Draft Cash Ratio Deposits (Value Bands and Ratios) Order 2018

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2018 General Committees

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I am grateful to the Minister for those helpful explanatory remarks.

It is clearly essential that the Bank’s monetary policy and financial stability functions are adequately funded, and I therefore understand why some reform is necessary, given the shortfall arising under current arrangements. None the less, it is important that we properly interrogate this matter, given that we are talking about very large sums needing to be raised—£845 million over the five years to 2023—and extremely large sums of the Bank’s capital being held in order to raise that sum. I therefore have some questions for the Minister.

First, has a proper cost-benefit analysis been conducted on this approach to raising funds, as against other possible options? According to the summary of consultation responses for the scheme review, one respondent

“considered that a fee-based mechanism would be the fairest, most efficient and most transparent means of funding the Bank’s critical monetary policy and financial stability policy work. The respondent noted that, whilst the consultation paper explained that a fee-based model would require more in-depth analysis, no indication had been given to if, or when, such in-depth analysis will take place. The respondent understood that the current legislative agenda makes changing the basis of funding the CRD scheme difficult, but nonetheless considered that discussions on this proposal should begin.”

It will be interesting to discover from the Minister when and where those discussions about a fee-based model will take place.

I tried to do my own back-of-an-envelope calculation yesterday to work out whether the current approach is a relatively expensive or cheap way of raising the funds that the Bank needs for the overall economy, given that returns from gilts are generally low compared with other forms of investment. We could say that this is a rather banal calculation, in some ways. Banks are returning to substantial levels of profitability, in many cases, and something that costs a bank a lot may only cost its shareholders; that would not, therefore, necessarily constitute a major public policy concern.

I thought it was helpful to think this through from the neutral point of view of overall economic efficiency. In theory, the freed-up balances from banks could be invested in riskier but more profitable forms of investment. The five-year yield on UK gilts currently appears to be 1.15%. Traditionally, banks’ return on equity has been substantially higher than that, outside crisis periods. However, the return on equity has been reduced substantially by the financial crisis and subsequent regulatory requirements, and Brexit is also predicted to challenge returns on equity. I think it is interesting, and important, to compare the two levels of returns.

The respondent who suggested a fee-based approach may not have been concerned with efficiency—although the protection of banks’ profits may have been involved, given that, as I understand it, the respondents to the consultation were the banks that already contribute to the scheme. None the less, the respondent also referred to greater transparency arising from a fee-based system. I think there is some argument for that, given that it is, as I understand it, the method used to cover the cost of financial regulation via the Prudential Regulation Authority.

It was maintained in some of the documentation that I read that it would not be possible to adopt a fee-based system because the Bank’s monetary policy and financial stability functions affect all market actors. However, one could surely say the same thing about the PRA’s functions, to an extent. Furthermore, the threshold applied to this scheme means that, as the Minister rightly mentioned, the lion’s share of the contribution is made by the 20 largest institutions, with 146 making some kind of contribution and many other institutions that have eligible liabilities of less than £600 million making no contribution. Not each and every institution that benefits from financial stability currently makes a contribution, so I do not really understand that argument.

To conclude this point, it may indeed be sensible to stick with the current approach, albeit with the changes that the Minister has just adumbrated. However, given that at least one respondent suggested a fundamentally different methodology, it would be helpful to hear the Minister’s thoughts.

Secondly, how sensible was it to retain the current five-year cycle for determining the method and level of funding for the Bank on these operations? I say that because many of its financial stability functions, in particular, could be impacted significantly by Brexit, as of course could its monetary policy functions. As colleagues may well know, the PRA has introduced an EU withdrawal fee to its regime for financial institutions. However, there seems not to be even a single mention of Brexit in the explanatory memo for this change or the document “Review of the cash ratio deposit scheme: consultation on proposed changes”, which was released in February this year. Indeed, the latter suggests that the Bank’s policy costs will remain static over the four years following 2018-19. Does the Minister genuinely feel that the proposed method of contribution is likely to prove sufficient if we see the kind of no deal, highly disruptive scenario for which some Government Members have been pushing?

Finally, I note that the consultation suggests that we are talking about relatively small beer. The consultation document notes:

“In the wider context of the total tax burden on banks and building societies the review notes that in 2016-17, £3.0 billion was raised from the government bank levy, and over £1.6 billion from the bank corporation tax surcharge. Corporation tax receipts from the banking sector over the same period totalled £4.8 billion. By comparison the CRD scheme is looking to recover £169 million per annum.”

That tax burden is reducing in incidence because of decisions made by the current Government. I accept that the absolute value of tax collected has not diminished, given the return of many banks to profitability, as I have already mentioned.

Of course, many learned commentators suggest that that is one of the main reasons why corporation tax receipts appear to have increased despite a lowering of the rate. Those commentators suggest that the receipts would have not reduced, but risen if the rate had not been cut. In addition, I gently draw colleagues’ attention to the fact that the reduction in the bank levy is not compensated for by the corporation tax surcharge, and it leads, over time, to a £1.4 billion gap, as evidenced by the Government’s Red Book at the last Budget. We should therefore take decisions in this area informed by the fact that, overall, this Government have substantially reduced the taxation that falls on our banking sector. That is not, I suspect, an approach with which many of our constituents would agree.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Glen]

For the deficit over the last five-year period on its expenditure on these two functions, the Bank will have been obliged to find the funds from other sources within its organisation. We want to ensure that these particular functions—the monetary policy and financial stability functions—are properly funded and that there is flexibility over the amounts based on the prevailing gilts; they will be transparently and publicly available, because they are quoted all the time.

On the risk of the expansion of costs in the light of Brexit, the Government are working toward a solution that involves a long-term economic partnership. The enduring functions of the Bank of England to satisfy monetary policy and financial stability will continue. If, at some future point, the Bank of England realises further costs, it will be for the Bank to have conversations with the Treasury about the matter, but that is not anticipated. The Bank has been able to make projections over the next five years and commit to a budget that it is happy with under this model.

I have just received some advice on carried-forward costs. There are no fixed costs over five years, and there will be no carry-forward of the deficit. That will be dealt with, and we will start on the basis of the budget over the coming five years.

The hon. Lady made some wider observations about corporation tax. I think that they are out of the scope of this discussion, which is simply about the provision for this function of the Bank of England.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I mentioned corporation tax only because the consultation for the order set the requirement to place deposits with the Bank in the context of overall tax burdens on banks. It was mentioned in the consultation first; I did not come up with it initially.

[John Glen]

That was mentioned in passing, but the order is designed to give better assurance about the realising of the return required for the Bank of England to carry out these functions. I do not have anything more to add, so I hope that the Committee will agree to this draft order for the benefit of the Bank, our banking sector and the users of those services across the country.

Question put and agreed to.

Draft Double Taxation Relief (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) Order 2018 Draft Double Taxation Relief (Switzerland) Order 2018 Draft Double Taxation Relief and International Tax Enforcement (Uzbekistan) Order 2018

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2018 General Committees

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Hosie, for chairing today’s proceedings. I will focus my remarks on the MLI—I am grateful to the Minister for that shortening, for all our sakes—but I will also refer to the Swiss agreement in passing.

As the Minister rightly explained, the MLI is an innovative new way of effectively spreading, or leading to a convergence of, tax policy, developed by the OECD. Essentially, it is a set of different amendments to double tax agreements. All countries that have signed up to the MLI will implement all the amendments in all their double tax agreements, if the other country is also a signatory to the MLI.

As the Minister also explained, the OECD has promoted that approach to try to make all double tax treaties better at stopping base erosion and profit shifting. Given that Britain has a comparatively large number of double tax agreements—which are very varied in terms of how they prevent double taxation and, I would say, often facilitate double non-taxation—it appears sensible for the UK to adopt the MLI. As I noted in the discussion of the MLI in the Finance Bill Committee in January, it was encouraging to see the UK taking a leading role in defining and agreeing the MLI, marking—I would say—quite a contrast with its attempts to block international co-operation when it comes to improved transparency for trusts, for example.

None the less, three areas of the legislation raise significant concerns, all of which arise from a point I made on 16 January in the debate on the Finance Bill, when the UK’s adoption of the MLI was first mentioned in law. I expressed concern that we lacked sufficient information to understand why the Government had taken certain decisions, and not others, in relation to their implementation of the MLI. As the Minister explained very ably in his introductory remarks, countries that are adopting the MLI have a series of choices to make about how exactly they do so and which of its provisions they take on board.

Back in January, the Government did not provide much information about why certain choices had been made. We did not get a lot more information, to be honest, in the Minister’s otherwise illuminating introductory remarks. That is quite a big problem, because traditionally double tax treaties have often led to source countries in particular, which tend to be developing countries, being denied tax revenues, which then accrue to already profitable firms in richer countries—not necessarily even to the revenue of richer countries.

We need more information on three areas, and I hope that the Minister will be able to provide some. That is essential if we are properly to show that the Government are holding to the principle of policy coherence for development in more than just a rhetorical form.

My first question is, why did Britain decide to exclude some of its double tax agreements from the list of countries mentioned in its adoption document? As colleagues may know, when a country signs up to the MLI, it has to indicate the double tax agreements to which it will apply the MLI. The UK excluded double tax agreements with Austria, the Falklands, the Faroe Islands, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates.

The Minister explained why Switzerland is not included. Are there any other countries where DTAs are put into primary legislation or passed through national legislation? I would have thought there are quite a few, so that seems like a slightly peculiar explanation of why we have taken a different approach to Switzerland. Does the Swiss system have a unique approach to tax legislation? I did not know that it did. Perhaps the Minister could explain that, because otherwise we would expect to see a similar approach being adopted to lots of other countries. That does not seem to be the case.

Given that a number of the jurisdictions that I have mentioned have been referred to in investigations into tax avoidance and evasion, it seems rather peculiar that they are not included here. It would be interesting to hear what the Government’s reasoning was and whether the requirements of the MLI are likely to lead to amendments to the double tax agreements for those jurisdictions too. If they are, what is the timetable to do that?

There are a number of targeted anti-avoidance rules in the MLI that countries can choose to adopt, but our Government decided not to. In the explanation of the MLI that we had previously, it was stated that that was essentially because they were too stringent. The Government stated that

“the mechanical test introduced by those provisions”—

the excluded ones—

“could deny treaty benefits in circumstances that are not abusive and would not target any genuine avoidance structures more effectively than the PPT”,

which is the principal purpose test.

The Minister said that the provisions were excluded because it was believed that they would have a disproportionate effect on corporate transactions, or they would be otherwise unnecessary. I find that a rather peculiar assessment, as do a number of experts. The principal purpose test is a very wide test—it includes a lot of discretion. Often, it is quite difficult for tax authorities to use it without being challenged, and most authorities and experts agree that strict and tight rules are better, because they avoid such ambiguities.

It would be helpful to hear from the Minister why we did not adopt articles 8, 9, 10 and 14. They apply a minimum ownership threshold for reduced tax on dividends, which makes rules about capital gains from shares and entities owning immovable property more precise. Those articles apply an anti-abuse rule for permanent establishments situated in third jurisdictions, and prevent the splitting up of contracts where companies game the system and pretend, for example, that one building site is delivered through a whole bunch of different contracts, when really it is delivered by just one firm.

All those measures were designed to prevent the kind of abusive behaviour that is frequently adopted by firms trying to avoid tax, especially in developing countries, yet the British Government have decided not to adopt them. Incidentally, the other country that has done that is the Netherlands, which I do not think has a model that we should aspire to when it comes to policy coherence for development in tax practice.

We need illumination from the Government on the rules on permanent establishment. Indeed, the Minister referred to those in his introductory remarks. I am very confused about precisely where Government are when it comes to the taxation of digital companies and assessing where their permanent establishment is. In relation to this MLI, the Government decided they would not adopt article 12 on the artificial avoidance of permanent establishment status through commissionaire arrangements and similar strategies. That contrasts with two other policy positions from the Government, which themselves are contradictory.

We have a new position paper from the Government on corporate tax and the digital economy, which says that they want much more ambitious measures, which could be agreed as part of the overall EU package of change. But in April, at the informal ECOFIN meeting, the Chancellor seemed to suggest through a spokesperson that the UK would instead only aim in the long run for internationally agreed measures—in particular, only those that the United States would agree to. That could take a very long time because, as we know, the US is directly against any development in this area from the OECD and the EU.

It would be good for the Government to tell us what we will do. Will we take proactive action on permanent establishments, as with the Google tax? Will we co-ordinate that with the EU? Will we try to do that with the OECD? Will we wait for the US? Surely, we should be an example in this regard. It will be interesting to hear the Government’s assessment.

Finally, in contrast to previous areas that I just mentioned, where the UK Government should have opted in to certain measures but decided not to, it is very strange that the Government have opted in to so-called mandatory binding arbitration in their adoption of the MLI. That will mean that if a multinational taxpayer triggers a dispute with the UK’s interpretation of a treaty and the dispute is not resolved within two years, the ultimate decision about whether the UK or the multinational’s home country has the right to tax the income under dispute will be taken by a panel of tax professionals—not through ordinary routes.

There are many problems with adopting that procedure, and they are analogous to some of the concerns raised around the inclusion of investor-state dispute settlements in trade deals, which occasioned a lot of public debate. I am sure that all members of the Committee will have received a lot of correspondence from constituents on that matter. Why did the Government not provide an assessment of the impact of adopting mandatory binding arbitration on the extent to which our tax policy will be coherent with our development goals? I raised this issue in the Finance Bill Committee, and was grateful to the Minister for listening to me there, but we did not get that information before this statutory instrument came before the House, and we need it.

I am well aware that, as the Minister said during the Finance Bill Committee, countries have to agree to arbitration in their adoption of the MLI before it can be applied to them, but that does not detract from the fact that the resources available to developing countries, particularly very low-income countries, to devote to their case and to amassing the information that would need to be provided to those tax professionals are minuscule in comparison with those available to the sort of multinational companies that we might be talking about. It would be a David and Goliath-style contest, and I am very concerned that that would not comply with policy coherence for development.

Finally, it is unclear why the Government have failed to provide an indication of how Parliament will be able to scrutinise the operation of this mandatory binding arbitration. We have gone in the wrong direction on this—the Government have expressly adopted paragraph 23.5 of the MLI. That paragraph requires written agreement from companies and their advisers not to disclose any information they receive in the course of their proceedings, which goes further than the default, to try to prevent that information being publicised. It is not clear to me how that is consistent with ensuring appropriate scrutiny of tax policy by Parliament, which the Government have repeatedly told us they are committed to. It would be helpful if the Minister could explain why that decision was taken.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the Minister for seeking clarification. The reason I mentioned it was that, with the adoption of the MLI, we have what many would view as quite a lax approach to defining permanent establishments, compared with article 12, if we had adopted that. However, in that consultation, the Government seemed to suggest a stricter approach. There seems to be a contradiction, which in itself is contradicted by what the Chancellor said at the informal ECOFIN—he seemed to say that we need to have US agreement before we can have stricter rules.

[Mel Stride]

I thank the hon. Lady for that clarification. I take this in two parts. These are different situations. When it comes to taxation of profits derived from digital platforms, be they social media, search engines or online marketplaces, the critical thing is to ensure that we tax the value that accrues to the interaction of consumers with those marketplaces. We are working with the OECD and the European Union, as the hon. Lady pointed out, to come up with an appropriate way to address that particular challenge of the current international taxation regime. As to the Chancellor’s remarks about whether we might go it alone or have to wait for America, I am not entirely sure that he said what was reported. That is the information I received, although I did notice those comments in the press, as did the hon. Lady.

We have debated mandatory arbitration before. The essential point is that, in order to enter into a DTA, both sides have to agree that it is an appropriate treaty to enter. Both sides have to be comfortable in the round with it. There is no circumstance in which the United Kingdom could therefore force a country against its will to enter into agreement with mandatory binding arbitration.

[Anneliese Dodds]

Surely it would be helpful, given the differences in resource that could none the less be provided between developing and developed nations, for the Government to carry out that analysis into the use of mandatory binding arbitration, and whether it exemplifies policy clearance for development. It would be wonderful to hear a Treasury Minister say that the Government might consider adopting this and doing so explicitly.

[Mel Stride]

The Government’s view is that mandatory binding arbitration is a very useful element of these agreements. In the absence of that, the process undertaken might be ultimately inconclusive. In order to ensure that these agreements work efficiently, we believe there is great merit to that approach.

I lastly turn to parliamentary scrutiny. Matters reserved against will be for the Government to determine in time although, as I have indicated, we have already put out preliminary suggestions of what we will do. As time goes forward, this or any other Government may decide to remove some of those reserved powers. It is down to this Committee and this moment to take a decision on whether in the round all those possible changes are agreed to or not. On that basis, I urge that we move forward with the recommendations.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Double Taxation Relief (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) Order 2018.

DRAFT DOUBLE TAXATION RELIEF (SWITZERLAND) ORDER 2018

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Double Taxation (Switzerland) Order 2018.—(Mel Stride.)

DRAFT DOUBLE TAXATION RELIEF AND INTERNATIONAL TAX ENFORCEMENT (UZBEKISTAN) ORDER 2018

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Double Taxation Relief and International Tax Enforcement (Uzbekistan) Order 2018.—(Mel Stride.)

Stamp Duty Land Tax

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Government appear to have arranged to give this statement so that they can pat themselves on the back, while reducing the amount of time spent on customs union with the EU. I appreciate that that issue may be controversial—albeit only for the Government; every other actor seems to feel that some kind of customs union is a good idea—but that should not prevent democracy from running its course on the matter. The Government’s cunning plan to introduce the statement today has spectacularly backfired, because rather than offering an opportunity for congratulation and digression, it has merely provided a chance to indicate the Government’s failure to deal with the housing crisis.

The Government have said—we heard it again just now—that their stamp duty cut is intended to back home ownership, but home ownership has fallen to a 30-year low under this Government. They say that the cut was intended to help first-time buyers, but there are now a million fewer under-45s who own their own home than there were in 2010. Home ownership was up by some 1 million under Labour, but it has fallen since 2010 under Conservative Ministers as part of this Government’s eight years of failure on housing.

At the root of that failure is an inability to increase the supply of genuinely affordable housing. I do not need to set out how the stamp duty cut has failed to deal with that issue; I will use the words of the Office for Budget Responsibility, which stated that

“the main gainers from the policy are people who already own property,”

not first-time buyers. In contrast, measures from the Government to increase supply are woefully inadequate. To take just one example, local authorities will only be able to bid into a pot in order to borrow to build—a farcical situation when demand is so pressing. The number of genuinely affordable homes is declining, not increasing, under this Government.

We parliamentarians see all around us the worst impact of the Government’s failure on housing, whether it is on the people we walk past who are rough sleeping in the city of London—rough sleeping is now at record levels here, as it is in many other cities—or the 120,000 children who are living in temporary accommodation, and whose families come to see us in our constituency surgeries. I am keen to hear the Minister’s response to the question of whether he has commissioned research into the impact of this flagship measure on prices, in the absence of decisive measures to increase affordable supply.

It would be helpful to hear from the Minister how Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is dealing with what appears to be a quadrupling of money-back claims related to a malfunctioning online calculator. What HMRC rather amusingly—it is not amusing for the people affected—calls a “ready reckoner” appears to be anything but, in view of its failure to take into account relevant stamp duty discounts. I would be grateful to hear from the Minister when it will be amended so that it properly reflects mixed-use properties.

On the subject of confusion over what stamp duty should be paid, it would be good to hear from the Minister about what the Government are doing to deal with those who make bulk purchases of individual flats, thus avoiding the buy-to-let surcharge. Let us imagine, as a hypothetical example, someone purchasing seven flats, worth between £450,000 and £1 million each, in a seaside town. They might try to do so using their own company, rather than as an individual. If so, I would hope that they registered the beneficial ownership of that company with Companies House—a matter that I look forward to debating with the Minister next week in our consideration of the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill. Aside from beneficial ownership, however, by undertaking such a bulk purchase, our imaginary, hypothetical person would avoid a significant amount of stamp duty—say, around £100,000—which could have gone into our cash-strapped NHS. Can the Minister please inform the House what he is doing to deal with that loophole?

Above all, can we please have genuine action from the Government to deal with our appalling housing crisis— we parliamentarians cannot fail to notice that it is causing much misery to our constituents and blighting the lives of many children—rather than misplaced self-congratulation?

[Mel Stride]

I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution and her questions. She opened by asking what was the motivation for giving this statement today. I reassure her that it is that we believe that housing policy is one of the great issues of our age and we are determined to get on top of it, as the Chancellor set out in the autumn Budget. That is why—to move on to her question about how we will drive up the level of home ownership—the Chancellor made it clear at Budget that a further £15 billion would be made available, taking us up to £44 billion over the next five years, to drive up the supply of new homes. That is alongside planning changes and the review that my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) is undertaking to ensure that where planning permission is granted, houses are actually built. I suggest that we look at our record. Last year there were 217,000 new properties in this country, which is the largest figure since 2005-06. That indicates that our move towards having 300,000 more properties on the market by the middle of the next decade is realistic.

