Oral Answers to Questions
Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
The Minister for Industry (Jackie Doyle-Price)
We will publish a review by the end of the year which will consider how best to offer further support to those most at risk due to energy price increases. The review will consider which groups of non-domestic customers remain particularly at risk to energy price rises; and how best to continue supporting those customers, either by extending the existing scheme for some users, or by replacing it with a different one.
Helen Morgan
The Horse & Jockey pub in Northwood in my constituency closed before the Government’s assistance package was announced. It is one of many businesses that will not continue beyond April. Many others that have managed to remain open are struggling to secure bank facilities and to reassure suppliers and customers, because they need certainty to be able thrive. I would like to hear from the Minister what the Government are going to do to provide some certainty for these critical businesses beyond the winter period.
Jackie Doyle-Price
The hon. Lady is absolutely right—businesses deserve certainty, and we will give that to them as soon as we can, and well before the end of the scheme. It is important that we make sure, because this is a very expensive scheme for taxpayers, that we give that support where it is needed, at best value for the taxpayer. That means that we need to target it at those businesses that are at most risk of being damaged. I hope that that gives the hon. Lady some reassurance in the meantime—we are determined to give some advice before the end of the year.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
The Minister has announced what will happen if businesses have fixed-term energy contracts running into the period of the support scheme, but she has not said anything about what would happen where businesses are forced to sign new fixed-term contracts during the term of the scheme that run on after it has ended. Many businesses and firms might face ruin if they sign new, sky-high fixed-term contracts for which they know that there is support only for perhaps a few months of it. They need assurances now, not at the end of April. What assurances can the Minister give that proper measures will be urgently put in place to support businesses under such circumstances?
Jackie Doyle-Price
I repeat that we will announce conclusions before the end of the year, which provides sufficient notice before the end of the scheme. The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that we need to give support that is as targeted as possible, given the cost of the scheme. In respect of the point that he made regarding contracts, Ofgem will play a key role in making sure that energy suppliers behave honourably in the scheme. It remains our intention that businesses should receive the support that they deserve and that pricing is fair.
Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
The Minister for Industry (Jackie Doyle-Price)
The best way we can help deprived communities is by creating good jobs and growing the economy. By cutting red tape and boosting innovation, we are enabling more businesses to create more high-quality jobs. Cutting national insurance will encourage job creation and ensure that workers have more of their own money, but Government can also do their bit to help projects that will facilitate economic growth, and I am pleased that some £87 million is being spent in Sheffield at present.
Gill Furniss
According to recent polling, 69% of my constituents are worried about not being able to pay their energy bills. They are terrified for the future, with prices set to rise in April, but the latest new Prime Minister has shamefully boasted about taking money away from deprived areas like mine. Does the Minister agree that Britain needs a general election now, so that the public can have their say on their future?
Jackie Doyle-Price
The hon. Lady will not be surprised to hear that I do not share that opinion. She will appreciate my sincerity when I say that I am very concerned to do my bit to make sure that those in deprived communities feel reassured by the support they are getting from this Government. We will make sure that her constituents continue to get the support they need, but the best thing we can all do is give that message of reassurance, not seek to play party politics by calling for a general election.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Despite being the engine room of Britain’s economy, London still has some of the most deprived areas in the country. Does my hon. Friend agree that the best way we can get people out of poverty is to create good, well-paid jobs, so that they can earn their own living and have the ability to contribute to the economy?
Jackie Doyle-Price
My hon. Friend is quite right. We seem to have got ourselves into a cul-de-sac of seeing deprivation as a result of geography, when actually the truth is far from that; we have deprived communities in all parts of our United Kingdom. It is important that we ensure that everybody has access to good, well-paid employment. We will achieve that by making sure that we are equipping people with the skills that employers need and taking away the red tape and tax barriers, to encourage firms to create new jobs. That is the Government’s approach, and that is how we will grow our way out of the problems we are facing.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill (First sitting)
Jackie Doyle-Price ExcerptsTuesday 25th October 2022
(1 year, 6 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 View all Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 25 October 2022 - (25 Oct 2022)
Alison Thewliss
Q
Nick Van Benschoten: I do not think they are unprecedentedly low. From a very quick survey, we found that Benin and Turkmenistan also have a low figure. I am not sure that is the company the UK wants to keep. There is a question about international competitiveness. It is important to note that in other EU countries with major financial centres it is in the £50 to £100 range. That does not seem an unreasonable amount for us.
