Last week's Journal gave a lot of coverage to Theresa May's visit to Salisbury last Monday (One year on: PM praises city's spirit, March, 7).

Coincidentally, on that same day, an important financial services bill was withdrawn from parliament, a bill Mr Glen was likely to have been closely involved with since it concerned the City of London for which he is minister.

The bill was withdrawn because of a cross party amendment which sought to require the crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man to reveal who are the real owners of companies registered there.

This is not just of academic interest.

The City of London is at the centre of a network of tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions which, according to an estimate by Oxfam reported in the Financial Times, 'costs poorer countries $170bn a year.'

The tax gap in the UK is estimated in a House of Commons briefing paper last month at £33bn.

The mindboggling scale of this activity was revealed in the Panama and Paradise papers and more recently with the Troika Laundromat revelations.

Trillions of pounds of 'dirty money' sits in these tax havens.

The results of this tax avoidance are poorer public services; reduced police numbers; a struggling health service; housing shortages; the care crisis and the austerity agenda generally.

Weeks have been spent here in Salisbury with arguments concerning the Library.

Only a tiny fraction of this wealth would enable the city to have a brilliant new library.

Paradoxically, the Independent reported that Theresa May had to give up attempts last year to block a plan to reveal who owns assets in tax havens because of the outrage by Tory backbenchers following the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury.

Yet in Mr Glen's 'View from the Commons' there is no mention of Monday's climbdown, a surprising omission in view of the vast sums involved.

One hopes the bill will be reintroduced quickly and the islands forced to reveal who owns the trillions that sit in accounts there.

Peter Curbishley

Great Durnford