The Business Secretary, Vince Cable, admitted today that it was a “bit embarrassing” that his failure to pay on time a VAT bill of up to £25,000 “wasn’t spotted earlier”. The “oversight”, he said, had happened in good faith and would not stop him continuing to speak out on the issue of tax avoidance. Dr Cable’s bill followed a surge in lucrative media work in the two years before he became a minister in the coalition Government in 2010. He earned an estimated £192,000 on top of his MP’s annual salary of £65,738. But he did not tell Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) that his income had exceeded the threshold for VAT registration – an omission for which the Revenue fined him £500, half the maximum penalty. If a person’s turnover of VAT-liable goods and services over a 12-month period exceeds the current threshold of £73,000, he or she must

The Ministry of Defence has clawed back £433 paid to a soldier who was killed in Afghanistan because he died ten days before the end of a month for which he had already been paid. “When I read the letter it felt like I’d been poked in the eye with a sharp stick,” said Tony Bancroft, the father of Lance Corporal Jordan Bancroft, 25, of the 1st Battalion The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment. Lance Corporal Bancroft, from Earby, near Burnley, was shot dead on August 2010 as his platoon exchanged fire with insurgents while providing security for a meeting between Nato forces and village elders. He had joined the army in 2001 and had already served two operational tours in Iraq when he was sent to Helmand province. The MoD’s letter to his parents, sent on October 14, explained that he had been paid in advance for the month, but because he died on August 21 the