Labour has called on the UK’s tax authorities to investigate the financial affairs of health secretary, Sajid Javid, The Independent has learned.
The opposition party has penned a letter to HMRC requesting a fresh examination of the cabinet minister’s historic tax arrangements.
The letter centres on Mr Javid’s ties to a company called SA Capital. These links raise the “possibility that he has been a beneficiary of a loan scheme designed to avoid paying UK tax”, Labour’s shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting said.
It comes after a series of news reports on Mr Javid’s financial status. The health secretary used non-domicile status to reduce his UK tax bill and had an off-shore trust, even while he worked as a parliamentary private secretary in the Treasury.
Mr Javid made his use of non-dom status public after The Independent revealed the chancellor, Rishi Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty had also elected to use the mechanism for tax purposes.
Labour’s letter poses a host of questions over the health secretary’s ties to SA Capital which he co-owned with his brother and their respective wives. Mr Javid was director of the company for one day, during which sizeable loans amounting to nearly £1m were made to the firm. The loan arrangement has previously been reported by Private Eye Magazine.
Only just under half of this amount was raised from banks, leaving the source of the rest of this money unclear, Labour said.
A source close to the health secretary pushed back against the claims saying that Mr Javid never received any financial benefit from the arrangement. The health secretary had decided there was a risk the directorship was not compatible with “corporate leadership roles”, they added.
Still, Labour said there was a possibility that the “purpose of the loans were to provide a tax-efficient way for money held offshore to enter Britain” and that Mr Javid “potentially avoided paying hundreds of thousands of pounds to HMRC”.
The opposition party has asked HMRC to overlook time limits for investigations into historic tax affairs given the public interest in how cabinet ministers manage their finances. Senior politicians should not be “above the law when it comes to paying their taxes,” the letter said.
It also asked the tax body if it would consider an exemption to the time-limit if “an individual were to self-refer for investigation”.
A spokesperson for Mr Javid said: “This is a truly desperate smear attempt by Starmer’s Labour Party. The health secretary has been open and transparent about his previous tax statuses and residencies whilst in the UK and working abroad.
They added: “Nearly two decades ago, and many years before entering public life, he helped his brother start a business by investing in it.”
