Offshore financial centres

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France and Germany have put pressure on Ireland to give up its famously low corporate tax rate, as a condition for a European rescue package. French officials have resentfully called the rate, of 12.5%, 'almost predatory'. The BBC's Michael Robinson reports from Ireland, on how big companies channel money into low-tax nations to boost their profits. Plus, are offshore financial centres actually a boon to major financial centres such as the City of London? That's the controversial view of British Conservative MP Mark Field, who talked to Lesley Curwen at a debate hosted by the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation. On the other side of the argument was Richard Murphy, a director at the policy think-tank, Tax Research UK. He argued that the offshore financial centres do not generate the money and there is little or no transparency about where it originates.