Oral Answers to Questions

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I urge the Minister to do all he can to make sure that a new “jungle” does not form at Calais this year. It is not just about the humanitarian squalor to which 10,000 people were shamefully condemned. It is also essential that we stop the terrible pull factors that draw people on these terrible and dangerous journeys across Europe.

[Mr Goodwill]

The site of the former Calais camp remains clear and there is ongoing work, supported by UK funding, permanently to remove all former camp infrastructure and accommodation and to restore the site to its natural state. That work will help to prevent any re-establishment of squats or camps in the area.

Jamal al-Harith

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I think the best thing would be for me to write to the hon. Gentleman. I was the Parliamentary Private Secretary to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) in the Ministry of Justice at the time. If I were to say that my memory of the time is that the Ministry of Justice or the Government signed the payments off, I may be misleading the House inadvertently. The best thing is for me to write an accurate response to the hon. Gentleman, but he will know, as a former Minister, that we all take responsibility and that the whole Government stand by their legally binding commitment.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the best way to deal with tragic cases such as this one and the many other cases of this nature is to prevent radicalisation in the first place? Once radicalisation has happened, we need to support our intelligence services and our border officials at ports such as Dover, and work internationally with other countries to ensure that we can deal with the consequences.

[Mr Wallace]

My hon. Friend makes an important point that the whole way in which we can tackle this threat is by working together both internally in the United Kingdom at our borders between all the agencies—SO15, the intelligence services, the home police, Border Force and everything else—and with our international partners. We do that more and more to ensure that when people threaten to come to this country or to leave and do harm elsewhere, we interdict them, deter them and deal with them to the best of our ability.

Unaccompanied Children (Greece and Italy)

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question, which, again, the Minister must answer today.

It is deeply depressing to start a debate that was supposed to focus on how to build on the Dubs amendment by having to fight the same fight over again. The debate is about how we can do more for the many unaccompanied child refugees stuck in Greece and Italy. The Minister will talk about the fantastic support that this country offers refugee camps in the middle east and north Africa, how much we spend and how we do not want people to attempt the perilous journey across the sea. I will wholeheartedly agree with him. I am proud of our work overseas. It is right that we do everything possible to look after people in the region and keep them out of the hands of people traffickers who exploit their desperation. Nobody wants people, least of all children, to board those boats and make that crossing. However, we must move beyond those generalities. We are talking about desperate individuals, and hundreds of children do board those boats and end up in Greece and Italy. When they arrive, they remain vulnerable to the same traffickers who put them on the boats in the first place. They are exploited physically and often sexually. They are made to see and endure things that no child should ever have to. Unaccompanied children are the most at risk, and as the conflict continues unabated in Syria and parts of Africa, more children arrive in Europe without an adult to look after them.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a passionate case for her view. I represent Dover, and across the channel we had the Calais jungle, which was the biggest migrant magnet, where people were condemned to live in squalor. They were there in the hope of getting into Britain. The problem is that taking people in from Europe simply increases the pull of the migrant magnet. We know that because we are on the frontline.

[Alison McGovern]

As a Member of Parliament who also represents a port area of our country, I pay tribute to all those who work to keep our ports and our borders safe. I will come to the hon. Gentleman’s argument about a pull factor in a moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison McGovern]

If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that safety is a pull factor, I agree with him. If he is suggesting that not starving is a pull factor, I agree with him. If he is suggesting that escaping the bombs dropping on a child’s head is a pull factor, I entirely agree with him.

This debate will continue. I think it right for us to have the debate out in the open, and Members who disagree with me will have a chance to make their case, too.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Alison McGovern]

I will not, because I need to end my speech now.

As I was saying, many of these children are orphans who have no parents with whom they can be reunited. However, the Government are effectively saying that a child in a refugee camp in north Africa who has a grandparent in the UK is not eligible, but if that child got on a boat and went to Italy, he or she would be. That is madness. Will the Minister agree to think again and allow children in the region to apply under Dublin III to be reunited with their extended families in the UK?

As the Minister has heard from Members on both sides of the House, there are many points that he must address in his speech. In respect of Dublin III, will he commit himself to improving the system in Greece and Italy? Will he send more staff, speed up the processing of applications and work with the agencies in those countries to identify eligible children? Will he commit himself to allowing Dublin transfers from the region to extended families in the UK? In respect of Dubs, will he show us the figures on local authority capacity? Will he at least agree to monitor capacity and increase the numbers where possible? Will he, once and for all, drop the pretence that the main factor that is dragging children on to those boats is our immigration system, rather than war, poverty and famine?

I started by saying that this was not a party-political issue, and I stand by that. This is about British values, which we all share, and our desire to honour those values. Across Europe and the world, people are questioning whether we mean what we say when we talk about Britain as a welcoming, open, tolerant and decent country. It is up to us to show that we are who we say we are, that we will live up to the legacy of our past and that we will not turn away from the suffering and desperation of children on our own doorsteps who need our help.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Goodwill]

I will come on to that, and, indeed, it is important that one reads the Dubs amendment and looks at amendments rejected by this House in that regard.

Within Europe, in 2016 we transferred over 900 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children to the UK from other European countries, including more than 750 from France as part of the UK’s support for the Calais camp clearance. According to the latest EU resettlement and relocation report, since July 2015 the UK has resettled more people towards the EU’s overall resettlement target than any other EU member state. In 2016, we transferred almost as many unaccompanied children from within Europe to the UK as the entire EU relocation.

