IN last week’s column I highlighted that changes brought in by the Tories to the state pension will result in a saving of over £5.5 billion for the UK Government. This will be at the expense of those who were trying to put something aside in an occupational pension for their retirement.

I’ve also previously highlighted the WASPI campaign where women born in the early 1950s are suffering as they see their long-expected state pension drift off further into the future, leaving them with shattered plans on how to cope.

Whenever such issues are raised the Tory mantra of austerity is repeated ad nauseam by the Prime Minister and his followers. Apparently we don’t have the money to pay decent pensions, have a realistic retirement age or even maintain decent benefits for those who rely on them.

Well, the news from the Panama Papers has shown exactly why that is. While the rest of us pay our taxes, the super-rich invent new schemes to hide their earnings from the taxman. As a consequence, they might get a new flash car or holiday home while back in the UK public services are starved of cash and essential services are put on life support. Is this what the Government means when it speaks of all of us being “in it together”?

The UK’s role in this tax dodge is highlighted by the number of firms which are based in UK-administered tax havens. Over half of the 215,000 firms identified so far in the leaks are based in areas such as the British Virgin Islands which was the top location for Mossack Fonseca operations. This places the UK at the very heart of a system linked to money laundering, crime and systematic tax avoidance.

The links to leading UK politicians also raise concerns, particularly the actions of the Prime Minister, David Cameron. It wasn’t that long ago that Cameron claimed he would tackle tax evasion but now, after days of dithering and trying to claim his family’s tax returns were a private matter, he has admitted he has personally benefitted from tax avoidance.

Through shares in his late father’s company, Blairmore, the Prime Minister has now admitted he benefitted from the use of offshore tax havens.

As Prime Minister he questioned the morality of others using such tax-avoidance schemes, yet now – thanks to the leak of the Panama Papers – we find that he has personally benefitted from such schemes. Let’s be clear, without this leak the public would not have known about Cameron benefitting from tax avoidance. Even when the initial news broke he tried to remain silent and it took him five days before he admitted his involvement in such schemes. How can anyone trust a Prime Minister who publicly questions others for using the exact same tax avoidance practices from which he has benefitted?

We still don’t know the full extent of Cameron’s benefitting from tax avoidance. Has he, or his family, benefited from his father in law’s trust which uses the British Virgin Islands tax haven to register the ownership of a 19,000-acre estate on the Isle of Jura?

It will be interesting to see if the Prime Minister will still host a planned international anti-corruption summit in London next month following the disclosure of his involvement with an offshore firm.

The Panama Papers reveal only what one firm in one tax haven has done to help the rich avoid paying their share of tax – but how widespread is this issue and what is the real scale of the problem if we were to look at every tax haven and every firm that promotes such tax avoidance schemes? According to one report, tax havens hold at least £13 trillion. How much of that should have been paid in tax in the UK? The scale of this operation and the potential loss of tax revenue to the HMRC and the UK is vast.

However, there are problems if we expect HMRC to be able to deal with tracking down the tax avoiders. As I’ve highlighted before, the Tories have systematically been reducing the number of tax offices and HMRC staff over the past few years. According to the PCS the number of staff at HMRC has been almost halved since 2005 with more jobs expected to go as all 160 HMRC offices are closed and replaced by 13 regional hubs and four specialist centres.

This is already having an impact on the ability of HMRC to meet government targets for clamping down on tax avoidance and evasion. For instance, HMRC was set a target to recover £1.05 billion of hidden money in Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man yet the Office of Budget Responsibility’s assessment of the Chancellor’s budget found that just £270 million had been retrieved.

It comes as no surprise that the Tories, who have supporters who benefit from tax avoidance are, in reality, hampering the ability of the HMRC to tackle this issue.

It is also ironic that the HMRC’s own offices are owned by offshore companies. In a deal signed off by the then Chancellor Gordon Brown, HMRC handed over the ownership and management of 591 tax offices to an offshore company based in the Cayman Islands. At the last count the cost of this contract had risen to £3.87 billion and the maximum potential savings have slumped to £300m as HMRC discovered it could not recover its own VAT from the rent. You really have to question the competence of such a deal where the Government’s own tax department couldn’t work out the VAT implications of hiving off its offices.

The leak of 11 million files from the Panama legal firm Mossack Fonseca has lifted the lid on the secretive world of tax havens, exposing the actions of politicians, banks and criminals. No doubt there will be more information coming out as people dig deeper into what has been described as the biggest data leak in the history of journalism. The information we already have has shown the contempt the rich have for the rest of society.

Using tax schemes to hide your income and reduce your tax liability is akin to benefit fraud, the only difference is you will be hounded in the UK for benefit fraud but celebrated for avoiding tax. In each case the state loses out. You and me, our pensioners, our disabled, our vulnerable members of society all lose out. Tax avoidance means there is less to go around and public services have their funding cut. It means businesses and corporate companies are benefitting from the untaxed profits produced by their state educated and trained workers whilst starving the very state which keeps their workers healthy of vital resources. Most have known for years the Conservatives are only concerned with lining their own pockets, leaving others to fend for themselves regardless of who gets hurt. Now it has been confirmed.