The hon. Lady asked specific questions about the effect of stamp duty relief on house prices, and she will know that the OBR forecast a small impact of 0.3%. She will also know that that projection did not take into account the various supply-side measures that I have mentioned, and other measures that we have undertaken. She asked about the specific case of properties bought within a corporate wrapper, and I hope she will be familiar with the annual tax on enveloped dwellings, which stands at 15% if the property is put into the wrapper. Indeed, on the basis she outlined where a property is then rented out, ongoing charges recruit tax in that way.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Thank you for your very carefully tailored piece of demand stimulation, Mr Speaker. It was much appreciated for the economy of the Chamber.

My hon. Friend is right. As I have already said, working with the EU on this interim proposal for a turnover-based tax is, we believe, the right thing to do. We have, of course, also introduced an interim measure of our own, seeking to tax licence fees that are paid to low-tax jurisdictions where we judge that the underlying basis of the licence fee is economic activity taking place in the UK. We have that measure already in place, and we will continue to work with the EU on its proposed measure.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Despite promising to tighten up on Scottish Limited Partnerships, not a single non-compliant SLP appears to have been fined, which could have raised up to £2.2 billion. When will SLPs be banned, and what action are the Government taking on other shell companies to stop tax fiddling and money laundering?

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Lady asks a specific and detailed question about Scottish Limited Partnerships. The legislation is designed to deter the kind of activity to which she refers. The absence of fines should not be taken as an indication of an absence of activity. As she will know, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs always seeks, first of all, to deter non-compliant behaviour before it moves into hard compliance. If I may, I will write to her with a more detailed answer on the very specific point about Scottish Limited Partnerships.

Draft Finance Act 2003, Part 3 (Amendment) Order 2018

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 General Committees

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Davies. It is also a pleasure, as always, to sit across from the Minister, to whom I am grateful for his explanation of the measure.

Before this sitting, I attempted to access the tax information and impact note for this measure—the TIIN system is very good—and the most likely candidate appeared to be that entitled “Finance Act 2003: updates to Part 3”, published on 22 February. However, that refers to the draft statutory instrument being laid before the House of Commons on 5 March. It is not clear whether that is the right one. Perhaps this is more a point for the civil servants than the Minister, but could they not direct those interested to the exact URL for the TIIN concerned in the links of different tax-related SIs rather than to the generic TIIN webpage? Surely that would help all of us who want to look very closely at all the measures we cover in SI Committees and access the relevant information.

The measure at hand is an uncomplicated one, effectively substituting references to the Union customs code for mentions of the previous Community customs code. I do, however, have a couple of brief questions. First, as I understand it, and as the Minister has mentioned, the UCC came into action during spring 2016, so it is unclear why the changes to the Act were not made until now. That seems like a rather large time gap. Perhaps he can enlighten us and reassure us that all civil administrative financial penalties applied between spring 2016 and the current day will not be subject to any challenge as a result.

Secondly, I have found it difficult to access accurate information about how many civil administrative financial penalties have been levied over time. That is surely relevant, given that any effective customs regime needs to include the potential for fines to be levied when behaviour has not been in line with the law. However, the capacity of HMRC to do that currently—let alone in the future—does not appear to have been adequately thought through by the Government, let alone put into place.

The Minister probably recalls that during debate in the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill Committee I indicated the rather extreme challenges facing HMRC—a number of colleagues and industry representatives also did so—especially if in the future it will be required to deliver a new approach to customs, including a potentially unique -in-the-world, highly experimental customs partnership. That would be coming on stream very soon after the implementation of the new customs declaration service system, and all at a time when HMRC’s headcount has been cut substantially compared with 2010.

As I put it in the Bill Committee, the customs function in the UK is arguably already overstretched. The Government have maintained that comparative analysis of its capacity is not possible, but perhaps they have not looked at the World Customs Organisation’s annual reports. The latest one suggests that the UK has about 5,000 customs officers. The Government—in fact, the Minister said this to me in Committee—have committed to providing, potentially, another 5,000, so doubling the number of customs officers. However, even with the existing load of customs declarations to process, each of the customs officers currently in HMRC has to process more than 15,000 customs declarations per annum. That is the number averaged across the workforce, and it is about 10 times as many as every US and Canadian customs officer, 15 times as many as their German counterparts and more than 30 times as many as their Australian counterparts. As I noted in Committee, although there may be issues with comparability, they would have to be enormous if that large gap could be accounted for simply through different reporting conventions.

All this is highly relevant to the statutory instrument, because we need to know that it can feasibly be implemented by an already overstretched HMRC. To finish, I ask the Minister what his assessment is of the ability of HMRC currently to detect activity that ignores, bends or breaks the customs rules and to ensure that that activity is effectively sanctioned through the use of civil administrative penalties.

Draft Scottish Rates of Income Tax (Consequential Amendments) Order 2018

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 General Committees

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

These measures address problems relating to the married couples’ allowance and other issues raised earlier in the year, following the publication of the Scottish Government’s income tax plans for 2018-19. The Financial Secretary has gone through the other areas that needed change, such as gift aid and pensions tax treatment.

Of course, Labour supported the devolution process in Scotland, and that includes decision making over income tax. I therefore do not want to comment extensively on the proposals, beyond putting on the record Scottish Labour’s concerns that the plans do not go far enough to make our tax system more progressive.

The Economy

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

I agree with my council leader in so many ways, but the leader of Chelmsford City Council is not responsible for the education budget; that is covered within the Essex County Council area, where more frontline delivery of children’s services is happening every year.

On the issue of tax, it is vital to remember that it is this Government who have made sure that the wealthier pay the largest share of tax, and the top 1% of earners are paying more tax than ever before.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the hon. Lady not acknowledge, however, that ONS statistics show that the top decile pays less than the bottom decile? I believe she is talking only about income tax, which is very limited, and not the whole burden of tax.

[Vicky Ford]

I refer the hon. Lady back to what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said at Prime Minister’s questions yesterday, when she reaffirmed that the top 1% of earners are paying more tax than ever before.

Skills are absolutely vital to our future. I remember that under the last Labour Government over 1 million young people—those under the age of 25—were not in employment, education or training. It was completely shocking, but now youth unemployment is at all-time lows, and that is not by accident. In my constituency, 5,350 young people have started apprenticeships since 2010.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is real pleasure to close this debate for the Opposition and, it is a pleasure, as always, to follow the words of the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford). Like me, she entered this Parliament from the European Parliament, and while I may not always agree with everything she says, I know that she says it with a great deal of sincerity.

I am sure that we will all remember, back in 2010, when George Osborne, in his first speech as Chancellor to the Conservative party conference, maintained that we are

“all in this together.”

As he put it:

“The public must know that the burden”—

of deficit reduction—

“is being fairly shared.”

But opinion polls show that the public know that the opposite has occurred over the past eight years. The Conservatives have failed to deal with the long-term problems of our economy, at the same time as peoples’ living standards continue to fall. The Government have failed time and again—four times, precisely—to be on track to meet their own deficit elimination targets. The figures presented in the spring statement last week were hailed by the Chancellor as a turning point and, if I may say so, we had the same hubristic performance from the Government Front Bench today.

Closer examination reveals a deeply disturbing picture—a “lean, mean” picture, to use the perhaps rather ill-chosen phrase of the hon. Member for Clacton (Giles Watling). Public sector borrowing is still higher than was forecast a year ago, and debt is over £700 billion higher than when the Conservatives came to power. It is not “talking Britain down” to point out that the UK is headed for lower-than-expected growth by 2020 and 2021, as noted by the OBR. Expectations are not being exceeded, as suggested by the hon. Member for Angus (Kirstene Hair), but dashed.

I note that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury did not mention economic growth once. Perhaps the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), will come on to that in his final remarks, and I hope so because the Opposition believe, and many economists agree, that a significant reason for the lower-than-expected growth is the UK’s lower-than-expected productivity rates, with productivity increases having been revised down for 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022. In fact, in 2017, business investment—a core element of improving productivity—was half its average level between 2010 and 2015.

Last year, economic growth in Britain was the slowest in the G7, which is in contrast with the situation when Labour left office. I take up the suggestion of the hon. Member for Chelmsford to remember the situation when Labour left office, because I do not want to forget it. When Labour left office, the economy was growing rapidly, and the second quarter of 2010 saw the fastest growth since 2008. Our economy recovered after the crash under Labour, and we have had eight wasted years that have led to a lower trajectory of growth than under Labour. It is necessary to look at the facts and to discover how this Government have slowed our economy, particularly in international comparisons.

The Opposition are the real optimists. When we look at our economy’s performance and compare it with those of other OECD and G7 nations, we see that we are not fulfilling our potential. That is holding our citizens and our country back. We can do so much better. We do not want to just talk things up, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) advocates; we want to make them better. That is the difference between our position and that of the Government.

The Government’s economic policies have clearly failed on their own terms, but in addition the pain of deficit reduction—to the extent that deficit reduction has occurred—has not been equally distributed. I return to that conference speech by George Osborne, painful as it may be for the Government. In that speech, he stated that he would impose a permanent tax on banks, and that he would stick with the 50p tax rate for the highest earners. This Conservative Government have done the opposite. Just a few weeks ago, Labour gave the Conservatives the chance to reverse their reduction in the banking levy, to release funds to fill the gaping hole in children’s services, and they refused. In an eloquent and well-informed speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Fiona Onasanya) drew attention to the enormous stress that is being placed on children’s services in Peterborough. She is a very strong advocate for those children in her area.

Overall, this Government will have cut taxes for the best-off and for profitable corporations to the tune of £70 billion over the course of this Parliament. The Government have also failed to tackle illicit financial flows vigorously enough, as the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) said. I can reveal to the House today, as a result of my own work and research, that this Government have lost the eye-watering sum of £2.2 billion by failing to tackle the problem of Scottish limited partnerships. That is a problem that many of us have been raising for many months, but the Government have not got a grip on it, and furthermore, they have not dealt with it through fines. They have lost £2.2 billion.

Everyone, aside from the very best-off, has felt the pinch from this Government’s approach. As many have mentioned, real wages continue to fall. We have had a tiny tick up—the first for very many months—but overall we have had the longest squeeze in wages in this country since Napoleonic times. Indeed, we learned yesterday that, according to the Office for National Statistics, the average worker now brings home about £15 less a week than they did before the financial crisis. Nurses, teachers, police and other public sector workers had their pay frozen until recently. The cost of lifting the cap for the police had to be found from existing funds; and it remains to be seen whether decent pay for nurses will be at the expense of terms and conditions. Teachers and other public sector workers must struggle on as their wages become increasingly out of step with the cost of living.

All that, of course, is before even mentioning the omnishambles of this Government’s approach to Brexit. I have lost count of the number of business people I have spoken to who are incredulous at the Government’s lack of grip on the negotiation process, and their ideological decision to rule out potential membership of a customs union. But it is all right; we learned today from the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), to whom I am most grateful, that we can solve all these problems with just “a bit of electronics”. So that is fine. Just a bit of electronics and it will all be fine.

[David Linden]

Sorted.

[Anneliese Dodds]

All sorted.

The worst impacts have been concentrated on the least well-off people. Earlier this month, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission published its report, “The cumulative impact of tax and welfare reforms”. The report showed, on the basis of the commission’s exhaustive research and modelling, that overall, changes to taxes, benefits, tax credits and universal credit announced since 2010 have been regressive, however measured. Those in the bottom two deciles have lost, on average, approximately 10% of their net income, with much smaller losses for those higher up the income distribution.

The hon. Member for Chelmsford is usually very accurate and committed to accuracy, but I regret having to say that perhaps she needs to look again at the latest figures around taxation. Indeed, the Prime Minister was wrong on this. I was in a television studio with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury when I heard what the Prime Minister said, and the Prime Minister was incorrect on this. The most recent ONS statistics show that the best-off people pay 34% of their gross income in tax, and the worst-off 10% pay 42% of their gross income in tax under this Government. That is the reality. Yes, those at the top may pay more income tax, but the overall tax burden is unequal and regressive, and this Government are doing nothing to deal with that.

Moreover, the analysis by the Equality and Human Rights Commission showed that the changes put in place by the Conservative and coalition Governments will have a disproportionately negative impact on several protected groups, including disabled people, certain ethnic minorities and women. Appallingly—I will finish on this—for households with at least one disabled adult and a disabled child the average annual cash losses are just over £6,500—more than 13% of average net income for those families has been lost since 2010. The hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), who is no longer in his place, stated that his Government were focused on practically achieving the best outcomes for people. Perhaps he can tell me and other Opposition Members, and indeed his constituents, how that loss represents a good outcome for disabled people. To use the buzzword of the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), the economy has been reset—it has been reset in the wrong direction.

I note that this Government are also trying to reset their economic language. We did not hear this during the debate, but perhaps we will hear it in the Minister’s closing remarks. We no longer hear from the Government about poverty according to its usual definition, which traditionally, in Britain, has been relative poverty. Now they will talk only about absolute poverty, because they know that when we talk about relative poverty, the usual measure in this country and internationally, we see that we are sliding backwards.

That is the legacy of this Government: tax cuts for the best-off, and reduced incomes for disabled people and those on average and low salaries. Another approach is possible; and it is the approach that Labour has developed. It is one that we have costed, unlike the Government in relation to many of their current items of spending. We need to have a Britain that is growing sustainably at a rate comparable to that of other countries like ours, rather than lagging behind them. We need to have a Britain that halts the scourge of child poverty, which will soar by 1 million children under this Government unless checked. We need a Britain that truly enables the potential of everyone. That is ambition, and we would like the Government to start listening to it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anneliese Dodds]

Does the Minister acknowledge that under his Government, record levels of in-work poverty are affecting children?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am surprised that the hon. Lady cannot bring herself to welcome what I have just described, even in her own constituency, where jobs and employment are booming—

[Anneliese Dodds]

Answer the question.

[Robert Jenrick]

I will come to the hon. Lady’s point.

It is not just important to us to create a country of working people; it is our mission to create a nation of well-paid people in secure and fulfilling careers. We are doing that by tackling the root causes of our low national productivity as no Government have done before. We are seeing some positive signs. Inflation is falling—it fell from 3% to 2.7% in February—and the OBR has said that it will keep falling, leading to real wage growth.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

Well, we have been investing in all parts of the United Kingdom, including the east midlands. We created the midlands engine, which I just mentioned and which is designed to unleash the economic potential of the midlands. In the west midlands, we have seen the huge potential that Andy Street has now given to a city that has been run by the Labour party for too long.

What are we doing to invest in new technology? As my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) described, we are investing more in research and development than has been invested since the 1970s, when the statistics were first recorded, so we are probably investing more than has ever been invested in modern times. We have made the R&D tax credits more generous. We are investing in the enterprise investment scheme and the entrepreneurs’ relief that are so important to crowd in investment to the United Kingdom from all over the world. The Chancellor is today at the FinTech summit that the Treasury is hosting, with 600 investors from all over the world coming to the United Kingdom to see some of our most exciting business that are creating 60,000 new jobs in the FinTech sector alone.

What have we done to create a business environment? We have lowered capital gains tax and corporation tax, and committed to lowering it still further. Labour would reverse those changes. Our reductions in corporation tax have actually resulted in more tax revenue for the Treasury and more money for public services. That is prosperity over ideology.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am sure that the Minister wants to be accurate on these matters. Therefore, perhaps he will slightly correct his suggestion that the increased revenue was due to the reduction in corporation tax. So many commentators—including, I believe, the IFS—have said that the increase in revenue is due to, for example, banks returning to profitability, and it should not be connected with the reduction in rate.

[Robert Jenrick]

In the Treasury we try to deal in facts, rather than in comments, and the effect of reducing corporation tax has been an increase in revenue.

The Chief Secretary and other Conservative Members have said that we must make the case once again for free markets—something we thought we might never have to do again. However, as Margaret Thatcher and, I think, Tony Benn—an unusual pairing—used to say, “There are no final victories in politics, and if you want to continue to win important arguments, you have to keep making them and restating them over and over again.” The case for free markets is threatened as never before by the hard-left, heirloom policies and personalities of Labour Front Benchers. As someone who used to work in the auction business, I can spot an antique a mile away.

The central battle on this conflicting vision of our society is being fought again. That matters for two reasons. First, just as our parents and grandparents paid the price for this ideology last time it was employed in this country, we do not want our children and grandchildren to pay the price for its resurrection today. Last time, it left us a weak country saddled with debt and high taxes, unable and unwilling to embrace new technology or to invest in public services—and working people paid the price.

Secondly, to paraphrase Robert Kennedy, living in a democracy is not merely about the absence of tyranny but the presence of freedom. A free market matters to us and our constituents not just because we have learned that it is the best way to run an economy but because it underpins all our other freedoms. That is why we will continue to defend it as we build an economy and a country that works for everyone.

Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [Lords] (Sixth sitting)

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Alex Norris]

I thank my hon. Friend for that useful intervention. I absolutely agree. We should not see the Paradise papers and the Panama papers as the past, and assume that we will not see anything about this issue again. We are likely to see such things periodically on different programmes and in different newspapers. Every time that happens, people will ask, “What did you do about it? When you heard about it last time, how did you act?” If we say, “Well, we have this brilliant law, which we consider world-leading, but we stopped short of doing this,” people will wonder why we did that, and that will damage our brand.

This is not just about the British overseas territories—people will say, “Hang on a minute. They are British. What are you doing in your engagement with them?”—but about the Crown dependencies. The Crown will, dare I say, be a very important part of brand Britain, and people will draw a very straight line. Even if we feel that we should not be able to act in this area, people will expect that we can, so we ought to have a pretty clear picture on it. What is being asked for in the two new clauses is proportionate and sensible, and hopefully something that we can all support.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I do not want to speak for very long, or repeat what colleagues have said. I very much agree with the comments made by my hon. Friends the Members for Nottingham North and for Bishop Auckland. However, there are a couple of aspects that I would like to emphasise, and provide the Committee with a bit more information on.

First, it is the friends of the overseas territories and Crown dependencies who are deeply concerned about the lack of action in this area. I have had many meetings with representatives from both groups of jurisdictions over the years, both as an MP and as a Member of the European Parliament before that, when I sat on tax committees and the Panama papers committees in the European Parliament. I have had many discussions on these topics. I acknowledge that there is currently some resistance, but there is also an awareness of the reputational damage that is being done to their jurisdictions, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North mentioned.

There is also concern about having the resource necessary to implement more transparency. I strongly agree with what the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire said in that regard. That is why our new clause calls for support for the overseas territories to implement the changes. We do not want to end up in a situation similar to what happened in the Turks and Caicos Islands, where there were repeated warnings that there were problems but nothing was done until it got to such a height that there had to be what some would say was a very draconian response. We do not want to get to that situation; we want to see change. I will go on to explain what happened in the Turks and Caicos Islands in a moment, because colleagues need to know about that. We have not yet talked about the instances where Britain has exercised its relationships and the levers it possesses.

It is also important that we acknowledge that for many of the overseas territories and Crown dependencies there has been positive legislative change, particularly around 2013 and 2014. However, that has died off a bit recently. One thing that worried me was the fact that the British Virgin Islands have passed new laws against whistleblowers. That has caused a lot of concern, and appears to suggest a shift in the wrong direction. The US State Department, for example, has commented on the fact that low numbers of prosecutions are coming from some of the jurisdictions. Frankly, it is a bit of an embarrassment that the US State Department has commented on that, and we have not seen the necessary action.

It is also a major concern for our country. Others have commented on this, but we have not yet quoted from the National Crime Agency’s “National Strategic Assessment of Serious and Organised Crime 2016”. That report spelled out the problem with having our open register of beneficial ownership without having commensurate obligations in our associated jurisdictions—not to mention the register’s own problems, which we will come on to. The report said:

“When legislation to report beneficial ownership begins to be fully enforced…the UK will be less vulnerable to shell companies formed by professional enablers and others within the UK for the purposes of enabling bribery, corruption and money laundering. The UK will remain at risk from company formation in overseas jurisdictions where similar legislation is not in place.”

It is a direct concern for Britain that we have this leaky fence, to stretch again the metaphor of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North.

It is particularly worrying that the British Government’s position seems to have shifted backwards. Other colleagues have mentioned that, and I wanted to draw attention to the precise language that is now being used by the Government. David Cameron gave us a commitment to beneficial ownership registers—not to public ones. We wanted him to go further, but he committed to getting registers that could at least be used by law enforcement agencies.

As of the debate on the Bill in the other place, we have a new formulation of words, talking instead about either registers, or similarly effective mechanisms to beneficial ownership registers. It would be helpful to hear from the Minister exactly how they are similarly effective. I asked a parliamentary question about this issue and I was told that, for example, electronic search platforms are a technical solution designed to achieve precisely the same result. Well, they do not achieve the same result if it takes longer for law enforcement agencies to get the information they need to root out crooks and prosecute them.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan)]

Unfortunately for the hon. Lady, she seems unaware that I was the Minister responsible for Turks and Caicos, as a Minister in the Department for International Development at the time. The reasons she cited for our intervention are completely inaccurate. There was a growing financial deficit of £30 million, forecast to be £60 million and then £90 million—it would have been half a billion pounds within a very short time. On that basis, we stepped in and parachuted in a chief financial officer to get the public finances back into shape. It was a great success and is a good example of us intervening in a perfectly proper way in co-operation with the Governor and the Government there.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the Minister for those comments; I might agree with the second half of them. I wonder whether his remembering of the time is the same as that of the relevant FCO Minister. I am terribly sorry; I do not know who the individuals were, but I was not in the House at the time. He or she commented:

“These are some of the worst allegations that I have ever seen about sitting politicians”

and

“when things go badly wrong…we need to act”.

