Treasury to close Barclays tax loopholes

The government is closing two loopholes which would have allowed Barclays Bank to avoid paying hundreds of millions of pounds in tax.

The Treasury has taken the unusual step of introducing retrospective legislation to end what one minister described as "aggressive tax avoidance" schemes used by financial institutions.

The government has closed the schemes to retrieve £500m of lost tax and safeguard payments of billions of more tax in the future.

Stephen Herring is a tax partner at accounting firm BDO. He told the BBC that the retrospective legislation is likely to go back two or three years "at very most".