PMQs today: Prime Minister David Cameron turns tables on Labour over £130m Google tax deal
Prime Minister David Cameron was forced to defend the government's approach to collecting corporation tax today after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn questioned Google's £130m back taxes deal.
"We're talking about tax that should have been collected under a Labour government, raised by a Conservative government," Cameron said at Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs). "No government has done more than this one to crack down on tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance. No government, and certainly not the last Labour government."
Google revealed late Friday that it had reached a deal with HMRC to hand over £130m to settle claims covering a 10-year period, including years when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were in Number 10.
Cameron said told MPs today that "it's quite right" that tax deals are "done independently by HMRC", but pointed to new government policies to crack down on tax evasion and limit tax avoidance.
"We have put in place the diverted profit tax that means that this company and other companies will pay more tax in future. And more tax in future than they ever paid under Labour, where the tax rate for Google was zero per cent," Cameron said.
Read more: Taxing companies is after all just a stealthy way to tax people
Cameron also made a jab at big banks in PMQs, saying of Corbyn: "If like me he's genuinely angry about what happened to Google under Labour, can I tell him a few people he could call?"
"Maybe he should start by calling Tony Blair, you can get him at JP Morgan," Cameron told MPs. "Call Gordon Brown, apparently you can get him at a Californian bond dealer called Pimco. He could call Alistair Darling, I think he's at Morgan Stanley, but it's hard to keep up.
"Those are the people to blame for Google not paying their taxes, we're the ones who got them to pay," Cameron said.
Blair has been a paid adviser to JP Morgan since 2008, while it was revealed last December that Brown and Darling were taking up roles with Pimco and Morgan Stanley.