Senator Bailhache, who has been attending the Liberal Democrat party conference in Brighton, said that he had spoken to Mr Hemming, who in a statement in Parliament last week described Jersey as a place where ‘a culture of cover-up continues’.
Senator Bailhache said that the meeting had been a cordial one, and added that the opportunity to talk to Mr Hemming and others about Jersey and the finance industry was a valuable one.
Although Lib-Dem deputy leader Vince Cable, the coalition government’s business secretary, criticised ‘tax havens’ in his speech to the conference, he later confirmed he was not talking about Jersey specifically and Senator Bailhache said that he did not believe Mr Cable had the Channel Islands in mind at all.
‘In fact, listening to what Nick Clegg had to say yesterday, he acknowledged the value of the Channel Islands to the UK in the upstreaming of funds to London,’ he added.