I suspect that they were not talking simply about a budget deficit at that stage; they may have been talking about other matters.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

The hon. Lady is conflating two separate issues. There was a parallel legal issue over the plight and fleeing of Mr Misick, but that was not the basis on which we intervened.

[Anneliese Dodds]

Whether the intervention was due to alleged corruption in the activities of the former leader or budgetary matters, the arguments point in the same direction. When the British Government saw there was a problem, they decided it was appropriate to take action. We are lucky to have the Minister here. We are grateful to hear of his experience, and I hope he will inform us of how, in that regard, we can use that experience, in a consensual, respectful manner, to deal with our associated territories in relation to ownership registers.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

This has been a lively and interesting debate on an issue that we all agree is of importance. It boils down to how we think it appropriate for the Government to act. I am grateful to hon. Members for tabling new clauses, and I appreciate the desire for the overseas territories and Crown dependencies to adopt public registers. However, we should acknowledge the significant steps already taken by those jurisdictions in this area and continue to build on that progress.

While we continue to push for public registers to become the global standard, we should recognise that the arrangements that the territories and dependencies have concluded with the UK exceed the international standards set by the Financial Action Task Force, which do not require private registers, let alone public registers. Nevertheless, should public registers become the global standard, we would expect the overseas territories and Crown dependencies to meet that standard.

As the Committee knows, the overseas territories and Crown dependencies are separate jurisdictions with their own democratically elected Governments. We have therefore legislated for them without their consent only in exceptional circumstances—for example, to decriminalise homosexuality in certain territories, to ensure they were compliant with international human rights obligations. By contrast, financial services are an area of domestic responsibility for territory and dependency Governments.

Legislating for those jurisdictions without their consent effectively disenfranchises their elected representatives and risks harming our overall relationship with them. It also risks leading to a flight of business to other, less regulated jurisdictions, with the undesirable consequence that our law enforcement authorities would not have the same level of access to beneficial ownership information as under the existing bilateral arrangements. Imposing public registers of company beneficial ownership on the overseas territories would carry with it the risk that the territories would be less willing to work with us on this important issue.

[Dame Cheryl Gillan in the Chair]

I would like to draw parallels with the devolved Administrations and the Sewel convention. The hon. Member for Glasgow Central addressed the point on Second Reading:

“Much as I do not wish the House to legislate on Scottish matters, I do not want us to legislate for overseas territories or Crown dependencies without consent.”—[Official Report, 20 February 2018; Vol. 636, c. 92.]

I agree with her that that is the right approach.

The overseas territories and Crown dependencies have already made significant progress on beneficial ownership. Since we concluded our exchanges of notes with them in 2016, they have passed new primary legislation and delivered technological improvements to comply with the terms of the arrangements. They have committed to provide UK law enforcement authorities with automatic access to beneficial ownership information within 24 hours of a request being made, or within one hour in urgent cases. Those arrangements strengthen our law enforcement authorities’ ability to investigate serious organised crime, including money laundering and tax evasion.

The hon. Member for Oxford East asked about what are termed similarly effective systems. Some jurisdictions have opted under the bilateral arrangements concluded with the UK to establish an electronic search platform, allowing them to gain access to beneficial ownership information held by their authorities or by corporate service providers.

The exchanges of notes permit such similarly effective arrangements, provided that the following criteria are met. Law enforcement authorities can obtain beneficial ownership information without restrictions, and that information is available for use in both civil and criminal proceedings. Law enforcement authorities can also quickly identify all corporate and legal entities connected to a beneficial owner, without needing to submit multiple and repeated requests. Corporate and legal entities, or those to whom the beneficial ownership information relates, are not to be alerted to the fact that a request has been made or that an investigation is under way. We will monitor that arrangement to ensure that it does indeed provide the same results.

I hope that hon. Members agree that the overseas territories, in some cases in the most challenging circumstances, and the Crown dependencies have made significant efforts to move forward on this agenda. The effective implementation of the exchanges of notes will put them ahead of many G20 countries and many individual states of the USA, and demonstrates what can be achieved through working co-operatively.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Alan Duncan]

The hon. Lady is not being unreasonable; there are some arguments where some people say compel, and others say urge and consult. My argument would be that we are consulting—we do it all the time. We have a regular dialogue, and in that, we are urging them in the right direction. Anything that smacks of us in any way telling them what to do is counterproductive, because rather than imposing new requirements on these jurisdictions, it is better that to continue to focus our efforts on the consolidation of the existing arrangements.

The exchange of notes provide for the operation of these arrangements to be reviewed six months after they come into force. We are working very closely with the territories and dependencies on this review, and plan to conclude it by the end of March. That is a very good example of the sort of consultation we are engaging in on a regular basis.

[Anneliese Dodds]

When the Minister those letters are exchanged, will it include the logistics of this operation? I am trying to get my head round how we can genuinely say that contacting potentially myriad trust and company service providers and getting information from them is equivalent to having access to a register. How are the Government truly going to assess that in this exchange of letters? Will it be a question of time? We could be talking about hundreds of TCSPs.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I am not directly involved in this, but as I have said frequently, I am very happy to offer the expertise of officials to the hon. Lady so that she can fully get to grips with the intricate detail of the question she has asked.

Hon. Members will recall that the Criminal Finances Act 2017 provides for a review of the effectiveness of the bilateral arrangements. That report must be prepared before 1 July 2019, and it will then be published and laid before Parliament. The reviews will provide a clear understanding of how the jurisdictions are meeting their commitments. At that point, we will be in a better position to consider what more might need to be done. I stress once again that we will engage with the overseas territories and dependencies; we do so already and we will continue to do so on a regular basis, with the clear objectives in mind of wanting consistent and constant improvements in the way in which their finances are organised.

A key feature of the Government’s approach has been to maintain a level playing field between all the overseas territories with financial centres and the Crown dependencies. As I have described, we have robust review processes regarding the implementation of these arrangements. If these reviews demonstrate that the full implementation of the exchanges of notes is not taking place in any individual jurisdiction, it would be right for hon. Members to consider this issue further. For the time being, however, we should continue to focus on the full implementation of the existing bilateral arrangements. We are on a good and solid track; therefore, I urge hon. Members to withdraw the new clause.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Glen]

I will come on to explain the history of this and why we are where we are. I am happy for the hon. Gentleman to intervene if he does not feel satisfied at the end of that.

Mindful that the eyes of the world are on us, hon. Members should recognise that this legislation would be a world first. Successful delivery raises significant challenges and it is right that the Government achieve the right balance in an effective regime with robust enforcement that does not have a negative impact on land registration processes across the UK. I acknowledge that some have accused the Government—and we have also been accused this afternoon—of not acting swiftly enough to implement this policy. Let me address those concerns.

We have committed to publishing a draft Bill before the summer to introduce the Bill early in the second Session and for the register to be operational in 2021. Publishing a Bill in draft is the right approach. As I said before, this register will be the first of its kind in the world, it will affect people’s property rights, including not just new purchasers but existing owners. This is a sensitive and delicate area. Getting it wrong would have significant adverse consequences.

[Anneliese Dodds]

The Minister is being generous. He has kindly set out for us a three-year timetable, adding on a couple of years before that when Government committed to this. Is he aware of the Private Eye map, which has been in existence for some time? Through civil society and journalistic activity, Land Registry and Companies House data were put together and a map produced. That appears to have been done quite quickly.

[John Glen]

I am not familiar with that particular map but I would be very happy to examine it. For clarity, and addressing the hon. Lady’s previous point, the register will capture the details of beneficial owners of all non-UK companies—including those in the overseas territories—that own UK property. This will be a world first, so we are moving as fast as possible, ensuring that the register is as comprehensive as possible.

As the Government set out in last year’s call for evidence, for the register to be effective the sanctions to be applied for non-compliance must be a meaningful deterrent. Enforcement must be energetic. Simple criminal sanctions may not be sufficient in isolation. The draft Bill will include enforcement through land registration law. Where an overseas entity buys property, it will never be able to obtain legal title to that property without having complied with the register’s requirements. Similarly, a restriction on the title register for property owned by an overseas entity will signal to third parties that the overseas entity must comply with the regime before selling the property, creating a long lease or legal charge. Those are significant steps on which it is right to consult.

Hon. Members will recognise that there are separate Land Registries in Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as the Land Registry for England and Wales. The approaches taken to land registration and overseas entities by each of those Land Registries have been different until now. That too will need be streamlined. Delivery of an holistic outcome that complements all three land registration regimes is an exercise touching multiple teams across Government and the Land Registries. Put simply, it is an exercise that will take time to get right and a further demonstration of why publishing the legislation in draft is the appropriate next step if we are to get it right. Although I appreciate that the motive underlying the new clause supports the policy as a whole and demonstrates a desire for early delivery and implementation, it does not take account of the complexities that I have set out or the challenges of delivery and implementation.

The register will further demonstrate the Government’s commitment to combating money laundering through the property market. Hon. Members will have seen recent press reports—the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland drew our attention to the splash on 3 February—that two unexplained wealth orders have been obtained by the National Crime Agency in connection with two properties worth £22 million.

Those are the first orders obtained under the relevant powers conferred by the Criminal Finances Act 2017, which commenced at the end of January. They were obtained only a few days after it came into effect. As the Minister for Security and Economic Crime has said, the orders are an important addition to the UK’s ability to tackle illicit finance, and it is great to see them already in use.

The Government will continue to take action. BEIS’s response to last year’s call for evidence will be published shortly, and it will set out the Government’s approach to areas of particular complexity. BEIS has already made significant progress in preparing draft legislation; the work with the office of the parliamentary counsel to draft the Bill is under way.

Separately, BEIS is working to quantify the impact of the legislation on the UK. The impact assessment will quantify the register’s potential impact on the property market and investment flows, around which foreign direct investment is very specific, to pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland. The register will rightly make the UK more hostile to illicit flows of money, but we must understand the potential impact of legitimate inward investment.

All those issues were considered in last year’s call for evidence. Scrutiny of the draft Bill will further stress-test whether it will be effective. I hope that that process demonstrates the Government’s continued commitment to enact the policy, and our commitment to get it right. For those reasons, I hope that the hon. Lady will withdraw the new clause.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 15—Disqualification—

In the event that adequate procedures under subsection (3) of section [Failure to prevent money laundering] are found not to be in place, the Secretary of State must refer to the court a disqualification order under section 8 of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986 (disqualification of director on finding of unfitness).”.

This new clause would require the Minister to ask the courts to investigate whether directors of a company are fit and proper, if it was found that proper procedures against money laundering were not in place.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Cheryl, and in rather warmer circumstances than the last time. New clause 9 seeks to create an offence if a relevant body failed to put in place adequate procedures to prevent a person associated with it from carrying out a money laundering facilitation offence. New clause 15 creates a process for disqualification for those at the top level who have failed to prevent money laundering.

I will deal with each new clause in turn and then speak briefly about the overall regulatory context, which creates a necessity for these new approaches. First, on new clause 9 and the failure to prevent the facilitation of money laundering, there are many problems with the existing system. The FCA has found weaknesses in governance and long-standing and significant under-investment in resourcing for control systems, even in the sector that is actually regulated for money laundering. I will talk about some of the problems there later on.

Many of those who investigate in this area find that rules are intermittently enforced, penalties are low and senior executives face few personal, financial or reputational consequences. It is constructive to compare some of the penalties that have been levied in the UK with those levied in the US. As I understand, the largest fine levied in the UK for anti-money laundering or sanctions offences—the Minister may contradict me if I am wrong—was levied against Coutts & Co for £8.75 million. That is six hundred times less than the penalty that was levied by the United States on BNP Paribas for sanctions-related offences.

[John Glen]

I am very happy to confirm that in fact Deutsche Bank was fined £163 million in January 2017, and Barclays had a fine of £72 million in November 2015. I do not think that comparison is correct.

[Anneliese Dodds]

It would be helpful to know under which pieces of legislation those fines were levied, because I am uncertain whether they were directly under money laundering legislation. I will come back to that, particularly in relation to some of the outcomes of some parliamentary questions that I have asked to try to dig into this and find out what prosecutions have been enabled by existing legislation.

I am grateful for the information that the Economic Secretary has provided; however, there is still a lot of concern about banks’ and others’ ability to root out money laundering and the facilitating of money laundering. The FCA found—admittedly, in 2014—that there was

“significant and widespread weaknesses in most banks’ anti-money laundering systems and controls”.

That is revealed in the case of HSBC. Many members of the Committee will know that it was involved in a money laundering scandal that led to the US fining it £1.2 billion. There was a large investigation into that matter in the United States Senate, where it was said that our UK-based bank had been a conduit for

“drug kingpins and rogue nations”,

including Mexican drug cartels and North Korea. In fact, that case has been referred to already in this Committee.

Particularly worryingly, a congressional report found that George Osborne and the Financial Services Authority—now the FCA—corresponded on numerous occasions with their US counterparts about the case; in fact, they urged a less aggressive judicial approach on the US side. Apparently, the congressional report said that the UK interventions played a significant role in ultimately persuading the US Department of Justice not to prosecute HSBC. I find it quite concerning that the UK actually argued against measures being taken by other countries to try to deal with this problem.

We were hoping to have some change; the Serious Fraud Office has called for the broadening of existing economic offences to cover a kind of umbrella approach, also to cover failure to prevent. It thinks that that would be helpful to hold large companies to account criminally across the board. At the moment, we have the ability to prosecute the failure to prevent bribery and corruption, but those activities are rarely committed in isolation from instances of money laundering by corporate entities. Therefore, it seems to make sense to try to extend corporate liability to money laundering. That would push in the same direction as existing pieces of legislation. Of course, the Bribery Act 2010 created a new offence of corporate failure to prevent. I believe that Act was put in place because of the same kind of repeated criticism of the UK regime that we have seen in relation to money laundering. We also now have the offence of failure to prevent criminal tax evasion in the Criminal Finances Act 2017. Surely there is now a strong case for an explicit reference to failure to prevent money laundering.

Many of us thought that we were not going to have to push for a separate offence of money laundering because we were to have an umbrella approach. In May 2016, the Government committed to consult on a broad offence of failure to prevent economic crime, which would cover fraud, false accounting and money laundering. In January 2017, the Government downgraded that commitment and instead published a call for evidence on whether there was a case for economic crime corporate liability law reform.

As I understand it, the call for evidence closed in March 2017. I have not yet seen the results of that call for evidence. It would be helpful for the Minister to let us know the outcome of that call for evidence, the main findings and how the Government have decided to act on them. Will they introduce the umbrella offence or create a discrete offence, as we are asking for? Because we think we need action now. That is new clause 19.

[The Chair]

New clause 9.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I beg your pardon. I am getting over-excited and trying to hurtle towards the end of the programme. I am sorry, Dame Cheryl.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

Go ahead.

[Anneliese Dodds]

No; we are very keen to have a thorough discussion on every one of our new clauses.

New clause 15 focuses on disqualification. The purpose is to ensure that directors specifically take responsibility for their organisation’s mistakes, and to ensure that the Secretary of State may hold them to account for a failure to prevent money laundering, in the instance where procedures have not been put correctly in place.

Many colleagues might have served as directors and will know the rules on being a director—that directors can already be disqualified if they display unfit conduct. Unfit conduct is defined as including allowing a company to continue trading when it cannot pay its debts, not keeping proper company accounts and so on.

With the new clause, we wish to extend that to include a commitment for every director to ensure that they are not ignoring money laundering concerns. We want to mirror what happens under competition law in Britain, where a director’s role is looked at in the event of a breach of the law. That is necessary because of the situation we find ourselves in today.

I am sure many colleagues will have talked to professionals on the frontline of anti-money laundering. I have talked to quite a lot of people who work in banks and other organisations who have anti-money laundering responsibilities. I am sure there are people who work in accounting and other walks of life for whom this is a concern. Very often the clear message I get, as I am sure colleagues do, is that those individuals are working very hard to prevent money laundering but they are not supported by the leadership team within their firm. Global Witness has stated that,

“responsibility for compliance with anti-money laundering and other regulations is usually allocated to compliance teams, rather than to senior executives, who actually wield power within banks over what customers they take. This is a serious problem because it gives compliance staff none of the authority but all of the responsibility, breaking the important link between decision making and accountability.”

That is certainly what I find when I talk to individuals who are in that responsible position. They find they are often not supported by senior managements. That has also been discovered in some of the big corporate scandals—I referred to the HSBC case a moment ago. In his written evidence to the UK Parliament, David Bagley, who led on compliance at HSBC during the period of the failings we were just talking about, stated:

“as the Head of Group Compliance, my mandate was … limited to advising, recommending and reporting. My job was not—and I did not have the authority, resources, support or infrastructure—to ensure that all of these global affiliates followed the Group’s compliance standards”.

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[John Glen]

I undertake to address the points raised by the hon. Member for Oxford East. I will come to the point about the directors’ responsibility in my scripted remarks and also to the issue of what provision the fines were imposed under.

On the specific question the hon. Lady asked, the Ministry of Justice’s call for evidence considered a wide range of reforms to the law relating to corporate liability for economic crime. That is against a backdrop of already significant reform in this area in recent years, including the Bribery Act 2010, the Criminal Finances Act 2017 and the introduction of deferred prosecution agreements, which the Government would contend have strengthened the UK’s defences against corporate criminality. The Ministry of Justice is carefully considering the responses received to the call for evidence and is analysing the impacts of the Government’s range of recent reforms in this area. It will respond to its call for evidence in due course. I do not have a specific timetable, but that is the best information I can give the hon. Lady.

New clauses 9 and 15 seek to create a corporate criminal offence of failure to prevent money laundering, with an obligation on the Secretary of State to submit a disqualification order to the court against directors of a company found guilty of such an offence without having adequate anti-money laundering procedures in place. New clause 9 provides that a company or partnership is guilty of a criminal offence where the company’s employee, agent or other service provider commits one of the substantive money laundering offences in part 7 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. The relevant company would have a defence if it could prove that it had adequate procedures in place to prevent its employees or agents from committing such an offence.

The offence is not necessary in view of the extensive reforms to the UK’s anti-money laundering regime that the Government have put in place. The proposed offence is substantively applied to firms that are regulated for anti-money laundering purposes by part 2 of the Money Laundering Regulations 2017. Those require that regulated firms have policies, controls and procedures to mitigate and manage risks of money laundering and terrorist financing. The Government have legislated to require that these policies, controls and procedures are proportionate with regard to the size and nature of the firm’s business and proved by the firm’s senior management. Failure to comply with these requirements is a criminal offence in itself.

The Financial Conduct Authority and other supervisors are additionally able to take action against firms if their measures to counter money laundering are deficient. As was touched on in our exchange earlier, recent regulatory penalties related to firms’ anti-money laundering weaknesses include fines of £163 million for Deutsche Bank in January 2017 and £72 million for Barclays Bank in November 2015. They were a consequence of failures in anti-money laundering measures under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.

The new clause also seeks to address challenges that have arisen in apportioning responsibility for corporate failings. Within the financial services sector, that has been addressed through the senior managers regime, which was introduced after the financial crisis. Banks are now required to ensure that a named senior manager has unequivocal responsibility for overseeing the firm’s efforts to counter financial crime. That ensures that firms and individuals can be held to account for failing to put proper systems in place to prevent financial crime. If a relevant firm breaches its anti-money laundering obligations, the FCA can take action against a senior manager if it can prove that they did not take such steps as a person in their position can reasonably have been expected to take to avoid the breach occurring. The enforcement action includes fines and disbarment from undertaking regulated activities. The Government have legislated to extend the senior managers regime to apply across all financial services firms. That will be implemented in due course, and will further the Government’s reform programme. All those requirements are additional to the substantive money laundering offences in the Proceeds of Crime Act, such as entering into arrangements that facilitate the use of criminal property, which apply to any individual or company.

As hon. Members know, the Government have previously introduced two similar offences: the failure to prevent bribery, in 2010, and the failure to prevent the facilitation of UK and foreign tax evasion, in 2017. They are structured in a similar way to the proposed new clause, but they were introduced following clear evidence of gaps in the relevant legal frameworks that were limiting the bringing of effective and dissuasive enforcement proceedings. It is right that the offences that we have already established apply to legal entities, regardless of whether they operate in the regulated sector.

The situation in relation to money laundering is very different. The international standard is set by the Financial Action Task Force, which has been referred to numerous times in the Committee’s discussions. The UK’s money laundering regulations apply to banks, financial institutions, certain professional services firms and other types of entity, and act as gatekeepers to the financial system. As I have said, such firms are already required to have policies and procedures in place to prevent their services from being misused for money laundering.

