brother.’
In a separate exchange, Miliband said: ‘You took the money, you gave a job to the head of HSBC and you let the tax avoiders get away with it.
‘There’s something rotten at the heart of the Conservative Party and it’s you.’
Cameron replied: ‘For 13 years they (Labour) sat in the Treasury, they did nothing about tax transparency, nothing about tax dodging, nothing about tax avoidance.
‘This government has been tougher than any previous government. That’s why they are desperate, that’s why they are losing.’
He said Labour had welcomed the appointment of former HSBC chairman Lord Green as a trade minister, and had even held meetings with the peer as recently as 2013.
Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith is among those being linked to a HSBC Swiss bank account.
In a statement, the Richmond Park MP said: ‘To be clear, my very numerous family members around the world who are beneficiaries of the same Trust do not own or control it, but like me, they receive income from it.
‘I have never had a Swiss bank account, and do not control any Swiss bank accounts. I have never sought or been given tax minimisation advice by HSBC, directly or indirectly. The media commentary around this is therefore wrong.’
Labour is demanding that Lord Green, who was the most senior figure at the bank for much of the time the documents cover, must make a statement.
It is also demanding that PM Cameron must make a full statement about Lord Green’s role at HSBC, and his appointment as a government minister in 2011.
The bank helped 100,000 individuals – 7,000 UK nationals – with tax affairs.
On Tuesday, HMRC said it could not share information it had about the bank because of an international agreement.
HMRC was passed a hoard of documents in 2010 from France about clients of HSBC’s Swiss operation.
It had 7,000 clients from the UK for whom it held $21.7bn