More broadly, with UK support, UNICEF aims to provide shelter, food, essential supplies and medical assistance for 27,000 children and babies. UK aid to the International Committee of the Red Cross supported activities including family reunification, and we also funded the secondment of child protection specialists to work with UNICEF in Croatia, Macedonia, and Serbia. In Greece, we have so far spent £28 million to support migrants and refugees through key partners such as the UNHCR, the International Organisation for Migration and the Red Cross. This support has reached more than 250,000 people.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank my hon. Friend for setting out the facts. Does he agree that we must be careful to avoid unintended consequences? The sentiments and intentions of those on the Opposition Benches are very sincere and good, but the road to the hell of the Calais jungle is paved with those kinds of intentions and that kind of pull-factor? We cannot have that squalor again.

[Mr Goodwill]

We must certainly be aware that pull factors can be created when statements are made that might encourage people to enlist people traffickers.

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[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Lady is right. We need to prevent young people from ending up in Calais and Dunkirk in the first place. That means working through the Dublin and Dubs schemes, whether in France or, better still, in Greece and Italy, to prevent them from travelling in the first place. We need all countries to work together to share responsibility for these deeply vulnerable young people.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I am going to make some progress because I am conscious of the time.

Secondly, the Minister said that the French have urged us to stop the Dubs scheme, but according to what President Hollande has said, the evidence is that the reverse is true. I am worried that the co-operation we had in the autumn appears to have broken down.

Thirdly, it has been said that local authorities do not have capacity, but that was not what the Select Committee heard in evidence yesterday. The Local Government Association said that it had not been consulted specifically on Dubs; it had been consulted on the national transfer scheme. We should have more detailed consultation on Dubs. We heard from local councils that they wanted to offer more places but those places had not been taken up, and that if local authorities all met the 0.07% target that the Government have said is appropriate, there would be 3,000 more places on top of those already taken by those children who have arrived spontaneously.

[Charlie Elphicke]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I am going to make some progress, because Mr Deputy Speaker wants to move on.

Fourthly, the Government have said that we have met the spirit of the Dubs amendment, but that is simply not the case. Not only have we not met the spirit of Dubs, but the Government are failing again on the Dublin agreement. The expedited system that was temporarily in place in France was working. Ministers have said that they will learn lessons from that, but they do not seem to be doing so.

The Minister said in his answer to the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) that there were somehow 115 people in Greece, but we were told by the charities yesterday that there was only one person working on child transfers in Greece, one in Italy and one in France. That is not enough even to review the Dublin cases that were turned down and that the Home Office said it would review. I do not see how it can review those cases if none of those children has paperwork, has been given any formal response about why their case has been turned down, or has a process through which to apply to have it reviewed. The Government have done some good things. I ask them not to rip them up now.

This is what one of the child refugees who we helped said:

“Many of us have been traded like cattle between groups of smugglers...many of us know someone who died.”

Another said:

“Assaulting women, sexually abusing children—the smugglers are really not nice people.”

We created some safe legal routes that prevented the traffickers and the illegal, dangerous routes. They were working. That approach did not solve the whole problem—it addressed only a limited part of the refugee crisis—but it was about Britain doing its bit. It was about Britain being better than this. We in this House were all proud of it. I really urge the Minister to reopen the Dubs scheme, reinstate a proper, effective Dublin process and let Britain do its bit to help refugees again, just as we did for Alf Dubs, generations ago.

Oral Answers to Questions

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I share my hon. Friend’s view about how important the Commonwealth is to the UK, and I will certainly keep his suggestion under consideration.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

May I urge the Home Secretary to make sure there is consistency of border security and immigration policies across the United Kingdom? In that connection, will she tell the House what conversations have been had with Eurostar and Border Force to put an end to the Lille loophole, which seems to have been going on for six years? Does she agree that we cannot have a situation where profits are put before protection?

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that serious matter. We are taking forward actions immediately, this week, to ensure these things do not happen. We will be having conversations with Eurostar and Border Force to ensure certainty going forward.

Oral Answers to Questions

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

Let me make it clear that people who are here from elsewhere in the EU working legally do not need to receive additional documentation at this time. I reassure them that their status is assured. What happens in the future is a matter for the negotiations, but I make it absolutely clear that no additional documentation is needed at this stage.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

May I make the case to the Minister for updating the systems and the use of computers and information technology in border control—particularly as, with Brexit, we will need to count people in and count people out more effectively—and for investment in our ports, such as the port of Dover?

[Mr Goodwill]

Certainly, exit checks introduced in 2015 have given us an additional tool to track people as they enter and, in particular, leave the country. New technology, such as e-gates, has helped very much in that regard.

Criminal Finances Bill (Fourth sitting)

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 17th November 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Wallace]

Clauses 22 to 28 contain a number of minor and technical amendments that will strengthen the operational impact of POCA powers. The clauses clarify and simplify the use of powers intended to recover criminal assets, and I will very briefly expand on those particular provisions.

Clause 26 makes technical amendments to the process that accredited financial investigators follow when seeking approval to use certain POCA search and seizure powers. Accredited financial investigators are not warranted officers, but may be employed by a police force or another public body. They have access to a wide range of powers under POCA, including certain search and seizure powers. They have access to search and seizure powers to seize property that may be subject to a future confiscation order. In order to use those powers, an accredited financial investigator has to seek the prior approval of either a justice of the peace or a senior officer. Currently, POCA only allows a civilian AFI to seek the approval from a senior AFI, as opposed to a senior police officer. This is not always practical from an operational point of view and creates an additional layer of bureaucracy. This measure allows civilian accredited financial investigators to seek authorisation from a police colleague who is at least the rank of inspector and therefore of equivalent seniority, thereby creating additional flexibility.

