DOUBLE TAXATION RELIEF ORDER (Hansard, 1 December 1970)

§ The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Patrick Jenkin)

I beg to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Netherlands Antilles) Order 1970 be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on 27th October. The hour is late and I hope to deal with this Motion very briefly indeed. The Agreement is one of a long line of double taxation agreements which have been negotiated in the last three or four years and of which we debated over 40 in the last Parliament.

The Order extends to the Netherlands Antilles the main provisions of our Agreement with the Netherlands which was itself negotiated in 1967, was debated in this House on 11th December 1967, and came into force in April, 1968.

The old Agreement with the Netherlands Antilles was inappropriate in a few respects and, accordingly, the United Kingdom Government gave notice to terminate it in the middle of 1969 as from 5th April of this year. We immediately indicated that we would be prepared to negotiate a new Agreement and, by July of last year, an exchange of notes took place at the official level and the Agreement was reached.

This Agreement, therefore, was negotiated under our predecessors. Nevertheless, I can commend it to the House as being an appropriately renegotiated Agreement for double taxation relief.

If any hon. Member has any questions that he would like to raise on the Agreement, I shall be happy to try to answer them. But I doubt whether it is necessary at this late hour to take the House through the details of the Agreement.