The managing director of Amazon.co.uk, Christopher North, has said that his firm invested over £1 billion into the UK economy, as well as paying a further £1 billion over the past five years and paying the Treasury £500 million in VAT.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr North also defended Amazon’s tax policy as “very clear and very consistent” but accepted that the company “perhaps haven’t done enough to tell our story”.

The news came as Amazon announced that its losses had narrowed in the third quarter as sales increased.

The company made a net loss of $41m (£25m) for the July-September period, down from $274m a year earlier.