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.