Labor has called on tax authorities to investigate the financial affairs of Health Secretary Sajid Javid, The Independent has learned.
The party has written a letter to the HMRC requesting a new review of the minister’s historic tax arrangements.
It focuses on Mr Javid’s ties to a company called SA Capital. These links increase “the possibility that he was the beneficiary of a loan scheme designed to evade tax in the United Kingdom,” said Shadow Health Minister Wes Street.
A spokesman for Mr Javid said the request for an investigation was a “defamation attempt” by the Labor Party.
This comes after a series of reports on Mr Javid’s financial situation. The Secretary of Health used his homeless status to reduce his tax bill in the United Kingdom and had offshore trust, even while working as a parliamentary personal secretary in the Ministry of Finance.
He also revealed his own use of homeless status after The Independent revealed that Rishi Sunak’s wife, Aksha Murti, had also chosen to use the mechanism for tax purposes.
The Labor letter raises many questions about the health secretary’s ties to SA Capital, which he owned with his brother and their wives.
Mr Javid was the company’s director for one day in May 2005. In the same year 2005, the company was granted significant loans of nearly £ 1 million, Labor said. The loan agreement has already been announced by Private Eye magazine.
Just under half of that amount was raised by banks, leaving the source of the rest of the money unclear, Labor said.
A source close to the health minister said Mr Javid had never benefited financially from the agreement. Mr Javid has decided that there is a risk that the directorship is not compatible with “corporate leadership roles”, the source added.
However, Labor said there was a possibility “the purpose of the loans was to ensure a tax-efficient way for foreign money to enter the UK” and that Mr Javid “potentially avoids paying hundreds of thousands of pounds to HMRC”.
He asked HMRC to ignore deadlines for investigating historic tax cases, 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.
He also asked the tax authority if it would consider an exemption if “an individual refers himself to an investigation”.
A spokesman for Mr Javid said: “This is a really desperate attempt at defamation by Starmer’s Labor Party. The Health Secretary was open and transparent about his previous tax statuses and residence while in the UK and working abroad.
“Nearly two decades ago and many years before entering public life, he helped his brother start a business by investing in it,” the spokesman added.
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