Moves to introduce a public register of real company ownership are a ’really welcome step’, says the chairman of the UK Treasury select committee.

Former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan and fellow Tory MP Steve Baker MP, deputy chairman of the Brexiteer European Research Group, made a whirlwind visit to the island last week.

They were invited over by the Chief Minister as part of the select committee’s inquiry into tax avoidance and evasion.

Speaking at the Eagle Lab on Victoria Street, Douglas, Mrs Morgan said the Isle of Man’s name had come up during the committee’s inquiries and the debate in parliament on beneficial ownership - and the MPs wanted to take a look themselves.

She said: ’It’s clear things have changed and are changing. There is a greater acceptance of the need for transparency.’

The MP said she had been reassured that there are ’fewer and fewer’ opportunities for people to be able to ’behave in ways that are questionable’.

And she accepted: ’Sometimes there’s a gap between perception and reality.’

Mrs Morgan welcomed the Isle of Man government’s announcement that it was intending to comply with the provisions of the EU fifth money laundering directive by permitting public access to details of the beneficial owners of companies.

’It’s a really welcome step. Obviously it’s some way off,’ she said.

During the MPs’ visit, they had meetings with government, the Financial Services Authority, the Gambling Supervision Commission, the Financial Crime Strategic Board and members of the Manx business community.

Mrs Morgan was asked about the long-awaited report on the treatment of VAT on imported corporate jets - an issue raised in the Paradise Papers.

She said she believed the report has been prepared and its publication was ’imminent’ - and that it should not be delayed by a change of government.