Perhaps more importantly, we think Companies House needs to get resourced properly. You have to will the means, not just the ends. It is very important that Companies House fees are set at a reasonable level that would not deter an entrepreneur but would disrupt some of the bulk abuse we have seen, in which criminals set up hundreds and hundreds of shell companies. That is definitely a typology that we have seen.
Once there is enough money coming through main registration, there is then the question of whether Companies House will be granted any investment money out of the economic crime levy that is coming in next year. It is important that the levy is spent on things that actually improve the system, and that we do not just cross-subsidise, and that some of the opportunities also have a benefit for the economy—maybe for streamlining the onboarding of small companies, or for facilitating other access to regulated services.
Obviously, there is the question of what the Government will spend the levy on. We welcome the money that they have spent so far. There is an interesting proposal—by, I think, one of the Committee members’ all-party parliamentary groups—that the Government should match-fund the economic crime levy. Obviously, we in the regulator sector would love that. It is something for the Government to consider.
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Jackie Doyle-Price)
Q
Gurpreet Manku: To clarify, I think this is a really important Bill. We have been saying for a very long time that the provisions need to be implemented quickly. The issues that we have raised are really on points of detail. Raising an international private equity or venture capital fund is quite a complex process. We hope that the swift introduction of the provisions will deter criminals from using the vehicles that we are talking about. When the requirement was introduced for Scottish limited partnerships to go on the people with significant control register, it led to a dramatic drop-off in the use of such partnerships for nefarious purposes. We were not aware that English limited partnerships were being used in that way instead, and we were surprised that they were, because English limited partnerships do not have a legal personality, and so cannot hold assets and should not be able to set up a bank account; certainly, they cannot in this country. We were therefore surprised by the scale of abuse there.
The Government are sending a really strong signal by introducing these provisions, particularly the requirement to have an authorised corporate service provider submit documention and the measures around annual confirmation statements. That should deter criminals. Our version of the limited partnership fund structure has been emulated across the world, so there is a lot of competition, in the sense that international fund groups could set up a vehicle in the UK, the EU or the US. Our wish is for them to be here, because that drives other economic activity.
We have a huge domestic venture capital and growth capital funds industry that invests in small businesses around the country. Two thirds of our investment is outside London; 90% of investment goes to small and medium-sized enterprises. Our managers are small firms; they need a domestic vehicle that works and is trusted by international investors, including those from the US who invest heavily in our members. These vehicles are used by private equity and venture capital funds. They are also used by infrastructure, pension schemes and fund-to-fund investors. Notably, they are also used by the British Business Bank through its equity programmes. It is the largest venture capital and growth equity investor in the UK. It has a really important role in catalysing innovation and crowding in additional institutional investors. I am passionate about the need for a robust UK vehicle, and it has been really disappointing to see the abuse first in Scotland and then in England in recent years.
English limited partnerships and Scottish limited partnerships are popular because they are here. The UK law courts attract institutional investors, as does the fact that we have a large professional services community here. Because we have funds here, we also have the administration here, which means that we have good-quality jobs around the country; some of our members have hubs in Belfast and Southampton. I am passionate about ensuring that this vehicle works, and the rules that are being introduced will deter criminals; they will improve the robustness of the vehicle.
Our points are really points of detail, just to ensure that the limited liability status of investors is protected and that we can implement these reforms in a swift and easy manner.
Jackie Doyle-Price
Q
Gurpreet Manku: I think it will make a very good statement, and it will attract international investment. There is a huge level of interest in the UK because we have had some brilliant growth stories in our businesses, particularly in deep tech in life sciences and biotech, especially coming out of the pandemic. There is a lot of interest in investments, and the Bill will send a signal that these investors should be using UK fund vehicles and not those based outside the country.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
Q
Nick Van Benschoten: That is the case, and perhaps more, in a way, than you might expect. We are not saying that Companies House should be regulated for anti-money laundering, but it does not have the provisions to verify the status of directors or beneficial owners. That is the gap to the standards. I should stress that the industry standards allow reasonable measures in how you verify status, because it is a challenge, but those reasonable measures are a matter of how, not whether.
Alison Thewliss
Q
Nigel Kirby: I would leave those to UK Finance; it is not my area of expertise. Our nominated office in Lloyds feeds into UK Finance so we get the whole industry.
Jackie Doyle-Price
Q
Nigel Kirby: I can link this to your question on safeguards. Coming from a law enforcement background, I believe that safeguards for members of the public are really important in this space, and I am used to following those. GDPR does not stop us from doing some things. It provides a set of safeguards for what we do.
