Labour has urged tax authorities to investigate Sajid Javid’s financial affairs, it has emerged.
The party has written to HMRC requesting a new examination of the health secretary’s historic tax arrangements.
It focusses on Javid’s ties to a company called SA Capital, raising the “possibility that he has been a beneficiary of a loan scheme designed to avoid paying UK tax”, said Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary.
A spokesperson for Javid said the call for an investigation was a “smear attempt” by Labour, despite it following a series of reports about his financial status.
Earlier this year, it emerged that the health secretary used non-domicile status to reduce his UK tax bill and had an off-shore trust, even when he worked as a PPS in the Treasury.
Javid was director of SA Capital – which is co-owned with his brother and their respective wives – for one day in May 2005. In the same year, loans close to £1 million were made to the firm – with the source of half the money unclear.
A source close to the health secretary insisted he never received any financial benefit from the arrangement, but Labour suggested there was a chance that “purpose of the loans were to provide a tax-efficient way for money held offshore to enter Britain”.
A spokesperson for Javid told The Independent: “This is a truly desperate smear attempt by Starmer’s Labour Party. The health secretary has been open and transparent about his previous tax statuses and residencies whilst in the UK and working abroad.
“Nearly two decades ago, and many years before entering public life, he helped his brother start a business by investing in it,” the spokesperson added.