Michael Ashcroft Launches Public Attack On UK Minister Clare Short

by Jeremy Hetherington-Gore, Tax-News.com

21 June 2001

Earlier this week we reported on the discovery of a previously secret UK Foreign Office memo which suggested that the entire Belize/Ashcroft 'affair' has been a deliberate political 'dirty tricks' campaign mounted by Clare Short and other Labour Government ministers, aimed at undermining the Tories.

Now Lord Ashcroft, who recently announced that he is stepping down as Conservative party treasurer, has launched a hard-hitting attack on Clare Short, claiming in an article in the Guardian newspaper that she is behind a 'Get Ashcroft' campaign and warning her: 'I am big enough and fit enough to look after myself.'

Two weeks ago, during the UK election, Clare Short attacked Lord Ashcroft's tax free status in Belize, letting it be known that after the election she would press Belize to rescind the tax-privileged status of his companies there. Her argument was that Britain should not have to cancel debt repayments due from Belize if it is consciously allowing tax to go uncollected. The British Government had previously suspended debt relief to Belize while accountants KPMG investigated the country's tax concessions. Despite saying that 'We have no interest whatsoever in Michael Ashcroft. Our concern is with the poor of Belize," Clare Short, who has spent most of her political life on the extreme left of the socialist spectrum, is known to have sent back the first version of KPMG's report because it did not specifically address the concessions given to Ashcroft's companies.

It is ironic that the Guardian, itself once a denizen of the Marxist forest, should now offer Michael Ashcroft a pulpit from which to lecture the Government.

Lord Ashcroft, who promised to base himself in Britain and pay British taxes after William Hague nominated him for a peerage, says he and not Ms Short is championing the people of Belize: 'I regard Belize as home, and am concerned as to its future.'

'Having announced that I will step down as Conservative party treasurer once William Hague's successor is in place, an unusual and, on the whole, enjoyable chapter in my life is drawing to a close,' says the noble lord. 'The enjoyment has, though, come at something of a price. Having managed to get through the first 50 years of my life largely as a private person, I found myself under the public microscope. It has taken me a while to come to terms with this.

'But being tipped into the public arena has been but a minor irritation compared with the antics of those who saw my arrival as the announcement of open season - a time when rules, duties and the truth could safely be cast aside in pursuit of the quarry.

'For the time being, I am rather circumscribed as to how much I can say. Nevertheless, before too long, I hope to be able to redress the balance. In the meantime, as I explore my new-found freedom from the constraints of holding office, I wish to comment publicly for the first time - but not, I suspect, for the last - about the shameful treatment of the people of Belize by Britain's Department for International Development.

'I should perhaps provide a little background. Towards the end of the 1980s - long before I became the 'controversial Tory treasurer" - I agreed a contract with the government of Belize. I undertook to make substantial investments in the country and, in return, my companies were granted tax concessions.

'Tax concessions in the developing world are far from uncommon. There would be little external investment without them. I cannot think of a single nation in the Caribbean region that does not attract or retain investment in this way. Ironically, the biggest beneficiary of tax concessions in Belize is the Commonwealth Development Corporation. This is a business owned by Britain, and currently being groomed for privatisation. It is controlled by none other than DfID.

'This brings us to international development secretary, Clare Short. Asked on Radio 4 10 days ago about reports that she was 'to press for a clamp down on Tory treasurer Lord Ashcroft's tax free status in Belize' she said, 'I'm not interested in him. I'm interested in helping Belize help the poor people of Belize. We have to look at whether they've got a tax system that means they can care for their people. You have to look at what a country's doing with its tax system, and that's what brings us to Lord Ashcroft. But it's not personal, it's very seriously about life for the poor of Belize."

'She took a similar line in April, when DfID announced that it was not targeting me. (A curious announcement, one might think. What else, I wonder, is the department not doing that we should know about?) Ms Short said then, 'We have no interest whatsoever in Michael Ashcroft. Our concern is with the poor of Belize."

'This is, of course, rubbish. I know that. The government of Belize knows that. And the consultants employed by DfID with the aim of undermining my companies' tax concessions know that. Even the British high commissioner in Belize recognises the absurdity of such statements.

'In 1934, Aldous Huxley wrote of British Honduras, as Belize was then known: 'If the world had any ends, this would certainly be one of them. It is not on the way from anywhere to anywhere else. It has no strategic value. It is all but uninhabited."

'Twenty years later, when my father was posted there, I was able to experience at first hand the simple but breathtaking appeal of this small but captivating country. Unlike Huxley, I found its remoteness, its endless unspoilt coastline and its magnificent forests awe-inspiring. I found its people engaging and delightful. And I saw value wherever I looked. My commitment to this beautiful Commonwealth state goes far beyond my business interests there. I regard Belize as home, and am concerned as to its future.

'The people of Belize are facing problems typical of poor, emerging nation states. With limited natural resources and with the odds and scale of global food production stacked against them, they are adapting their lives, sometimes painfully, in order to guarantee the future of their economy.

'I spoke for the first time in the House of Lords just before Christmas. My subject was not Belize itself, but Britain's overseas territories in the eastern Caribbean. I quoted the government minister, Lady Symons, who has said: 'The world is a threatening place. Especially so if you are from a small territory with a narrow economic base, vulnerable, as so many of the overseas territories are, to the vagaries of fashion in international tourism, the impact of information technology, the spread of global business, the threats from drug traffickers and other international criminals. And, as was seen so dramatically on Montserrat in 1997, the dangers of natural disasters." This rings true for Belize, right down to the natural disasters. A little over six months ago, the country was devastated by Hurricane Keith. The people of Belize are still endeavouring to pick up the pieces, in the face of Dollars 250m-worth of damage (this is well over Dollars 5,000 of damage per household - almost a year's income).

'If Clare Short was indeed concerned about the poor of Belize, then Britain would presumably have spared little effort or expense to help the poor of this hurricane-ravaged Commonwealth nation. So what precisely has Britain's preoccupation in Belize been during the last six months? Repairing broken buildings and roads? No. Mending drainage and sanitation? No.

'Britain barely lifted a finger to help - it sent a handful of extra troops and a cheque for about pounds 100,000, which was handed straight to the Red Cross. To add insult to injury, Britain has reconfirmed its suspension of debt relief due to Belize under the Commonwealth debt initiative until - and unless - tax relief to the evil Lord Ashcroft is terminated.

'I have no doubt that Ms Short will deny that her department has made unwarranted demands with menaces, and she will in all probability accuse me of lying. But the facts speak for themselves. Instructions have gone out to 'Get Ashcroft!"

'All of this would count for little, if it were not for the very people who Ms Short says she is so keen to help. I am now unconstrained by political considerations and I can look after myself. But the people of Belize do not have that choice. There is a saying in Belize that when the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled. The elephants have, in the minds of the Belizeans, been squaring up for some time now. There is a popular view of the Caribbean nations that they are of little or no account - bankrupt, populated by the indolent and useful only for the acquisition of a suntan. That is not my view, neither is it my experience. Its people are on the whole proud and hard working, and they deserve all the assistance and support which the international community is able to give.

'Keen to play their full part in the world, the people of Belize are currently stigmatised by the actions of the UK government, which the wider international community interprets as indicative of a wider malaise within the administration of the country. Nothing could be further from the truth. If the Labour party wants to pick a fight with me, it should do so at a time and in a place when poor and innocent people do not stand in the way. I will be ready.

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