ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: We’re now going to take a look through the business pages of the Sunday papers and we’ve got the Chief Executive of Deloittes in the UK, David Sproul, very good to see you. What do you think of what Chris Leslie has been saying there and Harriet Green before? A lot of people will point the finger at companies like yours and say you’re part of the problem, you’re the ones helping these big companies avoid paying their fair share of tax here.

DAVID SPROUL: I think there are a couple of points, and I don’t disagree with much of what was said, but one has got to remember that business pays 30% of all tax collected in the UK already. We can go to the minutiae of individual cases but business pays 30% of all tax, it plays a big role in collecting tax for the government and it is very hard to find any business that doesn’t agree with the principle of paying a fair share of tax. There are issues really, the complication, because if you go back to one of the points you made earlier, the most important thing is that we have business here, we’re competitive, the Chancellor has already flagged corporate tax rates coming down to 20% and that’s what really drives business here. Certainly when I travel round the world and speak to businesses internationally, they recognise that principle that every business has a licence to operate in society but they don’t want to come here.

DM: Does your company ever say to a business, okay, we can come up with something here that’s legal but we don’t think it’s moral?

DS: Absolutely right, absolutely. We have terms and conditions which are very clear, that we will not show clients everything that we know is out there in terms of tax schemes, we don’t feel any responsibility to do that, quite the opposite. The environment has changed though, there are definitely things that business would have done ten years ago that they recognise is unacceptable and they wouldn’t do it now, so I think there is a very clear ment and the CBI, as you’ll be aware, just issued some principles about how business deals with tax including tax transparency so there are definitely some issues around the detail and one shouldn’t ignore that, but the principles are pretty clear.

DM: Plenty there from Chris Leslie but we’re going to look at some of these papers though now, that’s what you’ve come into do for us, Mr Sproul. David Smith writing here about Mervyn King, walking out with a spring in his gait. Well I saw that when I interviewed him, a smile on his face.

DS: I think the interesting thing about David Smith is of course he recites Mervyn King’s pronouncements about the strength of the economy which of course are based on what he perceives for the next four years. The points are made about the CBI and the OECD making similar statements but the interesting thing is that David Smith asks the question as to whether that spring is justified and of course he doesn’t use those green shoots line but he does come to the conclusion that despite some of the negatives in the economy. Pay is still going down, that’s a big challenge and we all recognise that in consumer spending; employment is not as strong as they’d like to be but he does come to the conclusion that there is some resilience and we are starting to move forward.

DM: There is another important point that your company will know a lot about which is of course investment, this wall of money which so many companies are meant to be sitting on, sitting on their hands. Is there any sign that they want to put that to use now?

DS: I think there are some signs and when one looks at that wall of money, I mean the numbers quoted are often 750 billion, enormous numbers, but even if you took a smaller number and said that’s available for investment, I think there are some early signs that business is starting to believe in that resilience of the economy and business need certainty. To actually make those investment decisions they need a degree of certainty, certainly on tax policy as I said earlier, but certainty on the economy and I think we are getting there, I think we are at that point where the debate around Europe is political and not economic to a large extent, one understands where Europe is. I think we are at that point where business is starting to see things are looking better and certainly we feel more optimistic about the next twelve months than we felt over the last twelve months.

DM: That’s good to hear and it goes along with the Governor. Your next story goes along with what we were discussing with the Governor as well and subsequently, this issue of where is the growth, where will the growth be coming from? This great idea of rebalancing the economy, the march of the makers. Well a little bit of a sign of that, UK exporters whistle up success in … I like that, new market, that’s ironic isn’t it, America?

DS: Well I thought that’s what was interesting. It was too things, first it was a great little manufacture, Acme Whistles, and their story of selling whistles to the US and of course it was America, because so much of our focus has been on the growing markets and we all recognise how important it is that we’re stronger in China and India and Vietnam and Indonesia and the data that says by 2020 those will have 40% of exports will be to those markets. But I thought this was great, let’s not forget that America is currently our biggest market, we are currently at a point where the data last month said non-EU growth had now exceeded EU growth, the US had 20% growth in exports last month. Be careful on one month’s data but there are a lot of signs there and this article picks it up, so America is a great market but I thought the interesting thing was this was a manufacturer, not high-tech, but a manufacturer selling on quality. The CEO makes the point in the article that you can buy the whistles more cheaply from Thailand but they are not as good and what the US is doing is buying the UK whistles. I thought that was a great story.

DM: And a great message as well, don’t ignore the wood for the trees.

DS: There’s a confidence in the US, we know that. We all read about the US economy, we know there is a confidence in their economy which I think is causing them to invest more quickly possibly than business in the UK but a positive sign.

DM: Okay, Mr Sproul, thank you very much indeed for your time. Chief Executive of Deloittes there.