At one time Vince Cable was deemed to be a trustworthy politician, someone willing to challenge his political friends as much as those opposed to his views if the evidence and case justified it. It was Vince Cable who claimed to have publicly identified the rising levels of personal debt as an impending crisis during 2008 and he was also one of the few Politicians calling for the nationalisation of Northern Rock when the rest of the Political establishment was caught in the headlights of a potential run on the bank. However his statements in the last 2-3 weeks show far Cable has fallen to earth. He has been blinded or mesmerised by the bright lights of his High Office.

Last week I wrote about the strange behaviour of Mr Cable in front of the business select committee when he appeared suggest that there were lessons to be learnt from the sell off of Royal Mail, but then went on to claim that the Government had done nothing wrong and had no reason to apologise. Whilst Politicians are usually allergic to saying they got something wrong, Vince Cable was understood to have been an unusually straight talking Politician. Most are also usually only prepared to accept that they can learn lessons from what their predecessors did wrong. It is clear that the sell off was not a success if this is measured in terms of achieving the best price for the sale of a national asset. If there are lessons to be learnt, then things could clearly have been done better. In the real world once we accept that we could have done things better, then we would usually apologise to anyone who is impacted by our lack of foresight. There is no question that the country and indeed the exchequer has paid a price that would have not been the case if these lessons were not needed.

Yesterday in Parliament Vince Cable spoke in a debate about the proposed take over of AstraZeneca by Pfizer and stated “I want to assure the House that we are alive to the national interest considerations in this regard. We see the future of the UK as a knowledge economy, not a tax haven. Our focus is on what is best for the UK: securing great British science, research and manufacturing jobs and decision making in the life sciences sector.” However it seems clear that it is this coalition and Mr Cables department that has followed a set of policies that have made the UK a tax haven with the lowest Corporation Tax rates in the G20. The idea that a Tax Haven is defined by someone putting up a sign declaring that status is clearly nonsense. If the UK does not want to be a Tax Haven, the solution is easy. We increase our Corporation Tax rates in line with the rates of other countries with similar levels of infrastructure. Whilst there are no prizes for charging the most, it can be a false economy for being the cheapest. When I was working as a financial adviser, one of the essential pieces of good advice was to make Investment decisions based on the underlying conditions and nature of the investment itself. The level of tax charged should not be the deciding reason for any long term decisions. However some investors would not listen to this advice. We must avoid the prospect of being chosen as a place of domicile by companies like Pfizer, simply because our tax rates are the lowest. By all means be in the lowest quartile, but lets not sell off our economy cheaply.