COMPANIES which avoid tax or blacklist workers could be banned from competing for lucrative contracts under proposals to be considered by a Merseyside council.
Senior Liberal Democrat councillor Stuart Kelly is urging Wirral council to back the plans when they come before the next full meeting of the authority.
They call on the council to “to strengthen its procedures” to ensure only companies who run their businesses in an “ethical way” can be considered for council work.
The Oxton councillor has written two motions to go before the full council. One calls for companies using these tactics to be banned from the authority's approved list for future construction work.
The second would require Wirral council to work with the Local Government Association to strengthen processes for selecting companies "bidding for the delivery of public service contracts to demonstrate high ethical, environmental and anti-tax avoidance standards".
Cllr Kelly said: "Two issues which have made people angry recently are the way many large companies are finding legal means of avoiding paying a fair share in tax, and the scandal of the discovery of the existence of a ‘blacklist’ discriminating against members of trade unions.
"We need to ensure that the companies being paid with tax payers money pay their fair share of tax in the UK, are not connected with any off-shore tax havens, and do not discriminate against groups of workers
"Millions of people and businesses who pay their taxes, work hard, aspire to do the right things for themselves and their families and are quite rightly angered when these practices are uncovered – giving good ethical businesses a bad name.
"Wirral Council procures millions of pounds of goods and services a year, and it is important to ensure that the companies it awards contracts to are playing by the same tax rules as Wirral taxpayers.
"Putting new guidelines in place will reassure local council tax payers that their money is not being used to prop up organisations unethically, hiding their money overseas or involved in operating blacklisting.”