Subsection (6) of new clause 9 would require all companies, regardless of whether they are incorporated, to have procedures in place to prevent persons connected to them from laundering money. The Government do not believe that that would be appropriate. It would risk making non-regulated firms liable for the actions of their regulated professional advisers. Instead, responsibility for anti-money laundering compliance should rest in the regulated sector, as is currently the case. The new clause would not go beyond the existing regulatory framework in that area, and it would blur where responsibility should lie for anti-money laundering compliance. Therefore, I respectfully ask the hon. Member for Oxford East to withdraw the new clause.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the Economic Secretary for those helpful explanations and clarifications. Despite his useful response, however, there are a number of areas where I am unclear. First, I appreciate that he has probably anticipated this question, but the Committee may ask why it has taken Government a whole year to assess the responses from their consultation on economic crime. Government frequently work at a far faster pace than that. He said that we will have the analysis of those consultation responses in due course. It would be helpful to know more about why it is taking so long for Government to analyse them.

Secondly, the Economic Secretary spoke about the requirement for all regulated firms to ensure that their policies, controls and procedures are appropriate to prevent money laundering, but there is a question about who assesses that and whose responsibility that is. That takes us back to the issue about there being myriad professional bodies, which all operate subtly different approaches towards regulation in this area. As I said, I appreciate that OPBAS has been created to try to draw them together, but I do not think we heard exactly what the status of that office is—I was trying to concentrate on what the Economic Secretary was saying. I have seen different descriptions of it as a team, an office and an organisation. It would be helpful to have a clearer indication, particularly because those professional bodies are, as I understand it, required to contribute financially to OPBAS, so a number of them are keen to understand what is happening with it. Furthermore, HMRC is not a member of it, as I said before, so the concern about a lack of regulatory co-ordination persists.

Finally, the Economic Secretary referred approvingly to the senior managers regime that has been brought in since the financial crisis, which looks like a positive step initially—of course, the HSBC problems occurred following that. In any case, as I understand it, the actual operation of this new regime and its extension are quite different from, for example, what was recommended by the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. Under this approach, the burden to show that senior managers failed to take appropriate steps will be on the regulator, rather than the senior managers themselves.

That is different from the approach taken in many other areas, including road traffic, health and safety at work, the Bribery Act 2010—which the Minister referred to—terrorist legislation, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and so on. It would be helpful to understand why, with the extension of this regime, the burden of proof has essentially now been placed on the shoulders of the regulator, rather than the shoulders of the managers.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

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[Anneliese Dodds]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 11—Due diligence—

“(1) For the purposes of preventing money laundering, when a company is formed, any company formation agent providing formation services must ensure that the identity and business risk profile of all beneficial owners of the company are established in accordance with—

(a) the customer due diligence measures under the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (S.I. 2017/692),

(b) regulations made under section 41 of this Act, or

(c) the Directive (EU) 2015/849 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 May 2015 on anti-money laundering measures.

(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), Companies House is to be treated as a ‘company formation agent’.”

This new clause would ensure that when a company is formed in the UK, the relevant formation services must identify the beneficial owners of the company. It will also treat Companies House as a “company formation agent”, ensuring that the data on the public register of beneficial ownership for companies is accurate.

New clause 12—Companies House: due diligence and resources—

“(1) For the purposes of preventing money laundering, the Companies Act 2006 is amended as follows.

(2) In section 1061 (the registrar’s functions) after subsection (1) insert—

‘(1A) Functions directed by the Secretary of State under subsection (1)(b) must include due diligence on a person wishing to register a company.

(1B) In this section “due diligence” has the same meaning as “customer due diligence measures” in regulation 3 of the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (S.I. 692/2017).’

(3) In section 1063 (Fees payable to the registrar), in subsection (2)(a) after ‘Secretary of State’ insert ‘including the duty of due diligence under section 1061(1A).’”

This new clause would amend the duties of Companies House to ensure that any person wishing to register a company must be checked for due diligence by Companies House, in line with the measures included in the Money Laundering Regulations 2017. It also ensures that the Secretary of State can charge fees for due diligence checks to cover costs incurred by Companies House.

New clause 13—UK bank accounts—

“(1) For the purposes of tackling money laundering, the Companies Act 2006 is amended as follows.

(2) In section 853A (duty to deliver confirmation statements), after subsection (1) insert—

‘(1A) In subsection (1) “information” includes such information as is able to demonstrate that the company has a UK bank account.

(1B) Any company that is unable to provide the information required in subsection (1A) is liable to a fee which may be prescribed by regulations.’”

This new clause would ensure that all companies wishing to be created in the UK must provide evidence of a UK bank account to ensure it has gone through proper money laundering checks by a UK supervising body. If a company is unable to provide proof then they are liable to a fee which will cover the cost of such checks.

[Anneliese Dodds]

It is a pleasure to present the new clauses to the Committee. As colleagues will know, they all essentially call for an increase in the due diligence and anti-money laundering checks for those who register a company through Companies House.

There is a clear rationale for the new clauses. Around 40% of incorporations in the UK every year are done directly through Companies House, which in many ways offers an easy and helpful service. It is very quick; it is one of the fastest and easiest ways to form a company—it costs only £12 and takes a matter of minutes to complete the necessary paperwork online. That is all very positive, but the negative side comes from the risks that result from an approach where there is insufficient due diligence on the data submitted through that route.

The problem, as I am sure Ministers are well aware—I have asked a number of parliamentary question to probe this—is that Companies House is exempt from the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 because of its not-for-profit status and the fact that it is not a company service provider. That means that a huge number of companies are created without any checks being made on the person setting up the company or the source of their wealth. We are talking about 251,628 companies last year.

As I said, there are very positive aspects to being able to create companies quickly, but the quality of data that results from that is potentially very poor; my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland talked of , potentially, 10% of company reports not including the appropriate information. There are some cases that might almost be humorous, but given the the circumstances they are deeply disturbing and indicate how little due diligence is taking place. An investigative journalist, Oliver Bullough, created a company called “Crooked Crook Crook Ltd.” With that name, many of us might think that this would be a company we would want to look into, but no, the confirmation documents were delivered within 36 hours. He details in an article, which colleagues can look up, should they wish, how easy it was to create that company. If he had not reported his activities in an article for a media outlet, his company could have gone on to partake in a myriad of activities, showing just how cheap, easy and disposable company formation through Companies House can be.

There are many concerns about that. We have a new regime in place now through the money laundering regulations, which covers trust and company service providers—TCSPs—as we have already mentioned. We have some amendments further down the agenda looking at some of those, because there is a particular issue around the operations of non-UK TCSPs. It is surely the case that when a company can be created through a TCSP, that TCSP has to follow all money laundering legislation, but when it does not go through a TCSP, and there is no money laundering legislation applying to it, we should be very concerned. Potentially, that money laundering regulation is undermined by having this massive loophole in place.

There are many disturbing findings from the data from Companies House that has been crunched by different investigative journalists and NGOs. We find that 4,000 beneficial owners named in the Companies House register are under the age of two. My daughter is two. She is really good at lots of things, such as climbing on to chairs. I am not sure that she or any of her playmates would be very good at being a person exercising significant control within a company. There are five beneficial owners registered who control more than 6,000 companies. Perhaps each one of those five are exercising all of their responsibilities perfectly in line with legislation and probity, but it must be very difficult for them to do that. We also have the fact that companies from secrecy jurisdictions can then be registered by Companies House through a UK company, or another formation agent, without there being any background or due diligence check.

I realise that some of these cases might sound a little bit silly, but potentially we are talking about some very worrying examples where there has not been that due diligence and there should have been. There was recently a BBC investigation—we have already referred to it within this Committee—into the case where a UK company registered at a Potters Bar address appeared to facilitate very complex financial arrangements involving the former President of Ukraine. At least £1.2 billion has been funnelled through companies registered at the same Potters Bar address, some of them potentially linked to the very complex situation where huge funds from the Eurovision song contest and lots of other activities seem to have somehow ended up in this company through very unclear routes.

It is concerning that we are in this kind of situation. Because of that, we find a number of professionals highlighting this as an area where we need to have reform. Frances Coulson, the head of insolvency and litigation at Moon Beever Solicitors, has been quoted as saying that this money is passing through Britain, through companies created with insufficient due diligence. She said:

“This is going on now and all the time…All the indicators are that it’s getting worse.”

And she said that,

“better due diligence—such as checking identification documents—by company formation agents and the UK corporate register, Companies House, would help combat fraud.”

Even if we do not manage to pass these new clauses at this stage, I hope that we will at least get some clarification on some of the rather unclear aspects of the regulatory regime. First, there is the role of Companies House. We are getting only a bit of an inkling of the role of Companies House through parliamentary questions. One response, given on 12 October 2017, said that the Government’s view is that Companies House

“does not have a front-line role in combatting money laundering”.

In the same month we were told:

“Companies House does not have powers to verify the authenticity of company directors, secretaries and registered office addresses. However, it does carry out a number of checks on all information received; ensuring it is valid, complete, correctly formatted and in compliance with company filing requirements.”

However, when we try to find out what this verification process involves, the picture gets rather complicated. Is any automated verification of beneficial ownership information occurring? I tried to find out in February, and no, there are “no current plans” to undertake that; however, Companies House is, it seems, undertaking activities, including,

“contacting companies where they believe the company has misunderstood the requirements…pursuing companies that have not provided PSC information”—

it seems that there is a huge number they will have to pursue, given the statistics discussed by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland,

“following up with companies and PSCs where they have issued notices to their PSC (asking the PSCs to provide them with information)”—

PSCs being “people with significant control”—and

“seeking compliance from companies where there has been a complaint about missing or incorrect PSC information.”

This was where the picture got more confused. [Interruption.]

I may have heard the Minister suggesting that I was rabbiting on. I am terribly sorry, but some of us are concerned about these matters and a number of professionals have contacted us about their concerns, so it is absolutely right that we deal with them in this Committee.

I tried to find out how many reports have been made about money laundering through the “report it” facility that Companies House has set up. The Minister of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), responded to me on 19 December, stating:

“Eight reports about money laundering have been made through the Companies House report it facility.”

However, I was then told on 20 December that the new “Report It Now” feature had led to Companies House

“receiving between 180-200 contacts a day through this service.”

That seems like quite a big gap. Will the Economic Secretary please indicate how many of those reports are about money laundering? Is it eight, or is it 180 to 200 a day?

I have been very concerned by the Government’s claim, in the same written answer:

“Higher risk company formation activities in the UK will generally be done via Trust or Company Service Providers, who are subject to the Money Laundering Regulations.”

I want to illustrate that with one last example, which I was told about yesterday and is quite concerning. It is the case of an individual who has previously described himself as “The Chicken Thief”. That is his name as a person of significant control within the Companies House database. His real name is thought to be Antonio Righi—a mafia kingpin in Italy. If someone searches for his name on the Companies House website, as an academic did yesterday before informing me about this, they get a link to Business Bank Italy Ltd.

All banks should be regulated through the FCA nowadays. We are supposed to have that proper approach in place. The use of the word “bank” in a company name is restricted. Any would-be bank has needed to obtain a letter or email of non-objection from the FCA before being allowed to operate as a bank. Yet we see this company still apparently registered with Companies House.

That is deeply worrying because the individual concerned has been named as an active member of the Camorra—a very problematic criminal network that operates in Italy, with links in many other countries. The revelations about “The Chicken Thief” are not new, so one would have thought that Business Bank Italy would have been looked into carefully by the Government, but apparently not, and it still appears to be registered on the Companies House website. I hope the Minister can indicate why that is and whether he will look into this matter, if he has not done so already.

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[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the Economic Secretary for those clarifications. He made several helpful points, but some concerns remain. He mentioned the FATF process, which the Committee has discussed previously, and seemed to suggest that we should not make alterations in this area of anti-money laundering activity because of the ongoing FATF assessment. Of course, that argument could stop action in any other area, because the FATF is looking at anti-money laundering and anti-corruption provisions across the board, so it is not clear that it is completely convincing. Furthermore, I understand that representations have been made to the FATF as part of its review that change is needed in this area, which suggests that the argument is the other way round. The Economic Secretary also suggested that there would be a much higher cost for those that want to incorporate through a TCSP. In practice, as I understand it, the cost may not be substantial—only a couple of pounds more in many cases.

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[Hannah Bardell]

Does the hon. Lady agree that we are letting our citizens down if we do not legislate properly and close these loopholes? I am sure we have all had constituency cases where people have lost money to unscrupulous companies and company owners. We have an opportunity to take action, and we must take it. The Government are letting citizens down if they do not accept the new clauses.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making the point clearly that our proposal has been portrayed as only a burden, when it could help to prevent our constituents from being ripped off by unscrupulous individuals who are able to set themselves up as a company with only minimum requirements for due diligence. As I said, they can be there by day, fly off by night, and leave the unfortunate person who dealt with that company in a very difficult position.

To end my remarks specifically on the Minister’s comments on new clause 13, many of us are worried that, in practice, there are TCSPs that offer UK company formation with a range of optional services, including setting up bank accounts in other jurisdictions such as Latvia, Belize, Switzerland and Cyprus. That would not necessarily be a problem, were it not for the fact that, time and again, we have seen in the cases we have discussed in this Committee that reliance on the third parties—the banks in those other countries—does not lead to a real assurance that money laundering provisions are being followed. The reality is quite the opposite.

In the Russian laundromat scandal, which we have already talked about, of the 440 UK shell companies used in the scheme—in itself, a staggering statistic—392 of them had Baltic bank accounts, with 270 UK firms using Latvian banks and 122 using banks in Estonia. It may be that we are fully confident in every case that anti-money laundering regulations were followed in those countries, but given some of what came out of the Russian laundromat scandal, it could be suggested that that is not the case.

We do need to get at this problem through another route. We need reform of the Companies House system, but we also need the use of another prong which is requiring a UK bank account.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

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Brought up, and read the First time.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

It feels a little like going out of the freezer and into the fire, because it is rather warm on this side of the Committee Room, but I am sure that we will be rewarded somewhere else for our endurance.

[The Chair]

May I ask the hon. Lady not to tempt fate?

[Anneliese Dodds]

We tabled the new clause because ineffective anti-money laundering supervision has a clear and obvious link with inadequate compliance and with low and poor-quality reporting of suspicious activity to the National Crime Agency. Research by a number of non-governmental organisations, particularly Transparency International, has indicated serious failings in the current framework for supervising money laundering compliance in the UK, especially with respect to trust and company service providers.

Under the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, only TCSPs carrying on business in the UK—that is their formulation in the legislation—have to register with an anti-money laundering supervisor and comply with MLR 2017. That means of course that TCSPs with no UK presence can incorporate UK companies without any oversight from an AML supervisor. They do not have to comply with UK standards for money laundering checks. We have seen a number of clear examples—I will talk about some in a moment—where that has allowed non-UK TCSPs to incorporate UK companies that have subsequently been used in large-scale money laundering schemes. I think many of the concerns raised a moment ago around undercutting existing legislation and the lack of a fair playing field for UK TCSPs come up again in this regard.

In 2012 the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists showed how a number of UK individuals offering company services had moved their base of operations outside our country but continued to form, and act as nominee directors for, UK companies. There are two examples that are particularly important. The first was Jesse Grant Hester, who was originally from the UK and who moved to Cyprus to form Atlas Corporate Services Ltd before moving to Dubai and, finally, Mauritius—he is somebody who has been lucky enough to travel much in life. Those jurisdictions have all been identified as presenting high money laundering risks. Mauritius in particular is very concerning: it scored 5.92 out of 10 on the Basel Institute on Governance money laundering risk index. Ten is the highest level of money laundering risk and zero is the least, so it is well up there. Jesse Grant Hester appeared on numerous occasions as a nominee director for companies embroiled in corruption scandals. In the Moldovan bank theft that we talked about earlier, he signed fake promissory notes using an alias on behalf of a UK firm, Goldbridge Trading Ltd, allowing £444 million to be stolen. Atlas Corporate Services is associated with eight people who, between them, have held directorships of 3,613 UK companies. Again, that is a staggering number of companies to be held by just eight people. As we discussed, that scandal caused enormous problems for the country of Moldova.

Another UK resident who became internationally renowned, although not in a positive way, for his company formation activities, is Ian Taylor. That is not the famous social policy academic, who I had the pleasure of working with, but another Ian Taylor. He also moved around a lot: he moved to Vanuatu.

[John Glen]

There was also a Tory MP of that name.

[Anneliese Dodds]

Oh, there was a Tory MP as well. Goodness—the name is frequently used. He moved to Vanuatu after he was banned from being a corporate director, first in New Zealand in 2011 and then in the UK in 2015, as a result of his companies’ involvement in numerous scandals, including a land banking scam in Somerset. Vanuatu’s self-assessment on money laundering risk found that its TCSP sector was among the most vulnerable to such activity. In 2015 the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering found serious deficiencies in Vanuatu’s AML system. Despite being banned in the UK, Taylor seems to have retained a UK presence. Various investigations have identified the circle of nominee directors that he works with. One of them is a Vanuatu resident who is a director of more than 61 companies. He took over from Taylor as a director of 20 of them on the same date.

Those examples show that physically moving out of the UK does not result in a lack of activity in the UK. Networks of associates make it difficult to stop the formation of UK companies by individuals who have already been disqualified here. Such individuals, who have been shown to have engaged in money laundering activities or have otherwise been disqualified or viewed as not competent in this arena, can function in other countries and create companies. The checking that should go on does not happen, and there is inadequate anti-money laundering supervision. We do not have a means of dealing with that, because we do not have a regulatory system for TCSPs that are not based in countries with appropriate anti-money laundering provisions. That is not currently illegal, which is why we want to change the legal situation.

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[John Glen]

I cannot comment on the specific cases that the hon. Lady mentions, because I have not seen or studied them. I imagine that there is a degree of variability in the effectiveness of regimes, but I am trying to set out the Government’s rationale for what we have in place. I do not suggest that it is perfect, but some of the developments have occurred in response to shortcomings that have been identified.

The individual anti-money laundering supervisors are under a duty to identify and assess international and domestic risks, including the money laundering and terrorism risk, which ensures that the most intensive supervision is applied where the highest risks of money laundering exist. The establishment of OPBAS will assist with the consistent identification of such risks across the TCSP sector. Our national risk assessment makes it clear that the Government are aware of the money laundering risks connected with TCSPs, and further reform in the area should take account of the conclusions of the ongoing FATF review. I assure Opposition Members that the regime is a searching and exacting one. I know from ministerial meetings concerning preparations for it that the evaluation will be exacting. We expect the observations to be meaningful, and we will need to respond carefully to them. However, until we receive the outcome of that review of the UK’s anti-money laundering regime and of the experience of OPBAS as its role develops, it would not be appropriate to adopt the amendment.

Hon. Members should be mindful of the fact that anti-money laundering supervision around the world follows a territorial model. Simply requiring non-UK TCSPs to have a UK supervisor when they set up UK companies will not address the challenges of extra-territorial supervision. Effective anti-money laundering supervision depends on measures that include supervisory on-site visits and close engagement with higher-risk firms. Requiring a UK supervisor to do that in relation to a non-UK firm will not, in and of itself, address the issue that hon. Members have identified.

As was noted in the other place, the most effective means of combating international money laundering is cross-border co-operation to drive up the standards of overseas supervision and enforcement. For those reasons, we have imposed a duty on each UK anti-money laundering supervisor to take such steps as they consider appropriate to co-operate with overseas authorities. That is the agenda we pursue through the global FATF process. I therefore respectfully ask the hon. Lady to withdraw the new clause.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the Minister for those remarks and clarifications. They have been genuinely helpful, but I regret that some areas are still rather unclear to me; perhaps they are not to other Committee members. He stated that the highest-risk TCSPs are assessed to be UK ones, but it has not been spelled out why. Perhaps he could write to me about that.

[John Glen]

I would be happy to write to the hon. Lady to spell that out. My understanding is that UK-based TCSPs typically offer a wider range of services and there are vulnerabilities in the additional services, but I will investigate and write to her as quickly as I can.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the Minister for offering to look into that. We must always be wary of talking about a general pattern of activity as necessarily reflecting the risk profile of that overall activity. Among those TCPS, there could be overseas ones that are not appropriately regulated and that also offer a wide range of services, in the same way as some UK TCSPs do.

I am also a bit confused about the professional regulators. As the Minister said, there are about 22 of them, and then on top of that we stick Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the Financial Conduct Authority and so on. As I understand it, the professional regulators do not have members based in other countries; they cover only UK residents. We are talking about, for example, the Law Society of Scotland and the Law Society of England and Wales—professional bodies dealing with UK individuals. We are not talking about professional associations covering professionals in other countries.

The Minister seemed to talk about a process of liaison between these organisations and their counterparts in other countries. I am sure we all want to encourage that, because it sounds like a very good idea. Information sharing is wonderful, but information sharing is not the same as having an appropriate process of regulation to ensure that there is compliance with anti-money laundering requirements.

The Minister said that the approach was an extraterritorial one, because it affects bodies in other countries. That is absolutely right, but those bodies then interact with our company formation procedure. That is the reason why we, as a country, have a stake in this process—a rather large one, given the reputational damage that seems to be being caused by the activities of some unregulated or inappropriately regulated TCSPs. I will be pressing the new clause to a vote.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

--- Later in debate ---

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The new clause looks to ensure that standards published by the Financial Action Task Force in relation to combating money laundering, terrorist financing and other threats to the integrity of the financial system can be easily implemented in this country. We are also seeking to identify or revoke a designation of a high-risk country, taking account of best international practice, including EU sanctions regimes.

