There is something I find deeply distasteful about public slanging matches, particularly when it comes to highly personal smears touching financial probity.

First of all, I do not believe there is anything wrong in giving financial support to a political party. In fact I do it all the time. While I am not in the big donors’ league in absolute terms but, measured as a proportion of my income, I am probably not too far off.

Secondly, there is nothing morally reprehensible about possessing a foreign bank account, or in seeking professional advice to properly and lawfully ensure you do not end up paying more tax than you ought.

Take the simple question of working from home: setting your proportionate expenses (extra heating, lighting, telephone, etc) against your tax liability is not “avoidance”, it is sensible economics. Of course, care must be taken not to incur other tax liabilities – like a socking great capital gains bill when you come to sell the home you used as an office.

It is for questions like this that we seek advice from accountants. Equally, safeguarding wealth for your family in a trust, if you can afford to, strikes me as something we ought not to condemn – it’s certainly better than handing them a debt (which is what we are all collectively doing at present).

Again, you might want to consult an accountant or solicitor first, because what a trust might gain in terms of inheritance tax treatment, it may well lose in terms of more aggressive income tax treatment, as well as a whole lot of other complex restrictions.

Personally I believe in the desirability of low taxes and I applaud the efforts of this government which has cut taxes as a key part of its long-term economic plan to build the most competitive corporate tax system in the world, in order to attract business to this country.

It’s worked: we get more foreign investment than the rest of Europe put together and it has led to the creation of 2,000 additional jobs for every day the government has been in office: more people are now at work in Britain today than ever before. The income tax threshold has been raised to £10,000 giving everyone a tax cut, taking the lowest paid out of income tax altogether. Not everyone, however, is paying their fair share.

The quid pro quo of lower taxes, I believe, is that everyone is under a duty to pay what they owe.

That is why this government has led the world on changing international tax rules – we used our presidency of the G8 aggressively to drive this forward. Consequently, we have closed more loopholes every year, raising £85 billion.

The exposure last week of HSBC’s historic practices underlines the fact that it just couldn’t happen now because, since 2010, we have been steadily shutting down the opportunities and we have increased the penalty for hiding money in tax havens to double the amount hidden previously. Following Britain’s lead, more than 90 countries last year signed up to new international comprehensive reporting standards.

To date, our agreements with Switzerland and Liechtenstein alone have brought in around £2 billion in previously unpaid tax. We have made more than 40 changes to tighten up our own tax laws and we have introduced a General Anti-Abuse Rule which will deter the creation of future tax avoidance schemes. We have invested an extra £1 billion in HMRC to deal with avoidance and evasion.

This is the proper way to proceed: methodically getting on and doing something about it; not denouncing public figures based on innuendo and association. I am afraid it all had something of the hysteria that accompanied the French Revolution about it.