Ministers were landed in boiling water yesterday over their role in an apparent cover-up protecting wealthy Tory backers caught up in illegal tax-dodging scams run by a shadowy Swiss wing of HSBC bank.

Leaked documents stripped away the shroud of secrecy that has protected over 130,000 super-wealthy individuals worldwide and hushed up the bank’s role advising them how to hide their billions from tighter tax rules.

HM Revenue and Customs’ hands-off approach towards wealthy tax-dodgers was savaged as it emerged that only a few hundred out of an initial list of 6,800 suspicious British names in a French dossier had been confronted.