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.

Out-of-court deals for dodged back payments totalled £135 million, but so far there has only been one prosecution.

Questions also mounted over PM David Cameron’s 2010 appointment of trade minister Lord Green — then a chief at the bank — months after secret details of the scandal reached the corridors of power.

The peer remained in hiding yesterday as the scandal surrounding a Panorama film aired last night grew.

Public accounts committee chair Margaret Hodge said: “Either he didn’t know and he was asleep at the wheel, or he did know and he was therefore involved in dodgy tax practices.”

MPs rounded on the Tories during an urgent Commons session.

Treasury Minister David Gauke claimed that Paris had not intended that the information be shared beyond HMRC, ruling out its use in criminal prosecutions.

Only around 1,000 out of an eventual 3,600 individuals had been challenged, he confirmed casually, while the tax authorities “continue to monitor” the dealings of the rest.

But Labour shadow Shabana Mahmood said the government’s explanations “simply don’t go far enough.

“We need much more detail as to what the government have been up to since they were made aware of this information and why they failed to act,” she said.

Labour MP Frank Dobson urged that the tax dodgers’ identities now be revealed by the government.

“The public really can’t understand why the names of these self-confessed tax swindlers are remaining secret,” he said.

The government should publish the list “to enable the public to see that list” and allow for cross-referencing with a list of Tory donors.

Labour MP John Mann, a member of the Treasury select committee, confirmed that he had written to committee chair Andrew Tyrie to demand a confrontation with HMRC bosses.

“HSBC have been found to have helped its wealthiest clients avoid paying tax in the UK and it appears that HMRC not only knew about this but chose to do nothing about it,” fumed Mr Mann.

Tax expert Richard Murphy warned that the HSBC dealings, which only came to light in 2007 when an employee blew the whistle, were likely just the tip of the iceberg.

He described it as “exceptionally unlikely that such abuse was restricted to that bank” and it suggested “widespread criminality was at play.”