When you look at what the Bill does on safeguards—I am trying to answer both questions—it makes it very clear that we share this information when certain conditions apply, such as exit or restriction, or we need the relevant actions, which would be the prevention and detection investigations for economic crime. Those safeguards are built into the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill.
In GDPR you already have safeguards in place. The first safeguard is: do we have a legitimate interest to share? That is precisely my point, Minister, about our needing to have legitimate interests to share—prevent all crime, not just fraud. Then you have a necessity limb to this. Is what we want to share targeted? Is it proportionate? Is there a less intrusive way? From a law enforcement perspective, we look at whether our actions are proportionate and collateral intrusion. There is a balancing act sitting there as a third limb, on ensuring that the legitimate interest of the public is not unduly overridden. I actually support the fact that there are safeguards in GDPR; I think that is the right thing to have. I support the fact that we need to meet those to be able to share information, but in doing so in that particular space, we need to be able to have sufficient breadth to be able to share across all economic crime and not just fraud.
Jackie Doyle-Price
Q
Nigel Kirby: I think it would be very helpful to have, on the obligations, clear guidance from somewhere like the Information Commissioner’s Office—it has got good guidance, to be fair—as we move through this. Should the Bill be enacted and become legislation, guidance across the industry and from the relevant Government sectors or law enforcement sectors on how we do this and come together in the same way as we came together through the Bill, would be important and give clarity, because, as I am sure you are aware, Minister, there are different interpretations of things, different views and different risk appetites. That is normal in business. The views, legal interpretations and risk appetites will always be different, but where there is guidance to help us through this, with a positive intent from Parliament, that is always really helpful.
Dame Margaret Hodge
Q
I want to take you back—I could not quite hear what you said to Alison—to the SARs regime, if I may. It may not be your area of expertise, but it is a very important instrument for informing the enforcement agencies of where there may be a problem. The system is clearly broken—hundreds of thousands of SARs are landing on the desks of enforcement agencies. And we had the idea that they could be put into categories—risk categorised. I wonder whether you are able to comment on that at all, because if currently there is just a tick box—you send off your SARs and you have done it—too often the banks then carry on doing business with a suspicious person. Is there room in the Bill for doing something more on that regime, to ensure that the enforcement agencies are more effective in rooting out economic crime?
Nigel Kirby: I think the SARs regime and the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 itself actually need—well, not necessarily to be turned upside down, but to be looked at as a whole. I think an individual focus just on some aspect of SARs probably would not change the system in any particular—
Jackie Doyle-Price
Q
Andy Gould: Probably the most obvious area would be around ransomware, which is if you are an organisation and you get hacked and attacked and then lose access to all your files or systems, and then get a demand from a cyber-criminal saying, “Okay, if you want to get access back, you have to pay”—basically, an extortion demand. That extortion demand will virtually always be in cryptocurrency, because there is a view that that is harder to trace.
Depending on the kind of cryptocurrency, the traceability varies. Effectively, a lot of the technology that sits behind cryptocurrencies is based within what is described as the blockchain. Arianna is much better at explaining this than me, but the blockchain is effectively a public ledger, if we are talking about Bitcoin or something like that. We can see all the transactions. It is like your bank account or NatWest or any other bank doing its transactions in the public space—everybody can look at them. It is effectively decentralised and very public, so there are real benefits in that. The anonymity comes from not knowing who is sending what or who is who, in terms of the bank accounts—the wallet equivalent.
That provides opportunities to follow the money, but, although you might be able to see where the money goes, you will not necessarily know who has sent it or who has received it. There are other investigations you would need to do that. And there are tools—mixing services or exchanges—that will jumble it all up and then send it elsewhere, and you will not be able to see what has come in compared with what is going out. That is why criminals like to use it—because, as they see it, it covers their tracks effectively.
Arianna Trozze: One way to make it a bit clearer is to situate cryptocurrency money laundering in the traditional phases of money laundering. When we talk about money laundering, we tend to talk about three specific phases—placement, layering and integration. In the crypto space, placement may look like someone depositing their Government-issue currency into a cryptocurrency exchange, and exchanging it for cryptoassets, or potentially using what is called a fiat on-ramp to buy cryptoassets using their fiat currency. They may also use something like an over-the-counter broker, which may allow them to buy cryptoassets using cash.
