Best of the web: Liechtenstein account holders offered tax deal

Thousands of British investors with up to £3bn stashed in secret Liechtenstein bank accounts will be asked to come forward voluntarily under a deal to be negotiated next week that could be the first of many worldwide.

According to The FT, lawyers said the Liechtenstein plan, discussed behind closed doors with the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, could serve as an international model for other tax havens seeking to avoid an OECD blacklist.

Liberal Democrat spokesman Lord Oakeshott used parliamentary privilege today to blow a hole in a gag order obtained by Barclays Bank over its tax avoidance scheme, The Guardian says.

The documents detailing the schemes, previously leaked to the Lib-Dems, were now available on Wikileaks and other websites, he told a Lords debate on tax avoidance.

Lord Myners, the minister charged with clamping down on tax avoidance, ran two more businesses that controlled substantial offshore funds, it emerged yesterday, according to The Times.

The disclosures come a day after it was reported that the peer set up an offshore company in the tax haven of Bermuda of which he was part-time chairman. That company - Aspen Insurance - avoided more than £100 million a year in tax.

Tax havens will be forced to submit themselves to international scrutiny under plans to tackle their culture of secrecy being proposed by Gordon Brown, The Guardian reports.

Despite a rearguard action by tax havens, the prime minister intends next week's G20 summit to discuss plans for a multilateral exchange of information on "offshore" accounts.

Millions of taxpayers who pay the Revenue by online or telephone banking must switch their payments to a new account or risk facing interest penalties when the old accounts are withdrawn, says The Daily Telegraph.

HM Revenue & Customs is changing banks from the Bank of England to Royal Bank of Scotland and Citi, the American group, because Britain's central bank is withdrawing from the "bread and butter" banking market to concentrate on running the country's monetary policy.