Clause 27 provides that an investigator has full access to investigation powers in section 22 revisits. Section 22 of the Proceeds of Crime Act allows an investigation to revisit any confiscation order so that any money acquired by a defendant in the future may be confiscated and satisfy a previous order. Currently, it is open to question whether an investigator’s ability to identify money made by the defendant using the investigatory powers in POCA—for example, by monitoring bank accounts, searching property or requiring the production of evidence —is available for investigations linked to revisits. Clause 27 strengthens investigative powers, making confiscation revisits more effective and helping to make best use of the resources being put into revisiting confiscation orders.

The remaining clauses clarify process and definitions to allow for the more effective recovery of criminal assets. Although minor and technical, these amendments are important measures that allow for the proper functioning of POCA. I hope that the clauses will stand part of the Bill.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan, and to make my first speech before this illustrious and most distinguished Committee. I have a few queries for the Minister on these important clauses. Part of the concern about POCA in the past has been that it has not always worked quite as well as it should have; it has a slightly chequered history when it comes to making sure that the proceeds of crime are, in fact, captured for the state.

First, looking at the miscellaneous provisions relating to Scotland, we are told that clause 23 is intended to replicate in Scotland the effects of section 67 for England and Wales, and section 215 for Northern Ireland, with certain modifications. It provides for the High Court of Justiciary or the sheriff, as the case may be, to order that any realisable property in the form of money held in a bank or building society account is paid to the appropriate clerk of court in satisfaction of all or part of the confiscation order. It would be helpful if the Minister could say why exactly those provisions are needed and how they will ensure that POCA works more efficiently. I am sure that will be a matter of concern to the spokesman for the Scottish nationalist party [Hon. Members: “Scottish National party.”] Oh, Scottish National party—or is it the Scottish neverendum party? I get confused, but I have a one in three chance of being right on one of them. That deals with the concern that I had on Scotland.

We are discussing clauses 23 to 28, are we not? Clause 24 deals with recovery orders related to heritable property. The proposed measure is to remove existing jurisdictional and procedural barriers that can delay the recovery of the possession of heritable property. For those who are not fully up to speed on what heritable property is, and for the benefit of colleagues and Members of the Committee, it is a house, flat, commercial premises and like real estate. I would ask why there were jurisdictional and procedural barriers in the first place and how they would be dealt with by this provision. The clause also says that, where a recovery order is granted, the property automatically vests in the trustee for civil recovery and the previous owner-occupier loses his or her title, since the owner-occupier of the property is subject to the recovery order and has no right or title to occupy the property. The appropriate way to recover possession in those circumstances is by warrant for ejection.

I want to check that there will not be any delay in getting such a warrant and that the procedural aspects are considered likely to work efficiently and swiftly. I also want to ask what the situation would be if there are any sitting tenants in the heritable property to which a recovery order applies. Would such sitting tenants be ejected or would they be able to see out the length of their tenancy?

A house might be owned by a crook who might have let that house to some innocent people, members of the hard-working classes of modern Britain, who suddenly find that their home is seized because that crook is brought to book. They do not want to be ejected and thrown out on to the street, where it is cold and dark as the seasons change against us. I hope we can understand what will happen to sitting tenants in such a case because that is extremely important. I see that the hon. Member for Scunthorpe is following with interest and is concerned about the matter. It would no doubt be heritable property 95% made with English steel from the great steelworks in his illustrious constituency.

Clause 25 deals with money received by administrators. We are told that this is a technical amendment to paragraph 6 of schedule 3 to POCA, which deals with money received by an administrator in Scotland. That is obviously a matter of great concern to my hon. Friend from the Scottish nationalist party. It is to provide a definition of “bank” following the repeal of the provisions of the Banking Act 1987, which previously provided the definition. I want to understand why it is so important to provide a definition of bank in such circumstances and why that is not already covered by legislation. That is a minor technical point. Is it truly necessary or does it make a substantive difference?

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend welcome, as I do, the fact that the Government are enabling civilians to help warranted officers in such important investigations? Civilians can bring skills from the private sector of which a warranted officer might not yet have experience. It is a useful tool in the armoury of law enforcement agencies to be able to draw on the wealth of experience in the private sector, as well as relying on the significant experience of warranted officers.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank my hon. Friend for more than fully answering my question. She has saved the Minister the trouble of having to respond to my query. She makes a powerful point. It is important that we have such expertise, understanding and skills and that the forces of law and order are able to draw on civilian skills that may not exist directly under the employ of officers of the Crown. That is extremely helpful, and I thank her very much.

[The Chair]

Minister, having caught such a rare fish, I presume you want to deal with it now rather than later.

[Dr Huq]

I am reassured to hear that tenants’ rights, which are often under-regulated in this country, will be dealt with in the legislation.

I have a question about clause 26, which is on accredited financial investigators. We have had those in this country since 2009. Even though I do not have the exact figures—my iPad is not getting wi-fi—there is evidence that we have not hung on to all of them. People have been trained as specialist investigators out of the public purse. We live in an age where we should justify every pound of public money, and we seem to have lost those people to the private sector. A lot of them have been poached.

[Charlie Elphicke]

This was exactly my concern as I studied the Bill in great detail. However, I feel that my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle, who is extraordinarily able and learned in these matters, answered that question by saying that one should be able to draw on skills across the whole nation by contracting them in. I thought that was quite a powerful point.

[Dr Huq]

It was a powerful point. As I was going to say if the hon. Gentleman had allowed me to finish the sentence I had embarked on, this issue will be addressed at the end in one of our new clauses. Perhaps we could build in some way of, if not exactly giving them golden handcuffs, then retaining them or even getting the cost of the training repaid, whatever that is. We see the same happening across other sectors. We hear of junior doctors being lost to Australia. It would be a tragedy if we trained these people up and then off they went, poached by the private sector. We have heard of examples where they have gone to the gambling industry, which my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East has experience of in her role on the all-party group on fixed odds betting terminals. I flag that issue up now, but we will come back to it later in a new clause.

