John McDonnell MP, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, responding to the reports today that leading UK based investment banks paid no tax in 2014, said:

“These are damning findings that make a real mockery of the government’s approach to taxation of the financial sector.

"This news will also be completely disheartening to the millions of us UK taxpayers who bailed out the banks and continue to pay the price for their past actions and excesses.

"The Chancellor has been moving towards an ever more soft touch approach by reducing the bank levy and cutting corporation tax, selling publicly owned banks off at a loss, and only last week he sat by while the watchdog he set up watered down its review into the sector, only six months after he replaced the head of the FCA for issuing large fines to banks.

"This report should be setting off alarm bells at the Treasury and he should be reversing his decision on the bank levy immediately.

"But the truth is that bankers see George Osborne and this government as one of their own, and the feeling is mutual. That is why they are prepared to stand by the banks at the expense of the rest of us taxpayers and not at the expense of the bankers who fund their party.”

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