Sir John Redwood, who served in the Major government in the 1990s and retired as an MP only last year, was the guest at a lunch event hosted by local think tank GPEG yesterday.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Guernsey Press, he said it was ‘very important to keep your tax arrangements’ and withstand any external pressure for change.
‘I, and conservatives like me, see you as the example of how it is clearly better to run a low-tax economy,’ said Sir John.
‘I have made the case endlessly, when it has been popular and when it has been unpopular, that if you look around the world you see that small islands with lower taxes do an awful lot better than anybody else, for obvious and good reasons, and it can be applied to larger countries as well.’
Sir John felt that most UK MPs, particularly in the current parliament, were of the view that most wealthy people got away without paying enough tax and believed that jurisdictions like Guernsey needed to change to help tackle the problem.
‘That doesn’t mean you agree with them,’ he said.
‘I don’t think you should give into the idea that you should implement a socialist taxation model in a small place that’s done rather well with a different model. You should be proud of your model.’
Sir John spoke about other aspects of politics, including Brexit, for which he was a long-time campaigner.
He also spoke about his childhood and his unusual memory, which stretches back far longer than most people’s, and about which he wrote a book titled What Do Boys Want? Why I Never Wanted A Doll, which was published earlier this year.
Matt Fallaize’s full-length interview with Sir John Redwood will be published in the Guernsey Press next week.
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