Criminal Finances Bill (Third sitting)

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 17th November 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Wallace]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. We had a useful meeting yesterday about some of these issues. He will know that we welcome these amendments as they give us the opportunity to discuss why we have effectively a different regime between politically exposed persons outside the EEA and ourselves. The amendment would cover us sitting in this room—all PEPs in the EEA. That is important because, if any of us were to face an unexplained wealth order, we would want to know that it had been issued on the basis of evidence linking us to serious crime; we would not want to give our authorities the ability just to slap one on without any evidential threshold.

We have confidence that, within the EEA—the hon. Gentleman used the example of a country prosecuting its own former Prime Minister—there are the tools to find the evidence and the ability to work with fellow law enforcement agencies around Europe to meet the evidential threshold. We cannot discriminate within the EEA; we cannot say, “This applies to Slovenia but it doesn’t apply to France”. Once we go into that area, we cannot discriminate between the different states. He picked out Hungary, where there is immunity for parliamentarians. I think there are other countries—even Italy; I do not know. If I remember my Berlusconi history, I think there were lots of issues about immunity in that country. That is the real issue. We have confidence in our neighbours and friends in Europe that they have the capacity to build the evidence and therefore to build a case for an unexplained wealth order.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful argument. Is he aware how many Members of Parliament have problems just opening a bank account because of over-eager regulators using the PEPs regulations? With this amendment, would there not be a risk that over-eager agencies would be interested in issuing these things to MPs, which is not an ideal situation? We ought to have the evidential threshold set out in clause 1(4)(b).

[Mr Wallace]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. He makes the clear point that we want to be confident that, when we are held to account, it is based on evidence gathered by our resourced law enforcement agencies. The decision on PEPs outside the EEA reflects real operational challenges that we and organisations such as the National Crime Agency have had in gathering evidence against people in some countries where there may be no properly functioning Government or, indeed, where the Government are entirely corrupt and it is very difficult to gather that evidence.

That is the reason we have had to plug that gap in that way. I hope that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central understands that that is why we have a different approach. I urge him not to push his amendment to a vote.

Calais Children and Immigration Act

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

We have dozens of Home Office officials on station. On the buses that were taking the children from the camp in Calais to the reception centres there were two Home Office officials, supported by interpreters and social workers. We have stepped up the numbers that we have operating in Italy and Greece. We currently have 70 officials who have been allocated to Greece and 54 are already on station there.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

At the Dover and Kent frontline, our communities are looking after 750 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children—a quarter of the total. That is five times more than the whole of Scotland and 12 times more than the whole of Wales, while Wakefield is looking after just 22. Is it not time for either mandatory dispersal or more help for Kent?

[Mr Goodwill]

The national transfer scheme is working well. We have had 160 transfers. I do understand the pressure that Kent has been facing and I have met the leader of my hon. Friend’s county council to discuss that. In response to concerns from local government, we have increased the rates that we give for the children being looked after, in some cases by as much as 33%. Some councils have been very helpful in opening up their books. We believe now that the funding that we have made available is sufficient to cover their additional costs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

The decision on whether we opt into the further Europol regulations will be announced to Parliament shortly. We will take that decision very soon; we are giving good consideration to where we are on that and will make an announcement to Parliament in due course.

The hon. Lady is right that the European arrest warrant provides a basis for a swift, and indeed cost-effective, extradition process across member states, but I will not presume what may or may not be in an agreement. We are in the early days of negotiations and will be going through that over the Brexit period.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

While some seem to want to water down the referendum result and drag us back into the EU, if not necessarily by name, does the Minister agree that co-operation on security, and particularly cross-border security, is important, and that when we take back control we must ensure that we keep that very important co-operation that keeps us safe and secure?

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Our co-operation and membership of Europol will obviously continue in full with us as a full and strong contributing member of Europol, which of course predates the European institutions. We have been very clear that our co-operation with member states, and our determination to ensure the security and protection of the people of this country, will continue when we are no longer a member of the EU.

Criminal Finances Bill

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 25th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

Yes, I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that that will happen throughout the passage of the Bill and even after. This is part of a longer process. We will make sure that, where we cannot get hold of the information that we need, we will prosecute people who are deliberately trying to evade tax, and also prosecute people who are trying to launder money. That is part of the process. Many of these powers, including the unexplained wealth orders, give us the benefit of the doubt and put it on to us to say, “Actually, we think you’re linked to serious organised crime, or we can show you are. Explain to us where your money is from.” At the very least, that will get over some of those hurdles about not being able to get to the bottom of the information in that process. That is one of the steps that we will take and that I hope the right hon. Gentleman will support as the Bill goes through.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I welcome my hon. Friend to his place as Security Minister. His appointment is much deserved.

May I ask him about seizure and forfeiture powers? Previous legislation in this area has not been entirely successful in ensuring that the assets of criminals are seized. Can the Minister explain to the House why the provisions in this Bill will make a difference? We want to ensure that we grab the money off the criminals so that they cannot carry on with their illegal enterprises.

[Mr Wallace]

My hon. Friend is right that, in the past, it has been a challenge. Crafty hoods have been very good at taking their money out of cash and putting it into a range of moveable valuables, such as fast cars, paintings, jewels, or even betting slips, which I know the Scottish Government are quite keen for us to consider. We need to broaden it out and ensure that when they are crafty, we are crafty as well.

This Government have already done more than any other to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing. More assets have been recovered from criminals than ever before, with a record £255 million recovered in 2015-16, and hundreds of millions of pounds more frozen and put beyond the reach of criminals. We set up the Panama papers taskforce to ensure an effective, joined-up approach to those revelations. The London anti-corruption summit in May built capacity with overseas partners.