We have talked a bit about the FATF in the Committee. As colleagues will know, its objectives are to set standards and promote effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system. It is a policy-making body that works to generate political will to bring about national legislative and regulatory reforms. We have talked about its reporting cycle already and the fact that the UK is currently being investigated in order for the FATF to report on us later in the year.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Glen]

I just want to clarify that, while I would not profess to be an expert on Pakistan’s compliance with the FATF, the concerns raised about its recent greylisting were around the specific handling of various banned terrorist organisations. I would not wish to cast any wider doubt over its intentions to improve the provision of services.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I thank the Minister for that helpful clarification. It is helpful to know the exact locus of FATF activity or the concerns about Pakistan that were focused on terrorist financing. That is not the area we are focused on now, but such financing and money laundering often go hand in hand.

Given the potential effects of such a ruling—we have talked about that in relation to Pakistan—we think it necessary that Ministers should have the flexibility to ensure that FATF standards can be implemented as soon as possible in our country in order to be on top of new international standards. That is particularly important because the UK was a founding member of the FATF, so we need to show that we are at the cutting edge of implementing its requirements.

As I mentioned, we also need to be able to identify or revoke high-risk countries quickly, taking account of the FATF’s standards and given the effect that it can have on the countries themselves and also on our reputation. If we are viewed as not following FATF recommendations, that prevents the co-ordinated approach that the FATF was set up to promote in the first place.

Finally on this amendment, we hope that Ministers will take account of aligning the designations with our EU partners. We have talked consistently in our deliberations about the need for co-ordination, which of course makes all the mechanisms much more effective. When they are not co-ordinated, there can be loopholes. In that regard, it is important to mention the case of Russia. In 2014, the Arms Export Controls Committees—we talked about their composition when we talked about scrutiny arrangements—reported that more than 200 licences to sell British weapons to Russia, including missile-launching equipment, were still in place, despite David Cameron’s claim that the Government had imposed an absolute arms embargo against Russia in alignment with the rest of the EU. We really need to make sure that that alignment is genuine in practice, not just on the surface and rhetorical.

[John Glen]

New clause 16 would limit amendments to the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 to those that would implement standards published by the Financial Action Task Force, or those whose purpose was identifying or revoking a designation of a high-risk third country. The 2017 regulations transpose the fourth EU anti-money laundering directive, which was in turn derived from the most recent major updates to the FATF standards, which were made in 2012. As the hon. Lady acknowledged, the UK is a founder member of the FATF and is committed to playing a leading role in its continuing work. It is right for the Government to have the power to update the UK regime when such standards change.

There are, however, several areas where the UK’s anti-money laundering regime already goes beyond those standards. Our recently established register of trusts generating tax consequences, for example, goes beyond the standards set by the FATF. Similarly, the UK announced at the time of the 2015 Budget that we intended to regulate virtual currency exchanges for AML purposes—an objective that was accomplished through negotiation of the fifth EU anti-money laundering directive—but that was not required by the FATF. So although we will remain aligned with the FATF standards after the UK ceases to be a member of the EU, our anti-money laundering regime exceeds those standards in certain areas.

The Government are determined to ensure that our defences against misuse of a financial system remain ahead of global standards rather than solely reflecting them. That is reflected in our commitment to the establishment of a public register of the beneficial ownership of non-UK companies that own UK property, which the Committee debated earlier, even if we did not agree on the timeline for it. The new clause would reduce our ability to do so. Under the power in question, the UK’s anti-money laundering regime could not go further in areas where we would otherwise want to.

As I said previously, in debating amendment 7, and as my right hon. Friend the Minister said about new clause 3, we do not believe that a bar on new offences is the right way to address the concerns raised by Lord Judge and others. We have instead tabled amendments to ensure that the power is used only where it is needed, and that Ministers are properly accountable to Parliament for it.

Ensuring that we can make regulations to prevent, or to enable or facilitate the detection or investigation of, money laundering or terrorist financing, as well as to implement the standards of the FATF, is the most certain method of placing future changes to our anti-money laundering system on a sound legal basis. The new clause would limit our ability to do so in the future, and I am sure that is not the intention behind it. I respectfully suggest that the hon. Lady might withdraw it.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation. It may be the fact that we have been in this room for a few hours, but I am struggling a little with, in particular, the suggestion that new clause 16 would somehow tie the UK’s hands in implementing additional requirements beyond the FATF standards.

The Minister referred to the public register of property owned by non-UK entities. We had a discussion about that, but he is right: it would arguably be an innovation in the UK. Of course it is one that we need more than other countries, because of the use of our property market in many such cases, and the exponential rise in house prices. He could have talked—although he did not—about the register of beneficial ownership of companies being an innovation as well, but countries such as the Netherlands and Norway are putting those into practice anyway, so perhaps we are not quite as far-reaching in what we are doing as we might suggest. Particularly in relation to the charges and fines levied against those found guilty of money laundering offences, we seem to be in a different position from that of our North American counterparts, for example, as we have discussed. None the less, it is not clear how the new clause would stop us going further than those other jurisdictions where we wished to do so. It says that we would take account of the

“best international practice including EU sanctions regimes”,

not that we would be led by it.

[Helen Goodman]

On a point of order, Dame Cheryl, in the light of what the Minister said earlier, I would like to read precisely what was published by The Independent. I misinterpreted it and, consequently, I misled the Committee. I wish to apologise to him and to the Committee for that. This is what The Independent published in 2014:

“According to Electoral Commission records, New Century Media gave the Conservatives £85,000 in the months leading up to the 2010 general election…New Century represents the personal foundation of the Ukrainian billionaire Dmitry Firtash, who has been indicted on bribery and corruption charges, which he denies, in the United States…David Burnside, New Century’s executive chairman, has made…claims about his connections with senior Tories…The company has paid for a table at the last four Conservative summer balls and paid for…the International Development minister”—

who is now the Minister for Europe and the Americas—to be its guest

“at Conservative events at a cost of…£800”.

I am sorry. I misread it and misunderstood it, and consequently I misled the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

It is good that we can continue proceedings, because there are many matters that we still need to consider, not least this new clause and the others on the selection list. I am grateful for the opportunity to do so.

New clause 17 requires a public consultation on corporate liability for money laundering within six months. We have already discussed what occurred with the Government’s evidence-gathering exercise—as I think they described it—in relation to a broader economic crime offence, and how the results of that exercise have been with the Government since last March. We still have no indication of how that will be dealt with, aside from the Economic Secretary’s helpful remark that it will be dealt with in due course. I know he always tries to be helpful, but I am afraid that that is not good enough for those of us who want to see change in this area.

We are specifically requesting a public consultation to get the process moving and to promote it, not least because of what the Government have committed to—or at least, what past Conservative leaders have committed to. In 2016, at the time of the anti-corruption summit, David Cameron wrote an article for The Guardian in which he claimed:

“In the UK, in addition to prosecuting companies that fail to prevent bribery and tax evasion”—

Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting)

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Alex Norris]

I thank my hon. Friend for that useful intervention. I absolutely agree. We should not see the Paradise papers and the Panama papers as the past, and assume that we will not see anything about this issue again. We are likely to see such things periodically on different programmes and in different newspapers. Every time that happens, people will ask, “What did you do about it? When you heard about it last time, how did you act?” If we say, “Well, we have this brilliant law, which we consider world-leading, but we stopped short of doing this,” people will wonder why we did that, and that will damage our brand.

This is not just about the British overseas territories—people will say, “Hang on a minute. They are British. What are you doing in your engagement with them?”—but about the Crown dependencies. The Crown will, dare I say, be a very important part of brand Britain, and people will draw a very straight line. Even if we feel that we should not be able to act in this area, people will expect that we can, so we ought to have a pretty clear picture on it. What is being asked for in the two new clauses is proportionate and sensible, and hopefully something that we can all support.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I do not want to speak for very long, or repeat what colleagues have said. I very much agree with the comments made by my hon. Friends the Members for Nottingham North and for Bishop Auckland. However, there are a couple of aspects that I would like to emphasise, and provide the Committee with a bit more information on.

First, it is the friends of the overseas territories and Crown dependencies who are deeply concerned about the lack of action in this area. I have had many meetings with representatives from both groups of jurisdictions over the years, both as an MP and as a Member of the European Parliament before that, when I sat on tax committees and the Panama papers committees in the European Parliament. I have had many discussions on these topics. I acknowledge that there is currently some resistance, but there is also an awareness of the reputational damage that is being done to their jurisdictions, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North mentioned.

There is also concern about having the resource necessary to implement more transparency. I strongly agree with what the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire said in that regard. That is why our new clause calls for support for the overseas territories to implement the changes. We do not want to end up in a situation similar to what happened in the Turks and Caicos Islands, where there were repeated warnings that there were problems but nothing was done until it got to such a height that there had to be what some would say was a very draconian response. We do not want to get to that situation; we want to see change. I will go on to explain what happened in the Turks and Caicos Islands in a moment, because colleagues need to know about that. We have not yet talked about the instances where Britain has exercised its relationships and the levers it possesses.

It is also important that we acknowledge that for many of the overseas territories and Crown dependencies there has been positive legislative change, particularly around 2013 and 2014. However, that has died off a bit recently. One thing that worried me was the fact that the British Virgin Islands have passed new laws against whistleblowers. That has caused a lot of concern, and appears to suggest a shift in the wrong direction. The US State Department, for example, has commented on the fact that low numbers of prosecutions are coming from some of the jurisdictions. Frankly, it is a bit of an embarrassment that the US State Department has commented on that, and we have not seen the necessary action.

It is also a major concern for our country. Others have commented on this, but we have not yet quoted from the National Crime Agency’s “National Strategic Assessment of Serious and Organised Crime 2016”. That report spelled out the problem with having our open register of beneficial ownership without having commensurate obligations in our associated jurisdictions—not to mention the register’s own problems, which we will come on to. The report said:

“When legislation to report beneficial ownership begins to be fully enforced…the UK will be less vulnerable to shell companies formed by professional enablers and others within the UK for the purposes of enabling bribery, corruption and money laundering. The UK will remain at risk from company formation in overseas jurisdictions where similar legislation is not in place.”

It is a direct concern for Britain that we have this leaky fence, to stretch again the metaphor of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North.

It is particularly worrying that the British Government’s position seems to have shifted backwards. Other colleagues have mentioned that, and I wanted to draw attention to the precise language that is now being used by the Government. David Cameron gave us a commitment to beneficial ownership registers—not to public ones. We wanted him to go further, but he committed to getting registers that could at least be used by law enforcement agencies.

As of the debate on the Bill in the other place, we have a new formulation of words, talking instead about either registers, or similarly effective mechanisms to beneficial ownership registers. It would be helpful to hear from the Minister exactly how they are similarly effective. I asked a parliamentary question about this issue and I was told that, for example, electronic search platforms are a technical solution designed to achieve precisely the same result. Well, they do not achieve the same result if it takes longer for law enforcement agencies to get the information they need to root out crooks and prosecute them.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan)]

Unfortunately for the hon. Lady, she seems unaware that I was the Minister responsible for Turks and Caicos, as a Minister in the Department for International Development at the time. The reasons she cited for our intervention are completely inaccurate. There was a growing financial deficit of £30 million, forecast to be £60 million and then £90 million—it would have been half a billion pounds within a very short time. On that basis, we stepped in and parachuted in a chief financial officer to get the public finances back into shape. It was a great success and is a good example of us intervening in a perfectly proper way in co-operation with the Governor and the Government there.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the Minister for those comments; I might agree with the second half of them. I wonder whether his remembering of the time is the same as that of the relevant FCO Minister. I am terribly sorry; I do not know who the individuals were, but I was not in the House at the time. He or she commented:

“These are some of the worst allegations that I have ever seen about sitting politicians”

and

“when things go badly wrong…we need to act”.

I suspect that they were not talking simply about a budget deficit at that stage; they may have been talking about other matters.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

The hon. Lady is conflating two separate issues. There was a parallel legal issue over the plight and fleeing of Mr Misick, but that was not the basis on which we intervened.

[Anneliese Dodds]

Whether the intervention was due to alleged corruption in the activities of the former leader or budgetary matters, the arguments point in the same direction. When the British Government saw there was a problem, they decided it was appropriate to take action. We are lucky to have the Minister here. We are grateful to hear of his experience, and I hope he will inform us of how, in that regard, we can use that experience, in a consensual, respectful manner, to deal with our associated territories in relation to ownership registers.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

This has been a lively and interesting debate on an issue that we all agree is of importance. It boils down to how we think it appropriate for the Government to act. I am grateful to hon. Members for tabling new clauses, and I appreciate the desire for the overseas territories and Crown dependencies to adopt public registers. However, we should acknowledge the significant steps already taken by those jurisdictions in this area and continue to build on that progress.

While we continue to push for public registers to become the global standard, we should recognise that the arrangements that the territories and dependencies have concluded with the UK exceed the international standards set by the Financial Action Task Force, which do not require private registers, let alone public registers. Nevertheless, should public registers become the global standard, we would expect the overseas territories and Crown dependencies to meet that standard.

As the Committee knows, the overseas territories and Crown dependencies are separate jurisdictions with their own democratically elected Governments. We have therefore legislated for them without their consent only in exceptional circumstances—for example, to decriminalise homosexuality in certain territories, to ensure they were compliant with international human rights obligations. By contrast, financial services are an area of domestic responsibility for territory and dependency Governments.

Legislating for those jurisdictions without their consent effectively disenfranchises their elected representatives and risks harming our overall relationship with them. It also risks leading to a flight of business to other, less regulated jurisdictions, with the undesirable consequence that our law enforcement authorities would not have the same level of access to beneficial ownership information as under the existing bilateral arrangements. Imposing public registers of company beneficial ownership on the overseas territories would carry with it the risk that the territories would be less willing to work with us on this important issue.

[Dame Cheryl Gillan in the Chair]

I would like to draw parallels with the devolved Administrations and the Sewel convention. The hon. Member for Glasgow Central addressed the point on Second Reading:

“Much as I do not wish the House to legislate on Scottish matters, I do not want us to legislate for overseas territories or Crown dependencies without consent.”—[Official Report, 20 February 2018; Vol. 636, c. 92.]

I agree with her that that is the right approach.

The overseas territories and Crown dependencies have already made significant progress on beneficial ownership. Since we concluded our exchanges of notes with them in 2016, they have passed new primary legislation and delivered technological improvements to comply with the terms of the arrangements. They have committed to provide UK law enforcement authorities with automatic access to beneficial ownership information within 24 hours of a request being made, or within one hour in urgent cases. Those arrangements strengthen our law enforcement authorities’ ability to investigate serious organised crime, including money laundering and tax evasion.

The hon. Member for Oxford East asked about what are termed similarly effective systems. Some jurisdictions have opted under the bilateral arrangements concluded with the UK to establish an electronic search platform, allowing them to gain access to beneficial ownership information held by their authorities or by corporate service providers.

The exchanges of notes permit such similarly effective arrangements, provided that the following criteria are met. Law enforcement authorities can obtain beneficial ownership information without restrictions, and that information is available for use in both civil and criminal proceedings. Law enforcement authorities can also quickly identify all corporate and legal entities connected to a beneficial owner, without needing to submit multiple and repeated requests. Corporate and legal entities, or those to whom the beneficial ownership information relates, are not to be alerted to the fact that a request has been made or that an investigation is under way. We will monitor that arrangement to ensure that it does indeed provide the same results.

I hope that hon. Members agree that the overseas territories, in some cases in the most challenging circumstances, and the Crown dependencies have made significant efforts to move forward on this agenda. The effective implementation of the exchanges of notes will put them ahead of many G20 countries and many individual states of the USA, and demonstrates what can be achieved through working co-operatively.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Alan Duncan]

The hon. Lady is not being unreasonable; there are some arguments where some people say compel, and others say urge and consult. My argument would be that we are consulting—we do it all the time. We have a regular dialogue, and in that, we are urging them in the right direction. Anything that smacks of us in any way telling them what to do is counterproductive, because rather than imposing new requirements on these jurisdictions, it is better to continue to focus our efforts on the consolidation of the existing arrangements.

The exchange of notes provides for the operation of these arrangements to be reviewed six months after they come into force. We are working very closely with the territories and dependencies on this review, and plan to conclude it by the end of March. That is a very good example of the sort of consultation we are engaging in on a regular basis.

[Anneliese Dodds]

When those letters are exchanged, will they include the logistics of this operation? I am trying to get my head round how we can genuinely say that contacting potentially myriad trust and company service providers and getting information from them is equivalent to having access to a register. How are the Government truly going to assess that in this exchange of letters? Will it be a question of time? We could be talking about hundreds of TCSPs.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I am not directly involved in this, but as I have said frequently, I am very happy to offer the expertise of officials to the hon. Lady so that she can fully get to grips with the intricate detail of the question she has asked.

Hon. Members will recall that the Criminal Finances Act 2017 provides for a review of the effectiveness of the bilateral arrangements. That report must be prepared before 1 July 2019, and it will then be published and laid before Parliament. The reviews will provide a clear understanding of how the jurisdictions are meeting their commitments. At that point, we will be in a better position to consider what more might need to be done. I stress once again that we will engage with the overseas territories and dependencies; we do so already and we will continue to do so on a regular basis, with the clear objectives in mind of wanting consistent and constant improvements in the way in which their finances are organised.

A key feature of the Government’s approach has been to maintain a level playing field between all the overseas territories with financial centres and the Crown dependencies. As I have described, we have robust review processes regarding the implementation of these arrangements. If these reviews demonstrate that the full implementation of the exchanges of notes is not taking place in any individual jurisdiction, it would be right for hon. Members to consider this issue further. For the time being, however, we should continue to focus on the full implementation of the existing bilateral arrangements. We are on a good and solid track; therefore, I urge hon. Members to withdraw the new clause.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Glen]

I will come on to explain the history of this and why we are where we are. I am happy for the hon. Gentleman to intervene if he does not feel satisfied at the end of that.

Mindful that the eyes of the world are on us, hon. Members should recognise that this legislation would be a world first. Successful delivery raises significant challenges and it is right that the Government achieve the right balance in an effective regime with robust enforcement that does not have a negative impact on land registration processes across the UK. I acknowledge that some have accused the Government—and we have also been accused this afternoon—of not acting swiftly enough to implement this policy. Let me address those concerns.

We have committed to publishing a draft Bill before the summer to introduce the Bill early in the second Session and for the register to be operational in 2021. Publishing a Bill in draft is the right approach. As I said before, this register will be the first of its kind in the world, and it will affect people’s property rights, including not just new purchasers but existing owners. This is a sensitive and delicate area. Getting it wrong would have significant adverse consequences.

[Anneliese Dodds]

The Minister is being generous. He has kindly set out for us a three-year timetable, adding on a couple of years before that when Government committed to this. Is he aware of the Private Eye map, which has been in existence for some time? Through civil society and journalistic activity, Land Registry and Companies House data were put together and a map produced. That appears to have been done quite quickly.

[John Glen]

I am not familiar with that particular map but I would be very happy to examine it. For clarity, and addressing the hon. Lady’s previous point, the register will capture the details of beneficial owners of all non-UK companies—including those in the overseas territories—that own UK property. This will be a world first, so we are moving as fast as possible, while ensuring that the register is as comprehensive as possible.

As the Government set out in last year’s call for evidence, for the register to be effective the sanctions to be applied for non-compliance must be a meaningful deterrent. Enforcement must be energetic. Simple criminal sanctions may not be sufficient in isolation. The draft Bill will include enforcement through land registration law. Where an overseas entity buys property, it will never be able to obtain legal title to that property without having complied with the register’s requirements. Similarly, a restriction on the title register for property owned by an overseas entity will signal to third parties that the overseas entity must comply with the regime before selling the property, creating a long lease or legal charge. Those are significant steps on which it is right to consult.

Hon. Members will recognise that there are separate Land Registries in Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as the Land Registry for England and Wales. The approaches taken to land registration and overseas entities by each of those Land Registries have been different until now. That too will need be streamlined. Delivery of an holistic outcome that complements all three land registration regimes is an exercise touching multiple teams across Government and the Land Registries. Put simply, it is an exercise that will take time to get right and a further demonstration of why publishing the legislation in draft is the appropriate next step if we are to get it right. Although I appreciate that the motive underlying the new clause supports the policy as a whole and demonstrates a desire for early delivery and implementation, it does not take account of the complexities that I have set out or the challenges of delivery and implementation.

The register will further demonstrate the Government’s commitment to combating money laundering through the property market. Hon. Members will have seen recent press reports—the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland drew our attention to the splash on 3 February—that two unexplained wealth orders have been obtained by the National Crime Agency in connection with two properties worth £22 million.

Those are the first orders obtained under the relevant powers conferred by the Criminal Finances Act 2017, which commenced at the end of January. They were obtained only a few days after it came into effect. As the Minister for Security and Economic Crime has said, the orders are an important addition to the UK’s ability to tackle illicit finance, and it is great to see them already in use.

The Government will continue to take action. BEIS’s response to last year’s call for evidence will be published shortly, and it will set out the Government’s approach to areas of particular complexity. BEIS has already made significant progress in preparing draft legislation; the work with the office of the parliamentary counsel to draft the Bill is under way.

