Tax the rich, Cameron tells Pakistan

British PM tells Pakistan elite: ‘Many of your richest people are getting away without paying much tax at all – and that’s not fair’ David Cameron has told the Pakistan elite they have to start paying more tax, and cut out government waste and weakness, if the British public are to back his plans announced today to pour £650m in UK aid to Pakistani schools. Pakistan is now to become the single largest recipient of UK aid. Cameron issued his warning in a wide-ranging speech in Islamabad setting out his plans for a fresh start with the Pakistan government after a turbulent year in which he criticised them for facing both ways on terrorism. Cameron is keen to put the relationship on a more even footing, and lean away from the previous stance encapsulated in the phrase “Pakistan must do more”. He said the British people would need convincing that every penny of the aid designed to help recruit 9,000 extra teachers and put 4 million children into education was going to the right places. He added: “My job is made more difficult when people in Britain look at Pakistan, a country that receives millions of pounds of our aid money, and see weaknesses in terms of government capacity and waste.” He pointed out that Pakistan “currently spends only 1.5% of its GDP on education and what’s more, you have one of the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios in the world”. He said the Pakistan was simply “not raising the resources necessary to pay for things that a modern state and people require”. The Pakistani fiscal position was a serious one because “too few people pay tax. Too many of your richest people are getting away without paying much tax at all – and that’s not fair”. He said this tax avoidance was neither fair “on ordinary Pakistanis, who suffer at the sharpest end of this weak governance or on British taxpayers, who are contributing to Pakistan’s future”. Cameron is acutely aware that he is taking a risk in increasing aid to a country that is seen as both corrupt, and the source of the biggest terrorist threat to the UK. The country is also buying six submarines from China. But he claimed the 17 million Pakistanis of school age not in education represented an emergency, adding it cost the country more per year than a flood such as the one that hit the country last year. But he claimed such an education gap also represented a breeding ground for extremism. The £650m additional aid for education over four years should put 4 million extra children into school. He also defended the war in Libya saying it was not an attack on Islam, pointing out that as in Afghanistan, Britain was there as part of a coalition and under a UN mandate. Although he praised the resilient Pakistanis for having fought so hard against terrorism, he gave a hint of his thirst for a wider crackdown in North Waziristan, saying: “It’s right that neither the Pakistan army nor Nato forces must ever tolerate sanctuaries for people plotting violence.” His remarks masked Pakistan’s anger over the use of US drones to bomb terrorist cells in North Waziristan region on the border with Afghanistan and the lack of action by the army to send troops in. David Cameron Pakistan Foreign policy Global terrorism UK security and terrorism Terrorism policy Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk

Posted by on April 5, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.