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Chancellor Alistair Darling announced in his Pre-Budget Report in October that he planned a £30,000 a year levy for non-domiciled individuals who have been resident in the UK for seven of the previous nine years.

A consultation on the proposed tax closes on 28 February, only five weeks before the new rules will start.

“Many people cannot understand why we are risking the loss of so many talented people from the UK who produce so much business for the UK and so much tax for the Treasury and employ large numbers of staff here, for the sake of the possibility of a relatively paltry tax receipt by the Treasury that it will probably never actually receive," Lord Jones said in an interview with the Financial Times.

The former director general of the CBI, one of Gordon Brown’s non-political appointments, said he had not been consulted on the plans.

He warned that although the prosposed levy would only apply to those who worked in the UK for over seven years, it could threaten London’s position of a global finance centre.

“I can give you five reasons as to why you should invest in Britain before you go and invest anywhere else in Europe. But maybe there were seven and now there are five,” Lord Jones added.

John Cridland, CBI Deputy Director-General, said in response that nobody disagreed with the principle of fairness in the tax system, but that the Treasury risked driving many talented individuals out of the UK by imposing these changes.

He called the headline £30,000 fee a red herring and added that only a closer look at all the small print of these changes made the position clear.

Cridland pointed out that non-doms paid over £7 billion in UK taxation in the last year alone.

"The Government may hope to raise an extra £800 million in tax revenues but puts at risk the £16.6 billion that non-doms spend here each year. Intentionally or otherwise the Government is sending out the signal that high flying individuals and their families are no longer wanted here. The attractions of Switzerland and other destinations are growing ever stronger," he concluded.

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Related links

• Financial Times
• CBI