Separately, BEIS is working to quantify the impact of the legislation on the UK. The impact assessment will quantify the register’s potential impact on the property market and investment flows, around which foreign direct investment is very specific, to pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland. The register will rightly make the UK more hostile to illicit flows of money, but we must understand the potential impact on legitimate inward investment.

All those issues were considered in last year’s call for evidence. Scrutiny of the draft Bill will further stress-test whether it will be effective. I hope that that process demonstrates the Government’s continued commitment to enact the policy, and our commitment to get it right. For those reasons, I hope that the hon. Lady will withdraw the new clause.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 15—Disqualification—

In the event that adequate procedures under subsection (3) of section [Failure to prevent money laundering] are found not to be in place, the Secretary of State must refer to the court a disqualification order under section 8 of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986 (disqualification of director on finding of unfitness).”.

This new clause would require the Minister to ask the courts to investigate whether directors of a company are fit and proper, if it was found that proper procedures against money laundering were not in place.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Cheryl, and in rather warmer circumstances than the last time. New clause 9 seeks to create an offence if a relevant body failed to put in place adequate procedures to prevent a person associated with it from carrying out a money laundering facilitation offence. New clause 15 creates a process for disqualification for those at the top level who have failed to prevent money laundering.

I will deal with each new clause in turn and then speak briefly about the overall regulatory context, which creates a necessity for these new approaches. First, on new clause 9 and the failure to prevent the facilitation of money laundering, there are many problems with the existing system. The FCA has found weaknesses in governance and long-standing and significant under-investment in resourcing for control systems, even in the sector that is actually regulated for money laundering. I will talk about some of the problems there later on.

Many of those who investigate in this area find that rules are intermittently enforced, penalties are low and senior executives face few personal, financial or reputational consequences. It is constructive to compare some of the penalties that have been levied in the UK with those levied in the US. As I understand, the largest fine levied in the UK for anti-money laundering or sanctions offences—the Minister may contradict me if I am wrong—was levied against Coutts & Co for £8.75 million. That is six hundred times less than the penalty that was levied by the United States on BNP Paribas for sanctions-related offences.

[John Glen]

I am very happy to confirm that in fact Deutsche Bank was fined £163 million in January 2017, and Barclays had a fine of £72 million in November 2015. I do not think that comparison is correct.

[Anneliese Dodds]

It would be helpful to know under which pieces of legislation those fines were levied, because I am uncertain whether they were directly under money laundering legislation. I will come back to that, particularly in relation to some of the outcomes of some parliamentary questions that I have asked to try to dig into this and find out what prosecutions have been enabled by existing legislation.

I am grateful for the information that the Economic Secretary has provided; however, there is still a lot of concern about banks’ and others’ ability to root out money laundering and the facilitating of money laundering. The FCA found—admittedly, in 2014—that there was

“significant and widespread weaknesses in most banks’ anti-money laundering systems and controls”.

That is revealed in the case of HSBC. Many members of the Committee will know that it was involved in a money laundering scandal that led to the US fining it £1.2 billion. There was a large investigation into that matter in the United States Senate, where it was said that our UK-based bank had been a conduit for

“drug kingpins and rogue nations”,

including Mexican drug cartels and North Korea. In fact, that case has been referred to already in this Committee.

Particularly worryingly, a congressional report found that George Osborne and the Financial Services Authority—now the FCA—corresponded on numerous occasions with their US counterparts about the case; in fact, they urged a less aggressive judicial approach on the US side. Apparently, the congressional report said that the UK interventions played a significant role in ultimately persuading the US Department of Justice not to prosecute HSBC. I find it quite concerning that the UK actually argued against measures being taken by other countries to try to deal with this problem.

We were hoping to have some change; the Serious Fraud Office has called for the broadening of existing economic offences to cover a kind of umbrella approach, also to cover failure to prevent. It thinks that that would be helpful to hold large companies to account criminally across the board. At the moment, we have the ability to prosecute the failure to prevent bribery and corruption, but those activities are rarely committed in isolation from instances of money laundering by corporate entities. Therefore, it seems to make sense to try to extend corporate liability to money laundering. That would push in the same direction as existing pieces of legislation. Of course, the Bribery Act 2010 created a new offence of corporate failure to prevent. I believe that Act was put in place because of the same kind of repeated criticism of the UK regime that we have seen in relation to money laundering. We also now have the offence of failure to prevent criminal tax evasion in the Criminal Finances Act 2017. Surely there is now a strong case for an explicit reference to failure to prevent money laundering.

Many of us thought that we were not going to have to push for a separate offence of money laundering because we were to have an umbrella approach. In May 2016, the Government committed to consult on a broad offence of failure to prevent economic crime, which would cover fraud, false accounting and money laundering. In January 2017, the Government downgraded that commitment and instead published a call for evidence on whether there was a case for economic crime corporate liability law reform.

As I understand it, the call for evidence closed in March 2017. I have not yet seen the results of that call for evidence. It would be helpful for the Minister to let us know the outcome of that call for evidence, the main findings and how the Government have decided to act on them. Will they introduce the umbrella offence or create a discrete offence, as we are asking for? Because we think we need action now. That is new clause 19.

[The Chair]

New clause 9.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I beg your pardon. I am getting over-excited and trying to hurtle towards the end of the programme. I am sorry, Dame Cheryl.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

Go ahead.

[Anneliese Dodds]

No; we are very keen to have a thorough discussion on every one of our new clauses.

New clause 15 focuses on disqualification. The purpose is to ensure that directors specifically take responsibility for their organisation’s mistakes, and to ensure that the Secretary of State may hold them to account for a failure to prevent money laundering, in the instance where procedures have not been put correctly in place.

Many colleagues might have served as directors and will know the rules on being a director—that directors can already be disqualified if they display unfit conduct. Unfit conduct is defined as including allowing a company to continue trading when it cannot pay its debts, not keeping proper company accounts and so on.

With the new clause, we wish to extend that to include a commitment for every director to ensure that they are not ignoring money laundering concerns. We want to mirror what happens under competition law in Britain, where a director’s role is looked at in the event of a breach of the law. That is necessary because of the situation we find ourselves in today.

I am sure many colleagues will have talked to professionals on the frontline of anti-money laundering. I have talked to quite a lot of people who work in banks and other organisations who have anti-money laundering responsibilities. I am sure there are people who work in accounting and other walks of life for whom this is a concern. Very often the clear message I get, as I am sure colleagues do, is that those individuals are working very hard to prevent money laundering but they are not supported by the leadership team within their firm. Global Witness has stated that,

“responsibility for compliance with anti-money laundering and other regulations is usually allocated to compliance teams, rather than to senior executives, who actually wield power within banks over what customers they take. This is a serious problem because it gives compliance staff none of the authority but all of the responsibility, breaking the important link between decision making and accountability.”

That is certainly what I find when I talk to individuals who are in that responsible position. They find they are often not supported by senior managements. That has also been discovered in some of the big corporate scandals—I referred to the HSBC case a moment ago. In his written evidence to the UK Parliament, David Bagley, who led on compliance at HSBC during the period of the failings we were just talking about, stated:

“as the Head of Group Compliance, my mandate was … limited to advising, recommending and reporting. My job was not—and I did not have the authority, resources, support or infrastructure—to ensure that all of these global affiliates followed the Group’s compliance standards”.

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[John Glen]

I undertake to address the points raised by the hon. Member for Oxford East. I will come to the point about the directors’ responsibility in my scripted remarks and also to the issue of what provision the fines were imposed under.

On the specific question the hon. Lady asked, the Ministry of Justice’s call for evidence considered a wide range of reforms to the law relating to corporate liability for economic crime. That is against a backdrop of already significant reform in this area in recent years, including the Bribery Act 2010, the Criminal Finances Act 2017 and the introduction of deferred prosecution agreements, which the Government would contend have strengthened the UK’s defences against corporate criminality. The Ministry of Justice is carefully considering the responses received to the call for evidence and is analysing the impacts of the Government’s range of recent reforms in this area. It will respond to its call for evidence in due course. I do not have a specific timetable, but that is the best information I can give the hon. Lady.

New clauses 9 and 15 seek to create a corporate criminal offence of failure to prevent money laundering, with an obligation on the Secretary of State to submit a disqualification order to the court against directors of a company found guilty of such an offence without having adequate anti-money laundering procedures in place. New clause 9 provides that a company or partnership is guilty of a criminal offence where the company’s employee, agent or other service provider commits one of the substantive money laundering offences in part 7 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. The relevant company would have a defence if it could prove that it had adequate procedures in place to prevent its employees or agents from committing such an offence.

The offence is not necessary in view of the extensive reforms to the UK’s anti-money laundering regime that the Government have put in place. The proposed offence is substantively applied to firms that are regulated for anti-money laundering purposes by part 2 of the Money Laundering Regulations 2017. Those require that regulated firms have policies, controls and procedures to mitigate and manage risks of money laundering and terrorist financing. The Government have legislated to require that these policies, controls and procedures are proportionate with regard to the size and nature of the firm’s business and proved by the firm’s senior management. Failure to comply with these requirements is a criminal offence in itself.

The Financial Conduct Authority and other supervisors are additionally able to take action against firms if their measures to counter money laundering are deficient. As was touched on in our exchange earlier, recent regulatory penalties related to firms’ anti-money laundering weaknesses include fines of £163 million for Deutsche Bank in January 2017 and £72 million for Barclays Bank in November 2015. They were a consequence of failures in anti-money laundering measures under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.

The new clause also seeks to address challenges that have arisen in apportioning responsibility for corporate failings. Within the financial services sector, that has been addressed through the senior managers regime, which was introduced after the financial crisis. Banks are now required to ensure that a named senior manager has unequivocal responsibility for overseeing the firm’s efforts to counter financial crime. That ensures that firms and individuals can be held to account for failing to put proper systems in place to prevent financial crime. If a relevant firm breaches its anti-money laundering obligations, the FCA can take action against a senior manager if it can prove that they did not take such steps as a person in their position can reasonably have been expected to take to avoid the breach occurring. The enforcement action includes fines and disbarment from undertaking regulated activities. The Government have legislated to extend the senior managers regime to apply across all financial services firms. That will be implemented in due course, and will further the Government’s reform programme. All those requirements are additional to the substantive money laundering offences in the Proceeds of Crime Act, such as entering into arrangements that facilitate the use of criminal property, which apply to any individual or company.

As hon. Members know, the Government have previously introduced two similar offences: the failure to prevent bribery, in 2010, and the failure to prevent the facilitation of UK and foreign tax evasion, in 2017. They are structured in a similar way to the proposed new clause, but they were introduced following clear evidence of gaps in the relevant legal frameworks that were limiting the bringing of effective and dissuasive enforcement proceedings. It is right that the offences that we have already established apply to legal entities, regardless of whether they operate in the regulated sector.

The situation in relation to money laundering is very different. The international standard is set by the Financial Action Task Force, which has been referred to numerous times in the Committee’s discussions. The UK’s money laundering regulations apply to banks, financial institutions, certain professional services firms and other types of entity, and act as gatekeepers to the financial system. As I have said, such firms are already required to have policies and procedures in place to prevent their services from being misused for money laundering.

Subsection (6) of new clause 9 would require all companies, regardless of whether they are incorporated, to have procedures in place to prevent persons connected to them from laundering money. The Government do not believe that that would be appropriate. It would risk making non-regulated firms liable for the actions of their regulated professional advisers. Instead, responsibility for anti-money laundering compliance should rest in the regulated sector, as is currently the case. The new clause would not go beyond the existing regulatory framework in that area, and it would blur where responsibility should lie for anti-money laundering compliance. Therefore, I respectfully ask the hon. Member for Oxford East to withdraw the new clause.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the Economic Secretary for those helpful explanations and clarifications. Despite his useful response, however, there are a number of areas where I am unclear. First, I appreciate that he has probably anticipated this question, but the Committee may ask why it has taken Government a whole year to assess the responses from their consultation on economic crime. Government frequently work at a far faster pace than that. He said that we will have the analysis of those consultation responses in due course. It would be helpful to know more about why it is taking so long for Government to analyse them.

Secondly, the Economic Secretary spoke about the requirement for all regulated firms to ensure that their policies, controls and procedures are appropriate to prevent money laundering, but there is a question about who assesses that and whose responsibility that is. That takes us back to the issue about there being myriad professional bodies, which all operate subtly different approaches towards regulation in this area. As I said, I appreciate that OPBAS has been created to try to draw them together, but I do not think we heard exactly what the status of that office is—I was trying to concentrate on what the Economic Secretary was saying. I have seen different descriptions of it as a team, an office and an organisation. It would be helpful to have a clearer indication, particularly because those professional bodies are, as I understand it, required to contribute financially to OPBAS, so a number of them are keen to understand what is happening with it. Furthermore, HMRC is not a member of it, as I said before, so the concern about a lack of regulatory co-ordination persists.

Finally, the Economic Secretary referred approvingly to the senior managers regime that has been brought in since the financial crisis, which looks like a positive step initially—of course, the HSBC problems occurred following that. In any case, as I understand it, the actual operation of this new regime and its extension are quite different from, for example, what was recommended by the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. Under this approach, the burden to show that senior managers failed to take appropriate steps will be on the regulator, rather than the senior managers themselves.

That is different from the approach taken in many other areas, including road traffic, health and safety at work, the Bribery Act 2010—which the Minister referred to—terrorist legislation, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and so on. It would be helpful to understand why, with the extension of this regime, the burden of proof has essentially now been placed on the shoulders of the regulator, rather than the shoulders of the managers.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

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[Anneliese Dodds]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 11—Due diligence—

“(1) For the purposes of preventing money laundering, when a company is formed, any company formation agent providing formation services must ensure that the identity and business risk profile of all beneficial owners of the company are established in accordance with—

(a) the customer due diligence measures under the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (S.I. 2017/692),

(b) regulations made under section 41 of this Act, or

(c) the Directive (EU) 2015/849 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 May 2015 on anti-money laundering measures.

(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), Companies House is to be treated as a ‘company formation agent’.”

This new clause would ensure that when a company is formed in the UK, the relevant formation services must identify the beneficial owners of the company. It will also treat Companies House as a “company formation agent”, ensuring that the data on the public register of beneficial ownership for companies is accurate.

New clause 12—Companies House: due diligence and resources—

“(1) For the purposes of preventing money laundering, the Companies Act 2006 is amended as follows.

(2) In section 1061 (the registrar’s functions) after subsection (1) insert—

‘(1A) Functions directed by the Secretary of State under subsection (1)(b) must include due diligence on a person wishing to register a company.

(1B) In this section “due diligence” has the same meaning as “customer due diligence measures” in regulation 3 of the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (S.I. 692/2017).’

(3) In section 1063 (Fees payable to the registrar), in subsection (2)(a) after ‘Secretary of State’ insert ‘including the duty of due diligence under section 1061(1A).’”

This new clause would amend the duties of Companies House to ensure that any person wishing to register a company must be checked for due diligence by Companies House, in line with the measures included in the Money Laundering Regulations 2017. It also ensures that the Secretary of State can charge fees for due diligence checks to cover costs incurred by Companies House.

New clause 13—UK bank accounts—

“(1) For the purposes of tackling money laundering, the Companies Act 2006 is amended as follows.

(2) In section 853A (duty to deliver confirmation statements), after subsection (1) insert—

‘(1A) In subsection (1) “information” includes such information as is able to demonstrate that the company has a UK bank account.

(1B) Any company that is unable to provide the information required in subsection (1A) is liable to a fee which may be prescribed by regulations.’”

This new clause would ensure that all companies wishing to be created in the UK must provide evidence of a UK bank account to ensure it has gone through proper money laundering checks by a UK supervising body. If a company is unable to provide proof then they are liable to a fee which will cover the cost of such checks.

[Anneliese Dodds]

It is a pleasure to present the new clauses to the Committee. As colleagues will know, they all essentially call for an increase in the due diligence and anti-money laundering checks for those who register a company through Companies House.

There is a clear rationale for the new clauses. Around 40% of incorporations in the UK every year are done directly through Companies House, which in many ways offers an easy and helpful service. It is very quick; it is one of the fastest and easiest ways to form a company—it costs only £12 and takes a matter of minutes to complete the necessary paperwork online. That is all very positive, but the negative side comes from the risks that result from an approach where there is insufficient due diligence on the data submitted through that route.

The problem, as I am sure Ministers are well aware—I have asked a number of parliamentary questions to probe this—is that Companies House is exempt from the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 because of its not-for-profit status and the fact that it is not a company service provider. That means that a huge number of companies are created without any checks being made on the person setting up the company or the source of their wealth. We are talking about 251,628 companies last year.

As I said, there are very positive aspects to being able to create companies quickly, but the quality of data that results from that is potentially very poor; my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland talked of, potentially, 10% of company reports not including the appropriate information. There are some cases that might almost be humorous, but given the the circumstances they are deeply disturbing and indicate how little due diligence is taking place. An investigative journalist, Oliver Bullough, created a company called “Crooked Crook Crook Ltd.” With that name, many of us might think that this would be a company we would want to look into, but no, the confirmation documents were delivered within 36 hours. He details in an article, which colleagues can look up, should they wish, how easy it was to create that company. If he had not reported his activities in an article for a media outlet, his company could have gone on to partake in a myriad of activities, showing just how cheap, easy and disposable company formation through Companies House can be.

There are many concerns about that. We have a new regime in place now through the money laundering regulations, which covers trust and company service providers—TCSPs—as we have already mentioned. We have some amendments further down the agenda looking at some of those, because there is a particular issue around the operations of non-UK TCSPs. It is surely the case that when a company can be created through a TCSP, that TCSP has to follow all money laundering legislation, but when it does not go through a TCSP, and there is no money laundering legislation applying to it, we should be very concerned. Potentially, that money laundering regulation is undermined by having this massive loophole in place.

There are many disturbing findings from the data from Companies House that has been crunched by different investigative journalists and NGOs. We find that 4,000 beneficial owners named in the Companies House register are under the age of two. My daughter is two. She is really good at lots of things, such as climbing on to chairs. I am not sure that she or any of her playmates would be very good at being a person exercising significant control within a company. There are five beneficial owners registered who control more than 6,000 companies. Perhaps each one of those five are exercising all of their responsibilities perfectly in line with legislation and probity, but it must be very difficult for them to do that. We also have the fact that companies from secrecy jurisdictions can then be registered by Companies House through a UK company, or another formation agent, without there being any background or due diligence check.

I realise that some of these cases might sound a little bit silly, but potentially we are talking about some very worrying examples where there has not been that due diligence and there should have been. There was recently a BBC investigation—we have already referred to it within this Committee—into the case where a UK company registered at a Potters Bar address appeared to facilitate very complex financial arrangements involving the former President of Ukraine. At least £1.2 billion has been funnelled through companies registered at the same Potters Bar address, some of them potentially linked to the very complex situation where huge funds from the Eurovision song contest and lots of other activities seem to have somehow ended up in this company through very unclear routes.

It is concerning that we are in this kind of situation. Because of that, we find a number of professionals highlighting this as an area where we need to have reform. Frances Coulson, the head of insolvency and litigation at Moon Beever Solicitors, has been quoted as saying that this money is passing through Britain, through companies created with insufficient due diligence. She said:

“This is going on now and all the time…All the indicators are that it’s getting worse.”

And she said that,

“better due diligence—such as checking identification documents—by company formation agents and the UK corporate register, Companies House, would help combat fraud.”

Even if we do not manage to pass these new clauses at this stage, I hope that we will at least get some clarification on some of the rather unclear aspects of the regulatory regime. First, there is the role of Companies House. We are getting only a bit of an inkling of the role of Companies House through parliamentary questions. One response, given on 12 October 2017, said that the Government’s view is that Companies House

“does not have a front-line role in combatting money laundering”.

In the same month we were told:

“Companies House does not have powers to verify the authenticity of company directors, secretaries and registered office addresses. However, it does carry out a number of checks on all information received; ensuring it is valid, complete, correctly formatted and in compliance with company filing requirements.”

However, when we try to find out what this verification process involves, the picture gets rather complicated. Is any automated verification of beneficial ownership information occurring? I tried to find out in February, and no, there are “no current plans” to undertake that; however, Companies House is, it seems, undertaking activities, including,

“contacting companies where they believe the company has misunderstood the requirements…pursuing companies that have not provided PSC information”—

it seems that there is a huge number it will have to pursue, given the statistics discussed by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland. It is also

“following up with companies and PSCs where they have issued notices to their PSC (asking the PSCs to provide them with information)”—

PSCs being “people with significant control”—and

“seeking compliance from companies where there has been a complaint about missing or incorrect PSC information.”

This was where the picture got more confused. [Interruption.]

I may have heard the Minister suggesting that I was rabbiting on. I am terribly sorry, but some of us are concerned about these matters and a number of professionals have contacted us about their concerns, so it is absolutely right that we deal with them in this Committee.

I tried to find out how many reports have been made about money laundering through the “report it” facility that Companies House has set up. The Minister of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), responded to me on 19 December, stating:

“Eight reports about money laundering have been made through the Companies House report it facility.”

However, I was then told on 20 December that the new “Report It Now” feature had led to Companies House

“receiving between 180-200 contacts a day through this service.”

