ANGER flared in the Commons yesterday as Labour’s Ed Miliband raged against “dodgy” PM David Cameron and senior MPs bombarded HM Revenue and Customs officials over the unfolding HSBC tax-dodge scandal.

Three times the opposition leader challenged Mr Cameron over wealthy Tory donors holding senior positions at the firm and his appointment of the bank’s ex-chief Stephen Green as trade minister.

Three times the PM ducked the question.

“The Prime Minister cannot get away from it,” declared Mr Miliband.

“He is a dodgy Prime Minister surrounded by dodgy donors.

“He did not just take the money — he appointed the man who was head of HSBC as a minister,” said the Labour leader.

“It was in the public domain in September 2010 that HSBC was enabling tax avoidance on an industrial scale.

“Are we seriously expected to believe that when he made Stephen Green a minister four months later, he had no idea about these allegations?”

No 10 continued its total denial yesterday that any minister knew the details surrounding HSBC’s Swiss wing promoting alleged tax evasion.

But heated exchanges between HMRC chief Lin Homer and public accounts committee MPs led by chair Margaret Hodge produced more answers.

Members launched a barrage of questions on the chain of events that led to leaked details of thousands of accounts suspected of illegal tax dodging being passed from France to Britain.

Challenged on the point at which ministers were informed of the dossier after it was handed to HMRC in April 2010, Ms Homer replied: “We will have told people including ministers some time within the next few months.”

Ms Hodge asked: “Pretty immediatley?”

“Yes,” replied Ms Homer.

In the main chamber Mr Miliband confronted Mr Cameron directly on the issue, citing a November 2011 press release on HSBC’s Swiss operations issued by the minister in charge.

“Does the Prime Minister expect us to believe that in Stephen Green’s three years as a minister he never had a conversation with him about what was happening at HSBC?” said the Labour leader.

The PM ducked the question, instead claiming: “We are the friend of the hard-working taxpayer.”

Unite slams tax-dodging donor comparison

by Luke James

DAVID Cameron was condemned yesterday for comparing Tory cash from their “dodgy donors” caught up in the HSBC scandal with Labour funding from trade unions.

The Tory has consistently used PMQs to attack working people’s involvement in politics — but Unite said his latest outburst went “through the looking glass.”

It came as he was confronted with evidence that his party banked almost £5 million from seven individuals who have held Swiss bank accounts.

Tory peer and former party treasurer Stanley Fink and current Tory MP Zac Goldsmith were among account holders.

Pressed to explain the “revolving door between Tory HQ and the Swiss branch of HSBC” by Labour leader Ed Miliband at Prime Minister’s Question Time yesterday, panicked Mr Cameron resorted to another attack on trade unions.

He blustered: “When people donate to the Conservative Party they don’t pick the candidates, they don’t choose the policies, they don’t elect the leader.

“The only reason he is sitting there is because trade union leaders decided he was more left wing than his brother.”

Mr Miliband said his desperate bid to dodge the question showed: “He can’t get away from it — he’s a dodgy PM, surrounded by dodgy donors.”

And a Unite spokesman said: “Ed Miliband is right — there is something rotten in the Conservative Party and the working people of Britain know it.

“It’s a mark of this Prime Minister that he chooses to back shady hedge-fund cash and Swiss bank accounts over the hard-earned pounds and pence of British workers.

“Let’s be clear, trade union money is wholly transparent and clean. It comes from the pockets and purses of millions of our members. That is nothing to be ashamed of and we at Unite will never shy away from celebrating that kind of solidarity.”