In a recently released statement on the matter, Mr Bell revealed that: ' We were invited to consider to what extent our earlier commitments might need to be reviewed. This we duly did and conveyed our findings to the UK Treasury.'

The statement continued:

'From the Isle of Man's perspective the current commitments as set out in the document to Tynwald are sufficient to ensure compliance with the tax package as a whole. As can be seen from the approved recommendations relating to the savings directive, the Isle of Man has expressed a willingness to enter into a bilateral taxation agreement with an EU member which requests one. Naturally the Isle of Man will be looking for some economic benefit to accrue from such negotiations.'

Speaking last week, Ian Kelly, the IoM's Assessor of Tax was fairly confident that the savings tax talks will not be allowed to collapse, despite the current deadlock over automatic information exchange:

'We're not quite sure how the savings directive (debate) is going to work out,' he reportedly told a BPP Offshore conference audience last week. However, he added that: 'I'd be very, very surprised if the tax package fails. because they've gone too far down the road already...They will find a fudge.'