That seems like quite a big gap. Will the Economic Secretary please indicate how many of those reports are about money laundering? Is it eight, or is it 180 to 200 a day?

I have been very concerned by the Government’s claim, in the same written answer:

“Higher risk company formation activities in the UK will generally be done via Trust or Company Service Providers, who are subject to the Money Laundering Regulations.”

I want to illustrate that with one last example, which I was told about yesterday and is quite concerning. It is the case of an individual who has previously described himself as “The Chicken Thief”. That is his name as a person of significant control within the Companies House database. His real name is thought to be Antonio Righi—a mafia kingpin in Italy. If someone searches for his name on the Companies House website, as an academic did yesterday before informing me about this, they get a link to Business Bank Italy Ltd.

All banks should be regulated through the FCA nowadays. We are supposed to have that proper approach in place. The use of the word “bank” in a company name is restricted. Any would-be bank has needed to obtain a letter or email of non-objection from the FCA before being allowed to operate as a bank. Yet we see this company still apparently registered with Companies House.

That is deeply worrying because the individual concerned has been named as an active member of the Camorra—a very problematic criminal network that operates in Italy, with links in many other countries. The revelations about “The Chicken Thief” are not new, so one would have thought that Business Bank Italy would have been looked into carefully by the Government, but apparently not, and it still appears to be registered on the Companies House website. I hope the Minister can indicate why that is and whether he will look into this matter, if he has not done so already.

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[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the Economic Secretary for those clarifications. He made several helpful points, but some concerns remain. He mentioned the FATF process, which the Committee has discussed previously, and seemed to suggest that we should not make alterations in this area of anti-money laundering activity because of the ongoing FATF assessment. Of course, that argument could stop action in any other area, because the FATF is looking at anti-money laundering and anti-corruption provisions across the board, so it is not clear that it is completely convincing. Furthermore, I understand that representations have been made to the FATF as part of its review that change is needed in this area, which suggests that the argument is the other way round. The Economic Secretary also suggested that there would be a much higher cost for those that want to incorporate through a TCSP. In practice, as I understand it, the cost may not be substantial—only a couple of pounds more in many cases.

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[Hannah Bardell]

Does the hon. Lady agree that we are letting our citizens down if we do not legislate properly and close these loopholes? I am sure we have all had constituency cases where people have lost money to unscrupulous companies and company owners. We have an opportunity to take action, and we must take it. The Government are letting citizens down if they do not accept the new clauses.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making the point clearly that our proposal has been portrayed as only a burden, when it could help to prevent our constituents from being ripped off by unscrupulous individuals who are able to set themselves up as a company with only minimum requirements for due diligence. As I said, they can be there by day, fly off by night, and leave the unfortunate person who dealt with that company in a very difficult position.

To end my remarks specifically on the Minister’s comments on new clause 13, many of us are worried that, in practice, there are TCSPs that offer UK company formation with a range of optional services, including setting up bank accounts in other jurisdictions such as Latvia, Belize, Switzerland and Cyprus. That would not necessarily be a problem, were it not for the fact that, time and again, we have seen in the cases we have discussed in this Committee that reliance on the third parties—the banks in those other countries—does not lead to a real assurance that money laundering provisions are being followed. The reality is quite the opposite.

In the Russian laundromat scandal, which we have already talked about, of the 440 UK shell companies used in the scheme—in itself, a staggering statistic—392 of them had Baltic bank accounts, with 270 UK firms using Latvian banks and 122 using banks in Estonia. It may be that we are fully confident in every case that anti-money laundering regulations were followed in those countries, but given some of what came out of the Russian laundromat scandal, it could be suggested that that is not the case.

We do need to get at this problem through another route. We need reform of the Companies House system, but we also need the use of another prong, which is requiring a UK bank account.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

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Brought up, and read the First time.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

It feels a little like going out of the freezer and into the fire, because it is rather warm on this side of the Committee Room, but I am sure that we will be rewarded somewhere else for our endurance.

[The Chair]

May I ask the hon. Lady not to tempt fate?

[Anneliese Dodds]

We tabled the new clause because ineffective anti-money laundering supervision has a clear and obvious link with inadequate compliance and with low and poor-quality reporting of suspicious activity to the National Crime Agency. Research by a number of non-governmental organisations, particularly Transparency International, has indicated serious failings in the current framework for supervising money laundering compliance in the UK, especially with respect to trust and company service providers.

Under the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, only TCSPs carrying on business in the UK—that is their formulation in the legislation—have to register with an anti-money laundering supervisor and comply with MLR 2017. That means of course that TCSPs with no UK presence can incorporate UK companies without any oversight from an AML supervisor. They do not have to comply with UK standards for money laundering checks. We have seen a number of clear examples—I will talk about some in a moment—where that has allowed non-UK TCSPs to incorporate UK companies that have subsequently been used in large-scale money laundering schemes. I think many of the concerns raised a moment ago around undercutting existing legislation and the lack of a fair playing field for UK TCSPs come up again in this regard.

In 2012 the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists showed how a number of UK individuals offering company services had moved their base of operations outside our country but continued to form, and act as nominee directors for, UK companies. There are two examples that are particularly important. The first is Jesse Grant Hester, who was originally from the UK and who moved to Cyprus to form Atlas Corporate Services Ltd before moving to Dubai and, finally, Mauritius—he is somebody who has been lucky enough to travel much in life. Those jurisdictions have all been identified as presenting high money laundering risks. Mauritius in particular is very concerning: it scored 5.92 out of 10 on the Basel Institute on Governance money laundering risk index. Ten is the highest level of money laundering risk and zero is the least, so it is well up there. Jesse Grant Hester appeared on numerous occasions as a nominee director for companies embroiled in corruption scandals. In the Moldovan bank theft that we talked about earlier, he signed fake promissory notes using an alias on behalf of a UK firm, Goldbridge Trading Ltd, allowing £444 million to be stolen. Atlas Corporate Services is associated with eight people who, between them, have held directorships of 3,613 UK companies. Again, that is a staggering number of companies to be held by just eight people. As we discussed, that scandal caused enormous problems for the country of Moldova.

Another UK resident who became internationally renowned, although not in a positive way, for his company formation activities is Ian Taylor. That is not the famous social policy academic, who I had the pleasure of working with, but another Ian Taylor. He also moved around a lot: he moved to Vanuatu.

[John Glen]

There was also a Tory MP of that name.

[Anneliese Dodds]

Oh, there was a Tory MP as well. Goodness—the name is frequently used. He moved to Vanuatu after he was banned from being a corporate director, first in New Zealand in 2011 and then in the UK in 2015, as a result of his companies’ involvement in numerous scandals, including a land banking scam in Somerset. Vanuatu’s self-assessment on money laundering risk found that its TCSP sector was among the most vulnerable to such activity. In 2015 the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering found serious deficiencies in Vanuatu’s AML system. Despite being banned in the UK, Taylor seems to have retained a UK presence. Various investigations have identified the circle of nominee directors that he works with. One of them is a Vanuatu resident who is a director of more than 61 companies. He took over from Taylor as a director of 20 of them on the same date.

Those examples show that physically moving out of the UK does not result in a lack of activity in the UK. Networks of associates make it difficult to stop the formation of UK companies by individuals who have already been disqualified here. Such individuals, who have been shown to have engaged in money laundering activities or have otherwise been disqualified or viewed as not competent in this arena, can function in other countries and create companies. The checking that should go on does not happen, and there is inadequate anti-money laundering supervision. We do not have a means of dealing with that, because we do not have a regulatory system for TCSPs that are not based in countries with appropriate anti-money laundering provisions. That is not currently illegal, which is why we want to change the legal situation.

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[John Glen]

I cannot comment on the specific cases that the hon. Lady mentions, because I have not seen or studied them. I imagine that there is a degree of variability in the effectiveness of regimes, but I am trying to set out the Government’s rationale for what we have in place. I do not suggest that it is perfect, but some of the developments have occurred in response to shortcomings that have been identified.

The individual anti-money laundering supervisors are under a duty to identify and assess international and domestic risks, including the money laundering and terrorism risk, which ensures that the most intensive supervision is applied where the highest risks of money laundering exist. The establishment of OPBAS will assist with the consistent identification of such risks across the TCSP sector. Our national risk assessment makes it clear that the Government are aware of the money laundering risks connected with TCSPs, and further reform in the area should take account of the conclusions of the ongoing FATF review. I assure Opposition Members that the regime is a searching and exacting one. I know from ministerial meetings concerning preparations for it that the evaluation will be exacting. We expect the observations to be meaningful, and we will need to respond carefully to them. However, until we receive the outcome of that review of the UK’s anti-money laundering regime and of the experience of OPBAS as its role develops, it would not be appropriate to adopt the amendment.

Hon. Members should be mindful of the fact that anti-money laundering supervision around the world follows a territorial model. Simply requiring non-UK TCSPs to have a UK supervisor when they set up UK companies will not address the challenges of extra-territorial supervision. Effective anti-money laundering supervision depends on measures that include supervisory on-site visits and close engagement with higher-risk firms. Requiring a UK supervisor to do that in relation to a non-UK firm will not, in and of itself, address the issue that hon. Members have identified.

As was noted in the other place, the most effective means of combating international money laundering is cross-border co-operation to drive up the standards of overseas supervision and enforcement. For those reasons, we have imposed a duty on each UK anti-money laundering supervisor to take such steps as they consider appropriate to co-operate with overseas authorities. That is the agenda we pursue through the global FATF process. I therefore respectfully ask the hon. Lady to withdraw the new clause.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the Minister for those remarks and clarifications. They have been genuinely helpful, but I regret that some areas are still rather unclear to me; perhaps they are not to other Committee members. He stated that the highest-risk TCSPs are assessed to be UK ones, but it has not been spelled out why. Perhaps he could write to me about that.

[John Glen]

I would be happy to write to the hon. Lady to spell that out. My understanding is that UK-based TCSPs typically offer a wider range of services and there are vulnerabilities in the additional services, but I will investigate and write to her as quickly as I can.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the Minister for offering to look into that. We must always be wary of talking about a general pattern of activity as necessarily reflecting the risk profile of that overall activity. Among those TCPS, there could be overseas ones that are not appropriately regulated and that also offer a wide range of services, in the same way as some UK TCSPs do.

I am also a bit confused about the professional regulators. As the Minister said, there are about 22 of them, and then on top of that we stick Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the Financial Conduct Authority and so on. As I understand it, the professional regulators do not have members based in other countries; they cover only UK residents. We are talking about, for example, the Law Society of Scotland and the Law Society of England and Wales—professional bodies dealing with UK individuals. We are not talking about professional associations covering professionals in other countries.

The Minister seemed to talk about a process of liaison between these organisations and their counterparts in other countries. I am sure we all want to encourage that, because it sounds like a very good idea. Information sharing is wonderful, but information sharing is not the same as having an appropriate process of regulation to ensure that there is compliance with anti-money laundering requirements.

The Minister said that the approach was an extraterritorial one, because it affects bodies in other countries. That is absolutely right, but those bodies then interact with our company formation procedure. That is the reason why we, as a country, have a stake in this process—a rather large one, given the reputational damage that seems to be being caused by the activities of some unregulated or inappropriately regulated TCSPs. I will be pressing the new clause to a vote.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

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Brought up, and read the First time.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The new clause looks to ensure that standards published by the Financial Action Task Force in relation to combating money laundering, terrorist financing and other threats to the integrity of the financial system can be easily implemented in this country. We are also seeking to identify or revoke a designation of a high-risk country, taking account of best international practice, including EU sanctions regimes.

We have talked a bit about the FATF in the Committee. As colleagues will know, its objectives are to set standards and promote effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system. It is a policy-making body that works to generate political will to bring about national legislative and regulatory reforms. We have talked about its reporting cycle already and the fact that the UK is currently being investigated in order for the FATF to report on us later in the year.

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[John Glen]

I just want to clarify that, while I would not profess to be an expert on Pakistan’s compliance with the FATF, the concerns raised about its recent greylisting were around the specific handling of various banned terrorist organisations. I would not wish to cast any wider doubt over its intentions to improve the provision of services.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I thank the Minister for that helpful clarification. It is helpful to know the exact locus of FATF activity or the concerns about Pakistan that were focused on terrorist financing. That is not the area we are focused on now, but such financing and money laundering often go hand in hand.

Given the potential effects of such a ruling—we have talked about that in relation to Pakistan—we think it necessary that Ministers should have the flexibility to ensure that FATF standards can be implemented as soon as possible in our country in order to be on top of new international standards. That is particularly important because the UK was a founding member of the FATF, so we need to show that we are at the cutting edge of implementing its requirements.

As I mentioned, we also need to be able to identify or revoke high-risk countries quickly, taking account of the FATF’s standards and given the effect that it can have on the countries themselves and also on our reputation. If we are viewed as not following FATF recommendations, that prevents the co-ordinated approach that the FATF was set up to promote in the first place.

Finally on this amendment, we hope that Ministers will take account of aligning the designations with our EU partners. We have talked consistently in our deliberations about the need for co-ordination, which of course makes all the mechanisms much more effective. When they are not co-ordinated, there can be loopholes. In that regard, it is important to mention the case of Russia. In 2014, the Arms Export Controls Committees—we talked about their composition when we talked about scrutiny arrangements—reported that more than 200 licences to sell British weapons to Russia, including missile-launching equipment, were still in place, despite David Cameron’s claim that the Government had imposed an absolute arms embargo against Russia in alignment with the rest of the EU. We really need to make sure that that alignment is genuine in practice, not just on the surface and rhetorical.

[John Glen]

New clause 16 would limit amendments to the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 to those that would implement standards published by the Financial Action Task Force, or those whose purpose was identifying or revoking a designation of a high-risk third country. The 2017 regulations transpose the fourth EU anti-money laundering directive, which was in turn derived from the most recent major updates to the FATF standards, which were made in 2012. As the hon. Lady acknowledged, the UK is a founder member of the FATF and is committed to playing a leading role in its continuing work. It is right for the Government to have the power to update the UK regime when such standards change.

There are, however, several areas where the UK’s anti-money laundering regime already goes beyond those standards. Our recently established register of trusts generating tax consequences, for example, goes beyond the standards set by the FATF. Similarly, the UK announced at the time of the 2015 Budget that we intended to regulate virtual currency exchanges for AML purposes—an objective that was accomplished through negotiation of the fifth EU anti-money laundering directive—but that was not required by the FATF. So although we will remain aligned with the FATF standards after the UK ceases to be a member of the EU, our anti-money laundering regime exceeds those standards in certain areas.

The Government are determined to ensure that our defences against misuse of a financial system remain ahead of global standards rather than solely reflecting them. That is reflected in our commitment to the establishment of a public register of the beneficial ownership of non-UK companies that own UK property, which the Committee debated earlier, even if we did not agree on the timeline for it. The new clause would reduce our ability to do so. Under the power in question, the UK’s anti-money laundering regime could not go further in areas where we would otherwise want to.

As I said previously, in debating amendment 7, and as my right hon. Friend the Minister said about new clause 3, we do not believe that a bar on new offences is the right way to address the concerns raised by Lord Judge and others. We have instead tabled amendments to ensure that the power is used only where it is needed, and that Ministers are properly accountable to Parliament for it.

Ensuring that we can make regulations to prevent, or to enable or facilitate the detection or investigation of, money laundering or terrorist financing, as well as to implement the standards of the FATF, is the most certain method of placing future changes to our anti-money laundering system on a sound legal basis. The new clause would limit our ability to do so in the future, and I am sure that is not the intention behind it. I respectfully suggest that the hon. Lady might withdraw it.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation. It may be the fact that we have been in this room for a few hours, but I am struggling a little with, in particular, the suggestion that new clause 16 would somehow tie the UK’s hands in implementing additional requirements beyond the FATF standards.

The Minister referred to the public register of property owned by non-UK entities. We had a discussion about that, but he is right: it would arguably be an innovation in the UK. Of course it is one that we need more than other countries, because of the use of our property market in many such cases, and the exponential rise in house prices. He could have talked—although he did not—about the register of beneficial ownership of companies being an innovation as well, but countries such as the Netherlands and Norway are putting those into practice anyway, so perhaps we are not quite as far-reaching in what we are doing as we might suggest. Particularly in relation to the charges and fines levied against those found guilty of money laundering offences, we seem to be in a different position from that of our North American counterparts, for example, as we have discussed. None the less, it is not clear how the new clause would stop us going further than those other jurisdictions where we wished to do so. It says that we would take account of the

“best international practice including EU sanctions regimes”,

not that we would be led by it.

[Helen Goodman]

On a point of order, Dame Cheryl, in the light of what the Minister said earlier, I would like to read precisely what was published by The Independent. I misinterpreted it and, consequently, I misled the Committee. I wish to apologise to him and to the Committee for that. This is what The Independent published in 2014:

“According to Electoral Commission records, New Century Media gave the Conservatives £85,000 in the months leading up to the 2010 general election…New Century represents the personal foundation of the Ukrainian billionaire Dmitry Firtash, who has been indicted on bribery and corruption charges, which he denies, in the United States…David Burnside, New Century’s executive chairman, has made…claims about his connections with senior Tories…The company has paid for a table at the last four Conservative summer balls and paid for…the International Development minister”—

who is now the Minister for Europe and the Americas—to be its guest

“at Conservative events at a cost of…£800”.

I am sorry. I misread it and misunderstood it, and consequently I misled the Committee.

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Brought up, and read the First time.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

It is good that we can continue proceedings, because there are many matters that we still need to consider, not least this new clause and the others on the selection list. I am grateful for the opportunity to do so.

New clause 17 requires a public consultation on corporate liability for money laundering within six months. We have already discussed what occurred with the Government’s evidence-gathering exercise—as I think they described it—in relation to a broader economic crime offence, and how the results of that exercise have been with the Government since last March. We still have no indication of how that will be dealt with, aside from the Economic Secretary’s helpful remark that it will be dealt with in due course. I know he always tries to be helpful, but I am afraid that that is not good enough for those of us who want to see change in this area.

We are specifically requesting a public consultation to get the process moving and to promote it, not least because of what the Government have committed to—or at least, what past Conservative leaders have committed to. In 2016, at the time of the anti-corruption summit, David Cameron wrote an article for The Guardian in which he claimed:

“In the UK, in addition to prosecuting companies that fail to prevent bribery and tax evasion”—

Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [Lords] (Fourth sitting)

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland for not seeking to embarrass me again.

Amendment 36 requires the Government to provide quarterly reports on the impact of all sanction regimes, including the number and value of suspected breaches of sanctions. In considering the sorts of scenario that are in play here, hon. Members will remember that sanctions breaches are highly complex and involve multiple parties across various time periods. Sometimes they take place across borders and in different jurisdictions. The complexity of most sanctions breaches means that the investigation process from initial report to action often takes significant time and resources. There is also often a time lag between the breach taking place and being reported. The Government therefore continually adjust their figures as new information comes to light. Hence, it is very challenging to make the process fully accurate. It would be extremely difficult for the Government to report accurately on the number of breaches suspected or found at any one time. That would render the information published in the quarterly reports of little practical value.

The amendment would also place a significant burden on businesses. Currently, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation collects information on the value of funds frozen annually, which is onerous on businesses but important for compliance purposes.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I understand that the US Office of Foreign Assets Control routinely releases details of licences and other information. It believes it has achieved an appropriate balance between commercial confidentiality and public accountability, and it does not appear to be overly onerous in the US context. I wonder why we view it as being overly onerous in the UK context.

[John Glen]

It is not about the reporting, but the frequency of the reporting. The point I am making is that to increase it to quarterly would add unnecessary compliance cost to industry, when that cost is already considerable if necessary. It would also result in an administrative burden for Government to produce figures that may not be of much practical use. We do not think that is the best way to spend the limited resource of public money.

Providing quarterly reporting regime by regime may also risk breaking other laws. At the moment we only provide regime figures for the largest regimes. For the small regimes there may only be a small number of designated persons with frozen funds in the UK so providing that specific information, which can easily be traced back to them, may risk breaching data protection laws.

The Government have already committed to being transparent where appropriate. As part of the monetary penalty guidance published last year by the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, the Government committed to publishing details of breaches and criminal prosecutions. That is a matter of public record.

For those reasons, I urge the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland to withdraw the amendment.

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[Sir Alan Duncan]

The hon. Lady makes a perfectly fair request, and I think I can give her the reassurance she is seeking. Clause 41 enables an appropriate Minister to alter the legislation to introduce new types of sanctions measures where the UK has been subject to a UN or other international obligation to do so. That, I think, is the basis of her concern, but the power is for types of sanctions measures that have not previously been predicted and therefore cannot be and are not included in the Bill.

Common types of sanctions include asset freezes, travel bans, arms embargoes and prohibitions on aviation and maritime transport. These types of sanction are included in the Bill. A recent example of where the international community developed a new type of sanction was in the UN sanctions imposed in respect of North Korea. A recent UN resolution, which we are obliged to follow, requires that UN member states do not grant work permits to North Koreans, save where the UN agrees in advance on a case-by-case basis. That type of restriction did not exist prior to the resolution, and in the future there may be other unforeseen types of sanction that we would be under an obligation to introduce.