It is important to note that we are already doing this. In November 2015, the UK returned £28 million to Macau, which were the proceeds of corruption laundered in the UK. That is a concrete example of our giving back money to those countries that have been robbed by crooks who have used Britain to launder the money or to make the money in its jurisdiction. I want to see more of that and to see it go further.

There was a need for legislation and a need to build on the process of the anti-corruption summit and to find out where we were still vulnerable. In October 2015, the Government published the “National risk assessment for money laundering and terrorist financing”, identifying a number of areas where these regimes could be strengthened. Our response to that assessment was the action plan for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist finance, which was published in April 2016. It represents one of the most significant changes to our anti-money laundering and terrorist finance regime in more than a decade.

The Bill will give effect to key elements of that action plan. It will significantly enhance the capability of UK law enforcement to tackle money laundering and to recover the proceeds of crime. It will strengthen the relationship between public and private sectors and combat the financing of terrorism.

Part 1 contains a number of measures that will amend the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, including the creation of unexplained wealth orders. There are criminals who declare themselves almost penniless, yet control millions of pounds. Law enforcement agencies may suspect that assets are the proceeds of international corruption, but they are unable to freeze or recover them, often because they cannot rely on full co-operation with other jurisdictions to obtain evidence. A court will be able to make an unexplained wealth order to require an individual or organisation suspected of association with serious criminality to explain the origin of assets, where they appear to be disproportionate to their known income. If that person does not respond, this may enable the property to be recovered under existing civil recovery powers.

Part 1 chapter 1 will extend the use of disclosure orders, which allow a law enforcement officer to require someone who has relevant information to answer questions as part of an investigation. Those orders are already in use for civil recovery and confiscation investigations. They will now be available for money laundering cases.

Chapter 2 will enhance the process by which private sector companies report suspected money laundering—the suspicious activity reports, or SARs, regime. Where a company in the regulated sector, such as a bank, accountancy or legal firm, suspects that it may commit a money laundering offence, it is obliged to submit a SAR to the National Crime Agency, seeking consent to proceed. At present, there are occasions where these SARs are incomplete and where further information is needed to inform the NCA’s decision. The Bill will give law enforcement agencies more time to investigate those suspicious transactions that require consent and the NCA extra powers to request further information from companies to help to pursue those investigations and conduct wider analysis.

The Bill will provide a gateway for the sharing of information between regulated companies—subject to appropriate oversight—to help to build a broader intelligence picture of suspected money laundering. This has been piloted through a programme known as the joint money laundering intelligence taskforce. In the 12 months from February 2015, the taskforce led directly to 11 arrests, the restraint of more than £500,000 and the identification of 1,700 bank accounts linked to suspected criminal activity. We want to build on the success of that work, by providing the clearest possible legal certainty that companies can share information for the purposes of preventing and detecting serious crime.

Part 1 chapter 3 will improve the ability of law enforcement agencies to recover the proceeds of crime. Existing legislation contains civil powers to confiscate cash, but criminals hold proceeds in other forms, as I said earlier, and we must adapt. The types of asset covered by the power are listed in the Bill, so that Parliament can properly scrutinise its potential use. We continue to consult operational partners on their requirements, and I expect that we will introduce a Government amendment to extend the list to include gambling slips and tokens, which are often used by organised criminals to launder their ill-gotten cash. I hope that such an amendment will attract cross-party support.

The rest of part 1 will extend existing POCA powers to a number of other organisations, including the Serious Fraud Office, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Financial Conduct Authority. It will make a range of minor and technical amendments to POCA.

The first duty of any Government is to keep their citizens safe. The terrorist threat is real and is growing. If we are to combat that threat, we must cut off the funding streams that enable terrorist-related activity. The 2015 national risk assessment identified two key weaknesses in this area: the raising and moving of terrorist funds through vulnerabilities in the financial sector, including money service businesses and cash couriering; and the abuse of the charitable sector for terrorist purposes. To combat these issues, part 2 will make complementary changes to powers for terrorist finance cases, by mirroring many of the provisions in the Bill, such as those on SARs, disclosure orders and seizure and confiscation powers, so that they are also available for investigations into offences under the Terrorism Act 2000.

Part 3 will deliver on the Conservative manifesto commitment to make

“it a crime if companies fail to put in place measures to stop economic crime, such as tax evasion”.

At present, if an individual evades tax and that is criminally facilitated by those working for a company, the individual taxpayer will have committed a crime and those individuals facilitating it could also be prosecuted, but it is very difficult and often impossible to hold the corporate entity to account. That needs to change. That is why we are creating two new offences of corporate failure to prevent the criminal facilitation of tax evasion—one in relation to UK taxes; another in relation to taxes owed to other countries.

Tax evasion is wrong. It is a crime. It cannot be right that a business operating in the UK can escape criminal liability simply because a tax loss is suffered by another country rather than the UK. The new offence in relation to foreign taxes will be of particular benefit in tackling corporate facilitation of corruption in developing countries. HMRC has conducted two public consultations on these offences, including engagement with the private sector—banks, accountants and legal practices—and everyone is clear of the need to take responsibility for ensuring the highest possible standards of compliance in this area.

As I have said, tax evasion and corruption in the developing world are key contributors to global poverty. Those crimes are frequently facilitated by companies in other jurisdictions. We cannot abdicate our responsibility and leave solving this problem to other countries. The UK’s financial sector should lead on the disruption of tax evasion, money laundering and corruption. This measure will help to do just that.

The Government are committed to reducing the regulatory burden on business, which can make it harder for companies to focus on real risks. The measures in the Bill were developed in close partnership with law enforcement agencies and the regulated sector, including major financial institutions, as well as other key representatives.

