THE LEADER of Harlow Labour has issued the following statement regarding the chairman of the Conservative party and his tax affairs.

Mr Zahawi paid a penalty to HMRC over unpaid tax while he was chancellor.

Why Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs matter

Cllr Vince said: “Nobody likes paying taxes, but pay them we must, most of us paying them directly from our wages. These taxes pay for the NHS, schools, emptying bins, repairing potholes and all the other public sector services we depend on, services that have for the last 12 years been deprived of the cash needed to pay staff properly and invest in maintenance and modernisation.

Under the Conservatives, as public services have been starved of funds, the burden of taxation for ordinary workers has reached record levels. At the same time it seems increasingly obvious that the Conservatives consider tax to be something to be paid only by ‘the little people’ and not by them and their super rich friends and relatives. Instead they use offshore accounts and clever accountancy tricks to avoid paying their fair share.

This is exemplified by recent revelations about the tax affairs of Conservative Party Chair Nadhim Zahawi.

In the summer of 2022, Zahawi, was appointed as Chancellor of the Exchequer, in charge of tax and spending for the UK. Extraordinarily it is now reported that this appointment was made at a time when Zahawi was the subject of an investigation  by the National Crime Agency and the Serious Fraud Office into his own tax affairs.

Zahawi protested his innocence and threatened legal action against anyone who suggested he had not paid all the tax that was owing. 

This week he has coughed up nearly £5 million in unpaid taxes and, more tellingly, fines.

If the Prime Minister had any integrity Zahawi would have been sacked, but as I write he remains in post. A super rich, powerful man, who has tried to avoid paying what he owes to the government, while at the same time publicly saying that nurses, fire fighters, teachers and care workers should accept becoming poorer because the state doesn’t have enough money to raise their pay in line with inflation.

There is a stench of corruption that surrounds this Conservative government and its time they were given the boot. 

Cllr Chris Vince