28 Friday April 8 2022 | the times
Comment
the ultimate flowerful “snack”
garden, as I like to think of it.
It’s a whirlwind already. I haven’t
been on the road this much since
being a parliamentary sketchwriter
during an election. Now, though, it’s
all about travelling to salvage
reclamation yards and herb
nurseries. Regular readers will
know I had a small community
border at RHS Tatton last year but
this feels, well, like Chelsea. It’s
showtime.Not a taxing question
I
never thought I’d be in a
position to offer advice to the
wife of the chancellor but,
hey, life works in
mysterious ways. So,
Akshata Murty,
here’s the deal: I, too,
was born elsewhere
(America) but have
never been in
doubt about my
tax status. I am
a non-non-
dom, which
is the kind
of
double
negative
that the UK excels in.
Basically I am a British
taxpayer first and
foremost but am also required to file
a tax return in the States. It’s a faffbut that’s life. At some point in the
past an accountant may have said
the word “non-dom” to me. (It was
the Eighties, what can I say.) I noted
that, in reality, I do live here. As a
rule of thumb, it’s good to have a tax
status that reflects your actual life.
But then I am not living
in Downing Street,
which must often feel
rather temporary.Rocking it
C
helsea, the
place, has been
a bit of
a theme this week.
On Monday I
interviewed Joe
Swift, gardener and
broadcaster, for a
Times Plus event at
the Chelsea Physic
Garden (to be
viewed at the end
of April).
I went on a recce the
day before. The apothecary
beds fascinate but there
are many eccentric
touches, too. These
include Europe’s first
rockery, made in
1773 out of
Icelandic basalt
which came as
ship ballast, clam shells that
travelled from Tahiti on theI
f you see a 12-year-old black
Beetle with a taped-on number
plate and a “Bug Bling” flower
trundling by on a motorway,
then there is a good chance it is
me in the driving seat. I have been
on a bit of a marathon road trip of
late because — ta da — I am going
to have a (small) garden at the
RHS Chelsea Flower Show next
month.
My design is for the container and
balcony gardening category. This is a
newish category for Chelsea and
reflects the fact that everyone, even
if they only have a small space, can
create a great garden. Themes
among the nine bijou gardens
include those that attract birds or
were inspired by Scotland and
Mediterranean landscapes. My
theme is “wild edibles” and centres
on plants that allow you to forage
in your own urban back garden.
Plants include daisies, fennel,
aquilegia, elderflower and dog rose:
Non-doms are an elite relic of the colonial era
Letting the rich pay only a sliver of their earnings in tax offends against fairness and erodes trust
offshore earnings. They pursue the
country’s citizens to the ends of the
Earth for every last yuan or rupee
they earn anywhere, and America is
not short of rich people.
Even if abolition of non-dom
status were to lose Britain some of its
very rich, it’s not obvious that the tax
system should be distorted in an
effort to keep them. There are costs
as well as benefits associated with
the presence of rich foreigners. They
push up the price of housing, for
instance: the LSE and Warwick
research shows a close correlation
between the percentage of non-doms
in a ward and the house prices.
And non-dom status does
represent a distortion of the tax
system, for it offends against the
fairness principle. People who can
afford to pay tax and enjoy the
benefits that the British state
provides — security, the rule of law,
a reasonably well-educated
population and semi-decent
infrastructure and healthcare —
should contribute to them. It’s
patently unjust that somebody on
£40,000 a year pays about a quarter
of their salary in tax but a billionaire
who lives here 365 days a year can
get away with paying only a tiny
sliver of their income.
Trust in government has suffered
in recent years. The expenses
scandal, lobbying scandals and the
widespread perception in poorer bits
of the country that the system was
run for the benefit of rich
metropolitan insiders — which,
ironically, helped to bring Boris
Johnson and Sunak to power — has
already undermined it. This tax
dodge doesn’t help. Its time is up.money from people without
changing their behaviour in ways
that are bad for either them or the
economy. Most taxes are a bit
inefficient. Income tax, our main tax,
discourages people from earning
money but it’s an easy way to fill the
government’s coffers. National
insurance is worse, because it
discourages job creation, which
should be a priority. Sin and fuel
taxes are efficient, because it’s better
for people to smoke and drink less,
and it’s better for the environment if
they drive less.
One argument against abolishing
the loophole is that it would drive
rich immigrants — nine out of ten
non-doms were born abroad — to
leave Britain. Rich people invest
more and pay more tax than the rest
of us. The government points out
that non-doms contribute £7.9 billion
to the exchequer in taxes on their
British earnings.
The economy would suffer,
however, only if a lot of non-doms
left, and it seems highly likely that
most would stay. The appeal of living
in this country lies not just in
generous tax treatment, but also in
good schools and universities, and a
government that doesn’t rob people
of their assets or bung them in jail on
a whim. After Labour introduced the
levy, numbers dropped by about a
third, but that was mostly because
people gave up non-dom status, not
because they left the country. And
it’s not as though London’s
billionaires could pop off to New
York or Paris to enjoy non-dom
status, because no other rich country
offers it. Indeed, the US tax
authorities are particularly hot onE
mpire has left its mark on
this country in ways that
look increasingly odd. The
recent Caribbean tour by
the Duke and Duchess of
Cambridge — Prince William
resplendent in the military uniform
of a 19th-century conqueror — was
an embarrassing anachronism. The
tax system has its own peculiar
imperial relic. Two centuries ago, the
government allowed plantation-
owners and other colonials to avoid
British taxes by claiming they were
not domiciled here. This loophole
survives, enabling residents of
Britain who claim to be domiciled
overseas to avoid paying tax on
foreign earnings.