[Mr Wallace]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. In the past few months, I have visited regional organised crime units up and down the country, including in his region, and the NCA, and they all say that their barrier to getting further with some of these problems is not the resource issue; they all say that their barrier has been the ability to find the cash, see the cash and seize it. Those three things are incredibly important. We can put all the resources in the world into our law enforcement agencies, but if they do not have the powers to take back some of the stolen assets, it will not make a difference.

The thing that struck me coming into this job only a few months ago, although I thought I knew a bit about terrorism from my previous life, and what has absolutely shocked me is the weight and strength of organised crime across the United Kingdom. To see its depth, how it affects my community in the north-west and how close it comes to us all really takes my breath away. I am absolutely determined not only that the guys and girls at the top, the Mr Bigs, get sent to jail for as long as possible, but that those people who consider themselves a little removed from it—the facilitators, the white-collar smoothies who launder the money into property and so on—also face their time in court, because they are the people who contribute to the message that there is a permissive society and that it is okay to be associated with crime. They are the people who help the nasties to put a gloss on themselves.

That is what I am determined to do with the Bill. All Members should rest assured that I will use the Bill to try to build momentum in non-legislative areas—in the non-regulated sector. I want to ask the regulators of estate agents and accountants what they are doing to play their part. If we can change the powers here, if their members get into trouble, what are they going to do to hold their members to account? Legislation is only one part of this. I hope that everyone supports the Bill and that the message goes out that there is more to do and that we will make sure that those people who facilitate and think that they live on the edge of the crime know that we are coming after them.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again; he is being incredibly generous. As he says, this is a question not just of laws but of the culture of the organisations. The NCA’s predecessor organisations all seemed to be more culturally bureaucratic. The NCA seems to be more intelligence-led. It seems to have more officials at the top who were intelligence operators in past times. From everything that I have seen, the NCA is far more vigorous at chasing down the intelligence, which is what it really needs to do.

[Mr Wallace]

There are several parts to this. The NCA has absolutely got the bit between its teeth, and I see a professional organisation up and down the country determined to tackle the threat that we face. I compliment police forces throughout the country that have put away the old-fashioned territorial boundaries that organised crime often exploited and have been determined to work together. When we visit Police Scotland and regional organised crime units in the north-west and all the other regions, we see police forces all sitting around the same table, working together for their own ends, led by intelligence, deciding on their priorities, sharing capabilities and knuckling down and getting on with it, rather than just focusing on their small areas. The NCA and regional organised crime units have provided the impetus on this, and the results will speak for themselves. I can assure the House that each of the Bill’s provisions will be subject to a set of stringent safeguards and robust oversight, so that they can be used only where it is necessary and proportionate to do so.

We considered carefully the responses to the public consultation on options for legislative proposals to implement the action plan. We published the Government response alongside the Bill earlier this month. I am grateful to everyone who responded to that consultation. There will inevitably be some additional pieces of statutory guidance to underpin the measures in the Bill. We will seek, wherever possible, to make that available to Parliament during the passage of the Bill, to ensure the widest possible consultation on how it will work in practice.

The Bill is only one part of a wider package of measures, as I have said, aimed at strengthening the Government’s response to money laundering and increasing the amount of criminal assets confiscated by the state. Our wider programme includes improving the effectiveness of the supervisory regime for the regulated sector; reforming the SARs regime, including investment in systems and processes; and further increasing our international reach, working with other Governments, overseas territories, Crown dependencies and international organisations to crack down on money laundering, tax evasion and corruption. We must ensure that the Bill and those other projects have the greatest possible impact on money laundering and terrorist finance in this country and abroad.

I welcome the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) to her post as shadow Home Secretary, and I am pleased that she has been able to meet me since her appointment to discuss this Bill. I would be delighted to continue to meet her and her team during the passage of the Bill to make sure that we get it right. Hopefully, we can work to ensure that the whole House agrees to support the Bill to send a message to the crooks, criminals and facilitators that we will not tolerate this any more. I hope that the hon. Lady, her colleagues and Members from the Scottish National party agree that it is in the public interest that the Bill be enacted at the earliest opportunity, hopefully with clear cross-party support.

I also congratulate the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) on her recent election as Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs. I am afraid that she is not in the Chamber, but she has a wealth of experience in home affairs, and I look forward to discussing these issues with her and the Select Committee.

The Government are committed to protecting the security and prosperity of our citizens, and the integrity of our world-leading financial system. We must ensure that we can pursue vigorously those who abuse that for illicit means. That is what the Bill will do, and I commend it to the House.

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[Ms Abbott]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that important intervention. If the Minister does not give a clear reply to that question on the Floor of the House, I can assure him that we will pursue the issue in Committee.

The Minister said that money is not the main obstacle to pursuing money launderers and criminal actors, but it does not help when agencies such as the NCA experience cuts. The Home Affairs Committee produced an important report in June on the proceeds of crime, and I am indebted to the then Chair and the Committee as a whole for their investigatory work. The Committee pointed out that money laundering takes many complicated forms, ranging from complex financial vehicles and activity in tax havens around the world to property investments in London and high-value jewellery. I share the Select Committee’s astonishment that of over 1 million property transactions last year only 335 were deemed suspicious. I agree with the Select Committee’s conclusion that supervision of the property market has been “totally inadequate” and has

“laid out a welcome mat for launderers”.

The Select Committee report also made the important point that it is all too easy for people who want to launder money to buy property in London, let it out in the capital’s high-value lettings market, then take in clean money in perpetuity.

