While there’s no doubt corporate power needs to be curbed, Nesrine Malik (Opinion, 10 December) proposes a “single sales factor apportionment” to tax corporations based on where sales are made, not where profits are reported. But sales are where profits are realised, not where they are made. Offshore production of goods and services consumed in the UK will mean the workers producing these goods and services – and creating the profits – will get little benefit from tax receipts in their country compared to the UK. This would apply to developing world commodities, such as coffee and precious metals, largely ending up as consumer goods in the west, where the tax would end up under the single sales factor apportionment.
Ted Watson
Brighton, East Sussex
• As you say (Editorial, 13 December), government does indeed have powers that it shrinks from using in dealing with antisocial firms, and you cite the need to force those vying for public contracts to pay the living wage. One obvious place to begin is with the clinical commissioning groups handing out tens of millions to contracting firms as the NHS is privatised by stealth. Stockport NHS Watch, a voluntary group formed to monitor the awarding of contracts by the Stockport CCG, has been urging the inclusion of an ethical clause in its procurement policy that would require the payment of the living wage. Hiding behind “legal advice”, the content of which has not been disclosed, the CCG has rejected this and, in consequence, a formal complaint was entered last week that it has failed in its statutory duty to consult in good faith with interested parties. It may be too much to hope that the embarrassment of having to defend the indefensible will cause the CCG to have second thoughts. A surer way of forcing progress would be for the Labour party to pledge that its intended repeal of the Health and Social Care Act will include an obligation on all CCGs to apply such a measure in future contracts.
Dr Anthony Carew
Stockport, Cheshire
• You editorial should have added two points. First, once a contract has been agreed between a company and a local council or part of central government, the documents should be made available for viewing by the public. Second, directors of companies should be held personally liable for fines imposed on their company for any acts of malfeasance. That would concentrate their minds.
Richard Dargan
Old Coulsdon, Surrey
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