Why I gatecrashed David Hartnett’s dinner party

Last week, some friends and I burst in on a speech from the retired HMRC boss Dave Hartnett at a tax dodgers conference. The video of our action has since gone viral. Here's why I did it:

I stood as a Green candidate in local elections last year. If I had bought dinner and drinks for a potential voter, I would have been breaking the law and I would have been disqualified. If you buy someone who has power over you nice things in the hope they will do you a favour, then this is bribery. It’s pretty simple. When people do it in developing countries, the British establishment rolls its eyes.



Dave Hartnett was, until the end of July, Britain’s senior tax collector. He was also the civil servant who was most wined and dined. You can choose to believe one of two things: either the senior tax man has the most scintillating, entertaining dinner table chat of everyone at Whitehall; or there’s something more sinister going on.

Next, take look at the deals that Mr Hartnett has signed off on over the years: the £10 million ($16.2 million) he let Goldman Sachs off may seem a lot, but it is piffling next to the £6 billion ($9.7 billion) that Vodafone is said to have been allowed to scratch from their accounts. In total, the amount of tax owed by the extremely rich whom Mr Hartnett has let slip through the net over his years in post, must run to many billions of pounds.

I think it is fair to assume that his numerous invitations to these dinners are not the product of Mr Hartnett’s mastery of small tall.

The impact cannot be underestimated. There are the lives ruined by government cuts, the gross inequality. We all know the stories – or if you don’t, then you need to start looking around you. It is important to remember that there are many, many reasons that made austerity just one course of action, a choice. None of these cuts are necessary. And the easiest way to understand this is that the tax dodged through Dave Hartnett’s dodgy deals would have easily covered the cost of these cuts.

They surround themselves with smokescreens to block out the poverty, and they congratulate themselves on their mutual genius. They flit from conference centre to hotel to air-conditioned office, and they insulate themselves from the society they are wrecking.

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