Overall, the NCA believes that up to £100 billion of criminal funds could be passing through the UK each year in the form of property, luxury cars, art and jewellery. Transparency International estimates that there are hundreds of properties in the UK that are strongly suspected to have been acquired with the proceeds of corruption. Land Registry figures show that UK real estate worth more than £170 billion is held by more than 30,000 tax haven companies. I do not argue that there can never be a legitimate reason for holding UK real estate in a tax haven company, but I believe that, all too often, what we see could well be illicit activity.

[Charlie Elphicke]

As a former tax lawyer, may I point out to the hon. Lady that companies in tax havens own UK property because it was possible to do a stamp duty avoidance scheme called “enveloping” during most of the period in which the Labour Government were in office? Action taken by this Government has put a stop to a lot of that abuse.

[Ms Abbott]

I made a point of saying that there can be legitimates reasons for holding UK property in tax haven companies. I remind the hon. Gentleman that it was not every single detail of the activity of the last Labour Government that I supported.

Most owners of those companies hide behind anonymous trusts or nominee directors and shareholders. For instance, in a single 50-storey apartment complex in London, The Tower at St George Wharf in Vauxhall, a stone’s-throw from the House, a quarter of the flats are held through offshore companies. This Bill aims to close a loophole which means that authorities cannot seize property from overseas criminals unless the individuals are first convicted in their country of origin. The orders will apply to property and other assets worth more than £100,000. If the owner fails to demonstrate that a home or piece of jewellery was acquired using legal sources of income, agencies will be able to seize it.

The Opposition support the new law in principle, but stress that for it to be effective agencies must be given the financial and political support to take powerful and wealthy individuals to court. Furthermore, there is some concern, which we will explore in Committee, that the measures may be too widely drawn. Throughout, the sole safeguard for seizure orders is the reasonable suspicion of a police officer on their own authority. This may be too low a bar as a safeguard against the incompetent use or abuse of state powers.

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[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin) and listen very carefully to the important points he has had to make. I am glad he has had his meeting with the Minister and that promises have been made which I am sure he will ensure will be fulfilled.

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, because one of the most important reports the Home Affairs Committee produced this year was that on the proceeds of crime. I am sorry to have missed the speech by the hon. Member for Wealden (Nusrat Ghani), who is a member of the Committee, but I am sure she spoke brilliantly about the conclusions of that report. I am grateful to the shadow Home Secretary for mentioning it and for the points she made concerning the practicalities and the issues it revealed.

The Minister did not mention the report, but I am sure he has read it. I am sure he has taken on board some of the points the Committee made. When seeking to legislate, it is important to first see where the problems are and where gaps exist, to listen to all those with experience—when we conducted the inquiry we did not just go to the usual suspects; many members of the private sector also gave evidence—and try to come to a conclusion that will provide the basis for sound legislation.

The Minister, who is newly appointed to his position in the Home Office, will have a pretty easy ride in respect of today’s proceedings, because I understand that there will be no vote. There is general support throughout the House for the measures the Government are proposing. They are the right measures and they are sound measures. They are designed to deal with the issues of criminality and terrorism. On those two issues, he will always find a House united. However, I hope he does not take that support as carte blanche to get the proposed legislation through in its entirety. I hope Members will table amendments in Committee based on the important points they have made today. I hope the hon. Members for Dumfries and Galloway (Richard Arkless) and for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman), my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) and others will table amendments relating to the important measures they have put forward. In advance of her speech, I want to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq), who will be making her maiden Opposition Front-Bench speech on this important subject. More importantly, she will not be dividing the House, for which I think we are all very grateful.

The Bill identifies three priorities, which I will compare in turn to the findings of the Select Committee report published earlier this year. Robert Barrington, the director of Transparency International, says that every year over £100 billion might be laundered through the United Kingdom. That is equivalent to the GDP of Ukraine. A lot of that money goes through London, but as we are reminded by our colleagues from north of the border, other great financial centres, such as Edinburgh, are also used. Colleagues from Northern Ireland—we were having our own little debate as the main debate was going on—pointed out the particular difficulties they face, as Dublin is sometimes used by money launderers as an entry point to the EU. All those great financial centres are being used in this way, which is why it is right that action is taken, and taken immediately.

The Committee was shocked to find that poor supervision and enforcement in the London property investment market are making a safe haven for laundering and the proceeds of crime, a point made by the shadow Home Secretary. As we found out from the regulators themselves, it is far too easy for this to happen in a financial centre like London, which we believe—Edinburgh is, of course, respected—to be the greatest financial centre in the world. It is therefore essential to look at the markets here, how regulation operates, and try to deal with it in a constructive and positive way.

The hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) is not in his place, but he raised what I thought was a very important point about the necessity for resources. The Committee found that the private sector was using suspicious activity reports as a box-ticking exercise, sending in their information because it was their duty to do so. I was heartened by what the Minister said about the Government’s wish to cut through red tape so that information is sent on as quickly as possible.

Only 335 of the 1.2 million property transactions were deemed to be suspicious in 2015. The estate agents and their regulators were saying themselves that it was not possible to deal with all the complaints because there were so many of them.

We—Committees of this House, Members of Parliament —have made the point over a number of years that the assets and finances available to our law enforcement agencies cannot compare with the level of criminality in existence. Let us look at the budgets of the three main organisations dealing with this issue: the National Crime Agency has a budget of £450 million; the Financial Conduct Authority has a budget of £500 million; and the Serious Fraud Office has a budget of £45 million. However, the amount of criminal assets recovered has been very poor—only £155 million was recovered in 2014-15.

In defence of those three agencies, whose assets total about £1 billion a year, they say that it is not just about the recovery of assets—they are involved in other areas and they are part of other operations, which mean that the contribution that they make is not fully assessed. However, if we just compare like for like, we will see quite a difference between what the budgets are and what is recovered.