Non-dom status, unique to Britain
among rich countries, becomes a
talking point every so often. It was
last widely discussed in 2015 when it
emerged that Stuart Gulliver, chief
executive of HSBC, a British-born
British citizen living and educating
his children in Britain, was claiming
domicile in Hong Kong. This time it’s
Rishi Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty,
who owns £690 million worth of
shares in her father’s company,
Infosys, and claims to be domiciled
in India, rather than with her
husband at 11 Downing Street, a
claim that HMRC seems to have
accepted. She has thus legally
avoided paying tax on the £11 million
of dividends paid on those shares in
the past tax year.
Non-doms are few — 75,700 in
2020 — but significant. According to
recent research by the London
School of Economics and University
of Warwick, a fifth of top-earning
bankers, a sixth of top-earning sports
and film stars and two-fifths of all
those earning more than £5 million a
year have claimed non-dom status.
In bits of South Kensington and
Notting Hill, non-doms make up
more than a fifth of households.
Labour introduced a levy on non-
doms, which the Tories increased to
£30,000-90,000, depending on how
long they have lived in this country,but that’s peanuts to multi-
millionaires. Neither party was
inclined to abolish the loophole. The
Tories have too many friends among
the non-doms; Labour was worried it
would damage growth. Alistair
Darling, as chancellor, claimed that
doing so would discourage “doctors
and nurses, businessmen and
women” from coming to Britain.
I sympathise with Darling’s
enthusiasm for the contribution that
skilled immigrants can make to the
economy but growth is not the only
issue at stake. Non-dom status
offends against the two main
principles of taxation: efficiency and
fairness.
An efficient tax system removesNeither of the main
parties was inclined to
abolish the loophole
Endeavour with Captain Cook, and
stone cornices and other bits of
masonry from the Tower of London.
You’ve heard of crazy paving but this
is crazy rocking at its peak.Hospital delivery
T
hese days finding a post office
can feel like a destination event.
On Monday (back in Chelsea) I
needed a post office to mail a
birthday present to my friend.
Google pointed me towards a
postbox (!) but an actual counter
was required. Rather unbelievably
the only nearby post office was
at the Royal Hospital Chelsea
where I mailed my parcel in a shop
selling stuffed bears in bright red
pensioner outfits. There is an epic
painting of the Battle of Waterloo
in the foyer. Thought you’d like
to know.No energy
M
y new interest in global
energy issues continues and
word of the week is
Dunkelflaute which translates as
“dark doldrums”. It refers to those
periods when the sun doesn’t shine
and the wind doesn’t blow and so no
renewable energy can be generated.
But what about tidal? Could that be
an answer to Dunkelflaute?Ann Treneman Notebook
Visit me at
Chelsea and
learn how
to forage
@anntrenemanHow we can finally
put decades of NHS
data to good use
Ben Goldacre
Y
esterday I published a
review for Sajid Javid, the
health secretary, on how we
can achieve better, safer use
of NHS data. The challenge
is huge, as is our report with
(apologies) 185 recommendations.
The NHS was an early adopter of
digital records and this has built a
phenomenal dataset: the diagnoses,
treatments, tests and outcomes for
almost every citizen, over decades.
Other nations are catching up. Only
the NHS covers such a huge,
ethnically diverse population.
For years people have discussed
how data can improve patient care.
But inertia and incrementalism have
limited progress.
Access to this data is through ad
hoc mechanisms: we send out copies
of millions of patients’ records, for
thousands of data projects, to
countless analysts, researchers and
innovators. Names and addresses are
removed to “pseudonymise” the
records. But it can be simple to re-
identify a patient by finding a unique
match for the things you already
know about them: their age,approximate locations over time, the
dates they gave birth or key features
from their medical history.
The system has set out to manage
these risks — but by wrapping every
project in red tape. Analysts
complain that “information
governance” delays lifesaving work,
or blocks it outright.
Meanwhile at least two million
people have opted out of their NHS
records being used in research
altogether, as privacy campaigners
and professional bodies complain that
patients are not protected when NHS
data is distributed so widely.
There is a better way, and it now
has strong support, with funding,
from government. We can build
secure platforms — “trusted research
environments” — where analysts
come to work on the data. These
platforms protect patients’ privacy.
They can share transparent logs of
all activity to earn public trust. They
can eradicate red tape.
They are also more efficient. They
avoid duplication of data storage,
curation and analysis. They can
support, or oblige, analysts to share
their computer code, for review and
efficient re-use. They can help us to
embrace software developers as a
core part of research. For less than
the cost of digitising one hospital, we
can finally realise the full value in 73
years of NHS data. In doing so we
can save lives on a biblical scale.Professor Ben Goldacre is director of
the Bennett Institute at the University
of OxfordTwo million people
have opted out of their
health data being used
GEmma
Duncan