Then, the layering process follows, which is kind of what Andy was talking about, in terms of trying to obfuscate the origin and trail of funds. There are a lot of different tactics that the criminals can use to do that. As Andy mentioned, they may use mixing services, to try to break the chain. They may create thousands of different cryptocurrency wallets and accounts and transfer the funds among them in order to make it more difficult to trace. They may exchange them for various different types of cryptoassets, including privacy coins, which we, again, have a lot of trouble chasing, although there have been advancements in that regard. Finally, they may move to completely different blockchains, using what are called blockchain bridges, and that further makes it more difficult to trace—as Andy mentioned before, different providers have different capabilities and different expertise in terms of which chains they specialise in and which assets they are able to trace. That is something else that they may do to hide that trail of funds.
Finally, we have the integration process, which is criminals using those now-cleaned funds for mainstream economic activity. We know that sometimes they may seek to keep those funds in cryptoassets in an attempt to further their gains, speculatively investing in the market; or they may, again, use one of these exchanges or what is called a fiat off-ramp to transfer their cryptoassets back into pounds or any other currency.
Jackie Doyle-Price
Q
Arianna Trozze: Yes, and as it is such a quickly developing technology, there are constantly new ways coming out for criminals to use the technology for various purposes. Again, it is a rush for law enforcement and investigative companies to try to keep up with this.
Andy Gould: To give you a sense of the scale of the challenge, there are thousands of different forms of cryptoassets or cryptocoins in existence. We have to learn to use all the ones that the criminals are using. We can only do it with the private sector. There is no way we can invest in or have the skills in-house to be able to develop all of those tools for all of those different asset classes, so we work really closely with all the big private sector companies to build that capability. It is why we do big open national procurements—because that is the only way it is affordable.
Liam Byrne
Q
Andy Gould: It is really hard to say, because it is so hard to identify or report at scale. However, I would say yes. If you talked to all of the big cyber-incident companies and the threat intelligence companies about what we are seeing, in terms of reporting, then yes, everybody would say that it is rising. Certainly, the crime survey for England and Wales does.
Jackie Doyle-Price
Q
Jonathan Hall: Let us imagine that counter-terrorism police have intelligence that there is an Islamic State cell that has been fundraising in Birmingham, and they are going to try to transfer the funds that they have managed to raise to an active cell based in Syria. Their plan is to do that by using Bitcoin. Let us imagine counter-terrorism police had intelligence that that was about to happen. They could raid the premises where the UK-based cell was operating. They could seize a bit of paper on which the crucial key is written down, which would allow the transfer of the funds to take place to Syria. They could then use that key to grab the cryptoassets—let us say it is £1 million-worth of assets that are about to be converted, or have been converted, into cryptocurrency—and transfer the cryptocurrency to a police-controlled wallet or to another provider who they trust.
That money, which would otherwise have gone out to Syria to buy guns and so on, will then be seized by the police. If the police have evidence to do so, they could in six or 12 months’ or up to three years’ time, go to a magistrates court and say, “We can prove that this cryptocurrency was going to be used for the purposes of terrorism” or “It was the resources of a proscribed organisation, Islamic State. Can you now please order that the money be seized and transferred to the Treasury?” Does that help?
Jackie Doyle-Price
Yes, not only is that a brilliant explanation that brings this to life, but it is a great plot for a film.
Jonathan Hall: It is real life. There was a man called Hisham Chaudhary who was convicted last year of doing more or less that.
Jackie Doyle-Price
Q
Jonathan Hall: We can never be confident it is completely future-proof, but it is necessary and definitely a very strong step in the right direction. As I say, I have one reservation about overseas companies where I think it may go a bit too far. It may just be a question of deleting one part of the provision I read out to you. In general, it is a good step.
The Chair
I think the number of the page you are looking for is in the amendment document on page 47 and it is new schedule 1. I think that is what you were referring to, Mr Hall. I am going to move on anyway.
Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill (Second sitting)
Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Seema Malhotra
It was about how to tackle economic crime and whether the reform of the strike-off process is important to that.
Adrian Searle: The strike-off process is not something I have a detailed understanding of. I suspect Martin might be better placed to answer that question.
Martin Swain: Again, it is something we are very aware of. Companies take advantage of the strike-off route to discharge themselves of debts and so on, and for other purposes. My sense is probably that the Bill as drafted gives us what we need. It is about how we take forward the policy in that area regarding where companies are moved to strike off. For example, we get lots of representation with regard to lots of companies being registered at one address—a registered office being used and abused. The route for that would be to default them to our address at Companies House, for not having a registered office address that is valid. The next step on that would be strike-off, but clearly if we do that we may be having an adverse impact on the system and giving companies a route to use it for criminal activity or to fold without paying their debts. We are very aware of the issue.
