If Cameron sold his stake in an offshore trust over concerns about transparency, what about the rest of the Cabinet?

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All eyes are on David Cameron as he publishes his tax returns in an attempt to restore trust in his leadership (Reuters)

Oh what a tangled tax web David Cameron has woven. The question is just how much did he set out to deceive us?

Having now remembered he did profit from an off shore trust set up by his father, Cameron says he doesn’t know if some of his inheritance upon his father’s death could have been profits from the off shore venture. He also claims in 2010 he sold his stake in the Trust so that he could be transparent. Why? It is perfectly legal under the UK law to invest in an offshore trust (including tax free investments)and to hold an offshore bank account. Cameron would have known this when he invested in Blairmore. So why did he personally intervene to prevent a tax crackdown on offshore trusts? Did he have something to hide, or was he acting on behalf of crony donors?

Tax avoidance is a billion pound industry that Cameron and the Chancellor, George Osborne, have allowed. If both were serious about tackling it then Vodafone would have paid their £6bn tax bill and Google would be stumping up £1bn not £100m. There is a more interesting question, however. If transparency on entering Number Ten means one should not own any part of any offshore company or investment trust, as Cameron implied, does this disbar Osborne from becoming a future Prime Minister? What about Cameron’s cabinet? Why are they allowed to have shares in companies but serve in the cabinet – especially when those same companies get awarded government contracts? And why are so many such contracts awarded to companies that avoid paying taxes within the UK?

David Cameron claims he has never pretended to be something he’s not but, in light of the stance he recently took over tax transparency, that is clearly untrue. What else has he lied to us about? There is something rotten in the state of Westminster, and it stinks.

Julie Partridge
London, SE15

While it may be surprising that the details have emerged so suddenly, it is not surprising that David Cameron should have inherited tax-dodging dealings from his family, since he heads a government of friends, associates and supporters – ie. a class – of finance capitalists whose speculations crashed the economy, but which his government is propping up through austerity measures inflicted on the rest of us.

What is surprising is that the opposition Labour Party – which, under its new leader, is supposed to be against austerity – is not pointing this out much more clearly.

Patrick Ainley
London, SE25

Please can someone explain to me the purpose of David Cameron publishing his tax return? What will that reveal about his financial affairs?

What we need to see are his 'non-tax' returns. Presumably he has never had one; had one but did not benefitted from it; or sold it before he was caught, depending on what day the question is asked.

John Broughton
Calver, Derbyshire

Now that David Cameron has disclosed information about his tax returns since his move into Number 10 Downing Street in 2010 (but, noticeably, not before), isn't the responsibility now on the rest of Parliament as public servants to disclose theirs? I have the feeling that we have only seen the small tip of a very large iceberg.

Sarah Pegg
Seaford

As Jeremy Corbyn has yet to make public his tax returns, it seems somewhat hypocritical for him to demand further details of the Prime Minister's financial affairs when Mr Cameron has already published his.

John Eoin Douglas
Edinburgh

How odd to hear Nicola Sturgeon questioning whether the Prime Minister had revealed enough about his personal finances. This at the same time as we wait for the full truth to come out over the £10bn memorandum of understanding she signed on behalf of the Scottish government with a Chinese consortium whose credentials are in doubt.

For all that she plays it down, saying there are no proposals on the table, the leader of the consortium that signed the deal claims three quite specific projects have been discussed.

Well, which is it First Minister? And is your interest in David Cameron’s affairs simply an attempt at distraction?

Keith Howell
West Linton, Scottish Borders

Struggling to hear the echoes of Stalinsim

Robert Fisk’s article (Echoes of Stalinism abound in the very modern Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict, 9 April) was so off the mark that it left me bewildered. Virtually every anecdote or fact he brought up was either wrong, twisted or irrelevant. Stalin did in fact give Karabakh to Azerbaijan well before he was General Secretary of the USSR years later. He was able to transfer it in his role as Commissar of Nationalities in the 1920s. Armenians never fought a war over Karabakh because "it contained some of the nation's oldest churches", nor was it an "excuse" to take it back. The war was fought because the region had a 92 per cent Armenian population when Stalin gave it to Azerbaijan, and though the percentage had dropped by 1988, it was still overwhelmingly Armenian majority. The Armenians of Karabakh had many grievances over Azeri rule and wanted to be joined with Armenia, or become independent, like the Irish Free State had.

Too many civilians did die in Khojaly, but this exception to the rule was full of extenuating circumstances. The civilians had been told to flee the attack and a corridor was left open for them to escape. That they did not flee before the attack, and that when they did flee they did so with armed fighters scattered among them, set the stage for this disaster.

There is no event parallel to this one during the entire six years of fighting on the Armenian side, though the Azeri pograms of Armenians that proceeded it in Sumgait, Kirovabad, Maraga and Baku were conveniently left out of your article. Four more reasons why Armenians did not feel safe remaining a part of Azerbaijan.

I'll agree that it's a bit confusing that Armenian leaders of the Karabakh War were buried near the Armenian Genocide Memorial, but that's irrelevant to any of this.

Raffi Kojian
Yerevan, Armenia

Legitimate questions about parentage

Archbishop Welby is not alone. DNA research estimates that around one third of all British children born during the Second World War were “illegitimate”.

Dr John Cameron
St Andrews

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