Lord Digby Jones, speaking at a corporate event in Guernsey recently, referred, with considerable alarm, to the decision of McDonalds to move their European HQ from the UK to Switzerland.
“Kraft, Procter & Gamble, Google, Electronic Arts and Yahoo have all switched from the UK to Switzerland recently” he said, and McDonalds not only join that club but put up in big, well-understood, branded letters the warning signal that this UK Government ignore at not only its peril, but at the peril of every school and hospital funded by the taxation from the wealth created by these big inward investors.
He continued: “The politics of envy or revenge or the short-term political need of a beleaguered Government might call for increased rates of business and personal taxation, but it is so short-sighted and so self-defeating. A headline one day to appease a restless socialist backbencher results in less cash for the Exchequer and an increasing reputation that the UK is no longer a tax-competitive place for globally mobile overseas investors to pitch their job-creating, tax-delivering tents.”