HERE is what we know about the status of the whisky giant Whyte and Mackay. The company was bought by the Filipino billionaire Andrew Tan in 2014. Mr Tan was one of the tycoons named by the Panama Papers, leaked from the law firm Mossack Fonseca. One of his businesses is Emperador International, which is registered in the British Virgin Islands and, through a number of other businesses, owns Whyte and Mackay. Whyte and Mackay’s last annual accounts show it paid £172,000 in income tax in 2015 on pre-tax profits of just over £24m.

Whyte and Mackay itself is making no comment on any of these facts, which makes it hard to get to the bottom of what is going on. There is also no evidence that the company or its owners have done anything illegal. However, the fact a high-profile Scottish firm is owned in a tax haven is a cause for serious concern. It will also confirm the suspicion, deepened by the Panama Papers, that the UK is not doing enough to tackle tax avoidance.

The moral case for doing so is clear: as long as there are tax havens which allow wealthy individuals or multinationals to avoid paying their fair share of tax, governments will be denied resources they could use to help the poorest. In the UK alone, the annual missing revenue is estimated to be at least £34bn – money we cannot afford to lose when the country is struggling with debt and faces Brexit.

Sadly, we know that, far from being a world leader on the subject, Britain is complicit in the worst tax avoidance through its dependencies – the so-called treasure islands that include the British Virgin Islands where Emperador is registered. Some businesses say there are legitimate reasons for registering in such places, and there may well be, but it is also clear tax havens allow companies and individuals to do business in one place but pay minimal or no taxation because they are registered somewhere else.

The former PM David Cameron said he wanted to make tax avoiders “smell the coffee” (before he himself was compromised when it was revealed he made money from a stake in his father’s offshore fund). The new PM Theresa May has also committed herself to tackling tax avoidance. But in practice successive governments, including the Scottish Government, have done little to tackle avoidance and the status of tax havens.

There is much they could do. For example, many thousands of acres of land in Scotland is owned by companies based in tax havens - the Scottish Government could legislate to end the practice. The UK Government, as the ultimate authority in British dependencies, could also change the rules - it could require the islands to publish details of who owns companies in their territories; it could also require them to publish their accounts.

Without action of this sort, well meant and strictly enforced, tax havens will continue to flourish and companies will continue to use them with impunity. In the past, the UK has been far too tolerant of companies or individuals that avoid or minimise their tax for fear of losing their business In the future, it must send out a much stricter message: tax avoidance is unacceptable, at home or anywhere else where the UK has influence.