Under the powers in the clause, new types of sanction can be introduced only if the UK is, or has been, under a UN or other international obligation to impose them. The clause does not enable any modification to be made to the purposes for which sanctions can be made, as set out in clause 1(1) and (2). Changes will be made through regulations via the draft affirmative procedure, to ensure that Parliament is given a full role in scrutinising such changes.

The clause will ensure that we remain in close co-ordination with our international partners and can respond to changes in how sanctions are used as a foreign policy tool. That will help to maintain the UK’s leading role in this field and to address global challenges in collaboration with our partners.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 41 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 42 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 43

Money laundering and terrorist financing etc

[Anneliese Dodds]

I beg to move amendment 38, in clause 43, page 33, line 12, at end insert—

“(1A) Provision made under subsection (1)(a) may in particular include provision for enabling or facilitating the detection or investigation of money laundering, or preventing money laundering, through limited partnerships registered in Scotland.”

This amendment would ensure that regulations under this section made in relation to money laundering particularly applied to money laundering through limited partnerships in Scotland.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I will probably try to move around a little bit while I am speaking to warm myself up. It is wonderful to be able to speak to amendment 38. As colleagues will have seen, it is designed to ensure that regulations made under clause 34 in relation to money laundering also apply to money laundering through Scottish limited partnerships—SLPs, as they are commonly known and as I will call them for the purpose of this speech.

SLPs are a unique form of company. We tabled the amendment because we are concerned that, in addition to their use for modern business purposes—particularly by private equity firms and property investment funds—there appears to be considerable evidence that the huge surge in their use may be linked to money laundering. That concern has certainly been raised extensively in Scotland. It needs to be heard in the House, and action surely needs to be taken.

The key difference between SLPs and other forms of limited partnership is that they have a distinct legal personality; an SLP is able to sue and be sued, but the liability of the directors is still limited. In many respects, principally on tax, the partners within an SLP behave as they would elsewhere in the UK as part of a normal partnership, but the structure enables the company to maintain secrecy. They can also carry out other activities that other partnerships cannot—it can open bank accounts on its own account, for example. SLPs also have limited management participation requirements; the limited partners do not have to be involved directly in management, so there is less of a necessity for accountability there.

There has been some suggestion that SLPs initially proliferated partly for tax reasons. They reduce the liability of partners to UK or foreign tax on income and chargeable gains, as well as to stamp duty land tax. However, the recent increase in their number has been quite astonishing. The number of limited partnerships in Scotland has more than doubled, from just over 6,000 to nearly 15,000, since 2009. Now Scotland has more of those partnerships than England and Wales put together have ordinary limited partnerships.

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[Hannah Bardell]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on making an excellent speech. Will she join me in paying tribute to the former Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, our colleague Roger Mullin, who did a huge amount of work on this? Will she acknowledge as well that despite their name—Scottish limited partnerships —these companies have little to do with Scotland? They were introduced by the UK Government under Liberal Chancellor Herbert Asquith in 1907. The operation, regulation and dissolution of SLPs remain exclusively the preserve of Westminster, so it is vital that this legislation goes through and the changes happen.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for bringing those matters to light; I will return to the point about this being a UK Government responsibility later, because it is enormously important. It is important to raise our recognition of those who have done so much to uncover what has been occurring with SLPs. I also pay tribute to The Herald newspaper, which has done a good investigative job in this regard, and I know that Labour’s Jackie Baillie has expressed her concern about Scotland’s name being used potentially to enable offshore tax arrangements and worse. It is important that we look at these arrangements.

Also related to the hon. Lady’s comment, there is huge concern that the unfortunate link between the name SLP and Scotland itself is potentially darkening Scotland’s name. I understand that there is an advertisement that is run on a Belarus TV station, Varyag, saying,

“A company operating in the UK does not need to register with the tax authorities and is therefore automatically freed from any tax payments on an absolutely legal basis. Having registered a company in Scotland, by using offshore rules, you do not need to carry out any audits and, furthermore, there is no requirement to provide financial reports.”

The TV station stressed the kudos of Scotland and the fact that it is part of Britain:

“As a result of Scotland being part of the United Kingdom it does not fall in to the black list of offshore zones”,

presumably meaning either the OECD blacklist or the EU blacklist.

I will briefly mention a couple of specific cases where SLPs have been shown to be problematic, before looking at the current legal context, why this is a UK Government responsibility, and why we require Government to act and hopefully to accept our amendment. The first, which is very worrying, is the Moldovan case. According to the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, in November 2014 $1 billion was reported to have gone missing from three Moldovan banks. Hon. Members will know that Moldova is not a well-off country—quite the opposite: although it is one of the most beautiful countries in Europe, it is one of the poorest. The corruption that was revealed in that case was enormously damaging for that nation, which has many governance challenges. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund suspended financial aid to it after revelations about what had occurred in that siphoning off. Two companies registered on Brunswick Street in Edinburgh—a street I know well, as I am sure others do, too—kept coming up in the records for the case, which has had such a significant impact on that nation.

Another example that is commonly adduced in this regard is the Ukrainian one. A Lancashire-based firm called Fuerteventura Inter, which sounds rather like a football team, appears to have been used as an SLP. It was created in February 2015, and was used to siphon off funds from the sale of cannon shells to the United Arab Emirates. The SLP was an intermediary in that deal. The prosecutors allege that it enabled officials to take a large slice of the value of that contract.

Then there is the Azerbaijani laundromat, which I will come back to later. I am sure colleagues have heard of it, and I am sure we will hear a lot more about it in our discussions next Tuesday. “The Global Laundromat” was a piece of investigative journalism that looked into Russian money being laundered through different shell companies. That was going on until 2014. More recently, an investigation of Azerbaijani companies that came out in 2017 showed how companies including SLPs appear to have been used to hide the real ownership of payments.

This is not just about stealing from very poor people; it is about political influence. Some of the payments from the Azerbaijani laundromat were going to individuals who sit on Council of Europe working groups, including those involved in producing reports about human rights in Azerbaijan. Of course, many of the individuals involved have rejected any accusation that those funds had any influence on them. We will draw our own conclusions from looking at the paperwork and what has been said legally about that matter.

[Hannah Bardell]

I declare an interest: I represent my party in the Council of Europe. I spoke to some activists from Belarus, who raised that issue with me and talked about the damage and devastation it is causing in their country. That again highlights why this is so very important.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that issue. It is particularly important that highly respected international bodies are above any insinuation or reproach. It may be that there has been confusion and a lack of knowledge about the provenance of some of those funds, but we need to remove from the system any opacity that could give that impression.

Operation Car Wash, which came up only last month—it is funny that all of these cases use the washing metaphor, but it is clearly because they are about washing out the provenance of money—covered Brazil and Peru. A giant construction firm in those countries paid £1 billion in bribes for, it appears, political purposes, and it appears that some of the payments went through SLPs. When we look at the evidence, we see we need to have a far stronger grip on this problem.

In early summer last year, legislation was introduced by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to try to regulate SLPs, under which they were to be forced to disclose their beneficial owners within the next 28 days or face daily fines. I am concerned that we still do not know how many such firms have genuinely indicated their beneficial owners—I hope we will hear from the Minister on that now. I am not privy to information on how many fines have been levied, and most commentators suggest that not a single business has been prosecuted. Perhaps some have been fined but not prosecuted. Perhaps we can find out more about that.

The Opposition are concerned that more action needs to be taken. To return to our earlier exchange, it is important that the UK Government take responsibility, because they have reserved powers over Scots corporate law. The Scottish Government have asked the UK Government to act, and it appears that previous actions to require more ownership information may not have gone far enough. I hope the Minister will enlighten us on that and support our amendment.

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Lady has already said much of what I was going to say, so I am sure that, if that I am a bit briefer, that will be okay with everyone. We have serious concern about SLPs, and the Bill provides an opportunity to do something about it. When we know there is a problem and an opportunity to put it right, it would be negligent of us as parliamentarians to look the other way.

I understand that, even in the new regime where people with significant control should be registered, up to December 127 or so SLPs had registered via law firms, but 489 had registered via anonymous mailbox addresses, which means that the people with significant control are not there, are barely identifiable and are very hard to trace. We know from recurring stories in The Herald worked on hard by David Leask and the researcher and expert in this field, Richard Smith, that such companies keep the issues, scandals and money laundering behind the scenes, and that it keeps going on. We therefore need to do everything we can in every area to tackle these problems.

There is the broader issue of SLP non-compliance and the inadequacies of Companies House, which we may speak about later in our proceedings. Not having a postcode when registering a company should be a pretty simple compliance issue—the process could be stopped at that point, never mind going into the more technical detail. We therefore need to look at this issue carefully. Never mind all the overseas territories; we are allowing it to happen here, in this country, behind mailboxes in Scotland. Frankly, that is unacceptable. We need to do something about it. If we continue to let it go, the problem will not go away.

We can talk about how we might go ahead with this issue in terms of enforcement, because other countries have tackled it. My colleague Roger Mullin and others have worked on it for many years, and we should take the opportunity to look at it here and now. If the Government are not willing to accept any of the amendments, I urge them to table their own and not to let the opportunity pass.

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[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the Minister for his comments. I know that he is a very sincere and engaged Minister, but I am concerned that the direct questions that we levelled have not been answered. We asked for an indication of exactly how many of these SLPs had provided that beneficial ownership information. We asked for an update on that, but we have not had it. I also asked for an indication of how many of these SLPs have been prosecuted; I did not receive that, either. I did not receive an indication of how many have been fined under this new regime, which was set up last June. Surely we have had a number of months of operation of that new regime in order to adjudge whether it is truly effective.

I appreciate what the Minister said about BEIS conducting a review, but if the existing system is not working correctly, or if we have doubts about its operation, given the huge damage that these structures already seem to have inflicted, surely we need to have a reference to them in the Bill? We need to show that we are taking this matter seriously, and particularly that the Westminster Government are taking it seriously, in the light of comments from Government figures in other nations and their concerns about the use of SLPs.

I give the Minister one last chance to answer those questions and give that information: the number of prosecutions, the number of fines, and the number of SLPs indicating beneficial ownership information. If we do not get that information, we will have no choice but to press our amendment to a vote.

[John Glen]

I am very sorry but I cannot give those precise details at this point. I undertake to write to the hon. Lady, as soon as I can with that information, but I can do nothing from this place at this moment to provide it.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I wish to press the amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

Hon. Members should also be aware that the amendment is part of a wider package. Government amendment 11, to which I hope to speak very shortly, provides appropriate safeguards around the use of the power. When it is to be used, the appropriate Minister must report to Parliament that, on consideration, there are good reasons for creating an offence and for setting penalties at the given levels; and the Minister must inform Parliament what those good reasons are. Parliament may then consider those reasons before voting to bring the regulations into force. The safeguards were created specifically to address concerns expressed by Lord Judge in the other place. We listened carefully and Government amendment 11 is our response.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the Minister for his clarification. I do not want to go around the houses again, as we did at some length on Tuesday. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland for explaining why we are concerned about the lack of accountability in general for measures imposing criminal sanctions throughout the Bill. I recognise what the Minister said about this being a separate regime; it is obviously not the same one as is applied in the case of sanctions. The offences that can be applied are lesser in their extent—for example, we are talking about shorter prison sentences in the Bill—but we still have many of the same concerns that we expressed previously.

There has been some shift on the part of the Government, but I suppose it is difficult for any of us to judge whether the spirit of Lord Judge has been complied with, or whether there has merely been some kind of interpretation of a clutch of some of his words. Certainly we will look at what is written on the tin, but to us it does not appear to constitute recognition of the concerns expressed or the kind of meaningful engagement that we need. We are doing something very significant in the Bill, which in effect creates de novo a sanctions and anti- money laundering regime. Much stronger accountability is needed than is in the Bill, even as amended by the Government. We have the same concerns as we expressed previously, so we will resist the amendment.

[John Glen]

I acknowledge the outstanding concerns. I think I have set out clearly the rationale, why we need the provisions and how they respond suitably to Lord Judge’s concerns. I acknowledge the genuine difference of opinion, but I have set out the Government’s position and it is now for the Opposition to do as they wish.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

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[John Glen]

Amendment 10 is a consequence of the proposed new paragraph 20A, which will be inserted by amendment 11. Paragraph 20A(1) refers to offences created for the purposes of the enforcement of requirements imposed by or under regulations under clause 43.

The amendment further narrows the powers for future regulations to make provision for new criminal offences, as I referred to in the discussion on the previous amendment, as compared with the Bill when it was first introduced in the other place. It would make the powers subject to the requirement for a report to Parliament, along the same lines as amendments to part 1 of the Bill. That report would identify the offences created and their respective penalties, and would confirm that the Minister has considered that there are good reasons for creating those offences and setting the penalties at the levels at which they have been set. It would ensure that the Minister does not use the power lightly and is fully accountable to Parliament for doing so.

I take the opportunity to remind hon. Members that these safeguards are contained in Government amendment 11, to which I will turn shortly. These amendments are part of the wider package that inserts safeguards on the use of this power, and have been designed to directly address the concerns raised by Lord Judge and others in the other place.

The amendment restricts the scope of the power to create future offences to offences created for the purposes of enforcing future anti-money laundering regulations. Amendment 12 ensures that references made to regulations made under clause 43, with respect to paragraph 15 of schedule 2, and requirements imposed by regulations made under clause 43, with respect to paragraph 20A of schedule 2, also include reference to, or requirements imposed by, the Money Laundering Regulations 2017. That ensures that the safeguards proposed by Government amendment 11 will also apply to possible future changes made to the 2017 regulations.

The amendment ensures that it is possible for new money laundering offences to be created by amending the 2017 regulations. It will therefore enable the Government to create new offences in order to respond to, for example, emerging risks identified by the national risk assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing, which was published in October 2017, or in response to the ongoing review of the financial action taskforce of the UK’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist finance regime. When the Government do so, using the powers contained in clause 43, the enhanced procedural protections set out in the amendment will apply.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the Minister for that explanation. First, in relation to Government amendments 10 and 11, the Opposition would like the accountability provisions to be much more extensive than they are. However, given that the Government just won the last vote on an amendment, it would be rather self-defeating for us to oppose these amendments at this stage.

I have a question on Government amendment 12; perhaps the Minister can enlighten us a little bit. I understood that the whole Bill, when it comes to its money laundering provisions, amends the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017. I am therefore slightly confused about the timing and scheduling. Why are the Government bringing those regulations into the Bill when they were not there in the first place? I wonder whether the Minister can enlighten us.

[John Glen]

This is an enabling measure that allows us to take the action necessary. I am not sure I quite grasped the hon. Lady’s point. I think I will need to write to her to clarify that so that I do not say anything that misrepresents the Government’s position.

Amendment 10 agreed to.

[John Glen]

I beg to move amendment 11, in schedule 2, page 54, line 11 at end insert—

“20A (1) In this paragraph ‘relevant regulations’ means regulations under section 43 which create any offence for the purposes of the enforcement of any requirements imposed by or under regulations under section 43.

(2) The appropriate Minister making any relevant regulations (‘the Minister’) must at the required time lay before Parliament a report which—

(a) specifies the offences created by the regulations, indicating the requirements to which those offences relate,

(b) states that the Minister considers that there are good reasons for those requirements to be enforceable by criminal proceedings and explains why the Minister is of that opinion, and

(c) in the case of any of those offences which are punishable with imprisonment—

(i) states the maximum terms of imprisonment that apply to those offences,

(ii) states that the Minister considers that there are good reasons for those maximum terms, and

(iii) explains why the Minister is of that opinion.

(3) Sub-paragraph (4) applies where an offence created by the regulations relates to particular requirements and the Minister considers that a good reason—

(a) for those requirements to be enforceable by criminal proceedings, or

(b) for a particular maximum term of imprisonment to apply to that offence,

is consistency with another enactment relating to the enforcement of similar requirements.

(4) The report must identify that other enactment.

(5) In sub-paragraph (3) ‘another enactment’ means any provision of or made under an Act, other than a provision of the regulations to which the report relates.

(6) In sub-paragraph (2) ‘the required time’ means the same time as the draft of the statutory instrument containing the regulations is laid before Parliament.

(7) This paragraph applies to regulations which amend other regulations under section 43 so as to create an offence as it applies to regulations which otherwise create an offence.”

This amendment requires that where regulations under Clause 43 are made which include offences, a report specifying the offences and giving reasons for any terms of imprisonment that apply to them must be laid before Parliament.

As I said earlier, amendment 11 provides for an important safeguard that will apply when powers are used to create criminal offences. It will require the Government to lay a report before Parliament explaining the Minister’s reasons for using the powers—amendments 10, 11 and 12 are really a package—whenever a criminal offence is created in new or amended anti-money laundering regulations under clause 43.

The amendment requires such a report to be laid at the same time as the draft statutory instrument containing the relevant regulations. Regulations under clause 43 will of course be made using the draft affirmative procedure, unless they update the UK’s list of high-risk jurisdictions in connection with which enhanced due diligence measures are required. The report will therefore facilitate effective parliamentary scrutiny of changes to the UK’s AML regime and will go further than the status quo in enabling Parliament to scrutinise the creation of criminal offences through money laundering regulations.

The amendment specifies that the following elements should be included in the report: the offences that have been created and the requirements to which they refer; the good reasons why those requirements need criminal offences; the maximum prison terms for any offences created that are punishable by imprisonment; the good reasons for setting the maximum prison terms at the levels at which they have been set; and, where the creation of an offence is justified by reference to an existing offence in another enactment, reference to that other enactment.

The requirement for the Minister to demonstrate that they have good reasons for using the power ensures that it cannot be used lightly. I hope hon. Members agree that such reports will provide increased transparency about the reasons for creating criminal offences and give Members a solid basis for holding the Government to account when debating anti-money laundering regulations made under the Bill.

Nevertheless, the Government remain very aware that creating criminal offences and setting penalties in regulations is a serious matter that is not to be undertaken lightly. I am therefore happy to repeat reassurances and existing safeguards that the Government introduced in the other place. As it stands, a criminal offence can be established under clause 43 only if regulations provide either a mental element necessary for the commission of the offence or a defence to it, or both. That will maintain the existing policy position under the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 and preserve the deterrent effect established by criminalising breaches of anti-money laundering and terrorist financing regulations.

The amendment is an additional safeguard to the changes the Government have already introduced in response to concerns raised in the other place by Lord Judge and others. We listened to those concerns, and the amendment addresses them. It will ensure that Ministers cannot create criminal offences or set penalties —up to a maximum of two years’ imprisonment—without good reasons, and that Parliament has all the information it needs to hold Ministers to account.

That contrasts starkly with current practice, in which new criminal offences are created through statutory instruments made under section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972 under the negative procedure, without any need to state reasons, with no information about such reasons being provided to Parliament, and with no requirement for a vote in Parliament to approve them. The measure is, therefore, a better way of ensuring that proper safeguards are placed in the Bill with respect to offences, rather than removing the ability to create them, and so weakening the UK’s anti-money laundering regime.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the Minister for his comments. I shall not dwell on the matter, because we have already talked about the amendment to an extent in a previous debate. I repeat our concern that the regime is not sufficiently accountable. Reference to the previous regime may be inappropriate, because the framework in that case was set at EU level, and it was a question of implementing it in the UK. Surely with the brave new dawn that some see coming as we leave the EU, we should be aiming at a system that is as accountable as possible.

In our previous discussions about offences in relation to sanctions, Ministers suggested that there could be a need for speed in the creation of new regimes or new types of criminal offence, because, for example, a human rights challenge could arise suddenly, or there could be gross violations of human rights in a particular country, and we might need to respond quickly. Surely such a situation does not apply to money laundering. It is peculiar that the same almost fast-track, post hoc style of system should be applied to criminal offences to do with money laundering. It would be helpful to have more information about why the Government believe that in the relevant category of criminal offence, there cannot be the same—or at least movement towards the same—degree of scrutiny as there would be in other contexts, when the question of speed surely does not apply. In fact, the Minister did not mention speed.

[John Glen]

I take the hon. Lady’s concerns seriously. As my right hon. Friend the Minister said earlier, when we were discussing similar matters on Tuesday, we should be happy for hon. Members to meet officials to discuss outstanding concerns. I have set out in the amendments a clear affirmative process for laying a statutory instrument before the House, in a situation where Parliament will be able to discuss the requirement and its extent, the underlying rationale, and a mechanism for reporting to Parliament. If there are particular issues and specific cases that the hon. Lady wants to raise, I suggest that we convene a conversation with officials to deal with them. As we move forward, I am keen to secure the widest possible support and consensus about the Bill.

Amendment 11 agreed to.

Amendment made: 12, in schedule 2, page 54, line 39, at end insert—

‘( ) In paragraph 15 (offences), any reference to regulations under section 43 includes the Money Laundering Regulations 2017.

( ) In paragraph 20A (report in respect of offences)—

(a) the reference in sub-paragraph (1) to requirements imposed by or under regulations under section 43 includes requirements imposed by or under the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, and

(b) the reference in sub-paragraph (7) to other regulations under section 43 includes the Money Laundering Regulations 2017.”—(John Glen.)

This amendment has the effect that, while the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 remain in force, offences may be created by regulations under Clause 43 for the purposes of enforcing requirements in the 2017 regulations.

Schedule 2, as amended, agreed to.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Mike Freer.)