I pay tribute to Lynne Owens, who has done a tremendous job as head of the NCA. The creation of the National Crime Agency was one of the legacies of the previous Home Secretary, now the Prime Minister. In fact, I am on record as saying that we had something of a revolution in policing in the six years when the Prime Minister was the Home Secretary. The whole of the Home Office was shaken up and new organisations and institutions came into existence. She stayed Home Secretary longer than any other Home Secretary since the last century. We cannot expect Home Secretaries to stay for ever—as with Chairs of Home Affairs Select Committees, there is always an end to the fun of doing these jobs. The fact remains that there are aspects that have not fully settled down, and one of them is the ability to give organisations the resources they need in order to finish the job.

Lynne Owens is doing a terrific job, as is her organisation, but I am extremely worried about the computer system that exists to do the very things that the Government want to do. I assume that the Policing Minister will be winding up this debate. When he does, he will, I hope, have the answer to the question I posed to the Minister for Security—the question has been posed over months and years—about when the ELMER system is going to be renewed. It is all very well saying that we want more information coming in but, if we look at the figures, we know that they just do not add up. This is an old and creaking system, designed to manage only 20,000 suspicious activity reports. On the basis of the last available figures, there were 381,882 suspicious activity reports, so how is a system designed to deal with 20,000 supposed to deal with 381,882?

The Minister seemed to be saying that people are ticking boxes and sending in information and they do not need to send in that information, but I do not think that we should expect the private sector to be involved in becoming officers of the law. It is similar to what we have seen over the last five years with landlords becoming immigration officers, as have people working for airlines when they check passports and tickets. Despite what immigration Ministers have said over a number of years, we do not have 100% immigration checks on exit. The airlines check, but no immigration officer checks a passport or a ticket on departure from our airports, which is very sad. That is a different story. My issue is that we cannot get staff in the private sector to act as enforcement officers; they are not trained to do so. That is why we need a new computer system.

When we asked the then Home Secretary—the present Prime Minister—about that, she had no answer to the question of who was going to pay the bill. Would the money come from the budget of the National Crime Agency? Would it come from the Home Office budget? That, I think, is crucial to ensuring that this legislation is properly resourced. Are we going to give the NCA and the Serious Fraud Office the equipment that will enable them to deal with these issues productively? I hope that the Minister will tell us when the new ELMER system will be established, because that is a fundamental issue when it comes to suspicious activity reports.

Another aspect of the Bill is the granting of powers allowing banks to close accounts. I believe that the threshold is too low, and that the Minister must look at that, although it is really a Treasury issue. A number of my constituents have come to me—I know that this applies to other Members as well—and expressed concern after being told that their banks have closed their accounts. They are never given an explanation. Unfortunately, that has happened to too many members of the south Asian diaspora community, and, indeed, the African community. The Somali community was so concerned that representations were made to Treasury Ministers that, just because they happened to be Somali, their bank accounts had been closed. On Friday, I met someone from the Yemeni community who had been told that his bank account had been shut down in 28 days. He had been given no explanation, because banks are private organisations.

Obviously we do not want people to be told “By the way, we are closing your bank account because you are a terrorist” if inquiries are ongoing, but certain explanations need to be given. We need to be sure that the powers that we are granting are appropriate to the agencies to which we are granting them.

[Charlie Elphicke]

May I take up the issue of money laundering and the NCA? When I was a lawyer, one would do an ID check and then the information would be put in the bottom drawer, never to be seen again. If one were at all concerned, one would just do a “tipping off” and dump it on the authorities as a box-ticking exercise. There is no qualitative method of processing such information. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that there should be such a method?

[Keith Vaz]

I think that, when it comes to the hon. Gentleman, it is probably a case of “once a lawyer, always a lawyer”. He is absolutely right. Training should be given to those who are involved in these activities, and in each organisation there should be a compliance officer who has received the necessary training. I do not know what kind of law the hon. Gentleman practised, but we would not expect every single lawyer to be trained to deal with issues such as SARs. We would expect a compliance officer in a big firm of solicitors to be able to do that, because there would not be the time to train everyone. However, I do not believe that that would cut the figure of 381,000 to 20,000. Faced with a third of a million SARs, even the best-trained lawyer—and I would put the hon. Gentleman among, probably, the best that one could find—would not be able to lower that figure. So as well as giving the private sector more responsibility to check, we need to ensure that the equipment is fit for purpose.

Let me commend the suggestion made to the inquiry by the outgoing Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe. I pay tribute to the excellent work that he did as commissioner. The hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) will remember that, when she was a member of the Home Affairs Committee—before she was poached by the Policing Minister to become his Parliamentary Private Sector; we used to train them well in the Select Committee— Sir Bernard came up with a suggestion that was very important in relation to those who were involved in criminal activity. I raised this point with the shadow Home Secretary, and I am grateful to her for saying that she would consider it. I hope that the Policing Minister will also consider it, because when it comes from someone as distinguished as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner it is worth looking at again.

Those Mr Bigs or Mrs Bigs who serve their sentence and come out of prison and still have not paid their compensation order are at an advantage. I agree with my constituency neighbour, the right hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier), that we probably should not keep them in prison indefinitely, but there needs to be some sanction for them to pay up.

One of the issues that arose was that compensation orders were given for assets that probably did not exist. They sound like fabulous figures in court—“This criminal involved in mass criminal activity has millions and millions of pounds”—but actually they do not have those kinds of assets. We need to be realistic about what we are going to recover when we issue the compensation orders. However, there needs to be a penalty. We need to ensure that something is done so these people have to pay up before they come out of jail, otherwise they will simply use a sentence as an opportunity to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure and come out and have access to that money.

Finally, Mr Deputy Speaker—or should I say very finally? [Interruption.] I did not realise we were short of time; I thought this debate was ending at 7 o’clock.