The Minister for Industry (Jackie Doyle-Price)
Q
Adrian Searle: I think we have. There is, as you say, a real challenge to get the balance right between a prosperity and a security agenda. As we know, the Companies House reform elements of the Bill are a long time coming, so there has been lots of analysis and consideration of how you get the balance right. What I know from a law enforcement investigative perspective is that the changes being introduced under the Bill will certainly make the job of law enforcement far more straightforward in terms of our ability to investigate criminals and corrupt elites who are exploiting the complexity of the corporate structures to hide their assets, launder their wealth, and so on. I am confident that it gives Companies House and, by extension, the investigative agencies the powers we need. The indications that I have from exchanges with Martin and others in the industry are that the changes do not go so far that they inhibit transparent business practices in a way that undermines our economy. It feels to me that the balance is right.
Martin Swain: It is a very good point. It is a challenge for us as an organisation, because we have very clear direction from our Ministers that we should not create a burden for business, or make it difficult for companies to incorporate or for people to invest in the UK. The concept of balance is always there for us. We will bring in things such as ID verification, but we need to make that really efficient, and make it easy for people to understand the process, so that we do not create a burden for the vast majority of companies on our register that are legitimate businesses. That is quite a tension sometimes, because there is a significant spotlight on Companies House to become more than the passive register that we are at the moment, and to become—I hear this term—an “active gatekeeper” of the register. There is a potential that we move too far into that territory and make it harder for the vast majority of companies to deal with us.
I mentioned our transformation programme. There are two elements to our transformation. One is the legislative reform and all that is involved with that. The second part is digitising our services. That is what we have been focusing on in the last few years: making our systems really quick and easy to use, and to drive data, rather than receiving information on paper. You cannot work effectively with law enforcement from paper transactions; you have to have data.
Jackie Doyle-Price
Q
Martin Swain: It is a huge culture change for us, not least in becoming more of a proactive agency. I hear it said that Companies House will be key to the economic crime ecosystem; what I say to people is that we will also be part of the business growth ecosystem. It is important that we have that dual role.
Adrian Searle: I think there is real value for businesses in being able to trust the other businesses they are dealing with. There is a strong argument that the transparency agenda supports the business agenda.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Q
Martin Swain: At the moment we are in the design phase for verification. I should say first of all that we will not do the ID verification ourselves; we will outsource that.
Stephen Kinnock
Will you say a word about why that is? The system seems not to be working, so what do we need to do to fix it?
Commander Adams: I will start and then bring in Simon, who is an expert on money laundering. The first thing to say is that fraud is getting increasingly complex. About 70% of all fraud emanates from overseas and, as Adrian touched on, it is very difficult for us to obtain prosecutions and convictions across jurisdictions. That is a real challenge for us, as are the growth in technology, the way in which fraudsters are now exploiting people and the changes in tactics.
Fraudsters are moving away from unauthorised payment fraud, where people’s details are stolen and used fraudulently—banks are now preventing somewhere in the region of 65p in every pound of that type of activity—and we are now seeing much more sophisticated frauds, where people are socially engineered, or manipulated, into physically approving transactions. That of course is much harder for technological solutions to prevent, when the target is a human being.
Of course, all that complexity requires a much more complex and sophisticated policing response. As I described, the growth that is coming down the line—in particular the proactive growth—will not start landing until the end of this year and then, of course, we are several years before we have fully experienced and really competent and effective investigators working on those crimes. All those things will layer on over a period. We anticipate that the technological advances will continue, both in support of us and in challenging us in how we can investigate and progress these crimes. Simon, do you want to comment specifically on money laundering?
Simon Welch: On money laundering, the amount of offences—detected offences—is going down. Criminals are getting a lot more savvy about our tactics and things like that, so we find that they are not having assets in their own names so much—vehicles, houses, things like that—and our opportunities for confiscation are probably going down a bit. However, what you can see from the seizure figures is that the cash value is up, but the volume is down. We are targeting and getting good results from the cases, but it is a smaller number of cases. In reality, POCA is now quite old, and people are used to us going after the money, so they take far more steps to protect that money from us being able to confiscate it.
Jackie Doyle-Price
Q
Michelle Crotty: At the moment, we have those pre-investigation powers for overseas bribery and corruption. They allow us to investigate earlier, in particular to identify banking evidence earlier, and to see whether there is a case to pursue. By extending that to fraud and domestic-based issues, we are enabled to do that in those cases. At the moment, we have to take on a case formally and to commit resource in order to exercise the powers. To some extent, we can negotiate on occasion with companies to get that material, but if we have the power of compulsion, it would make it quicker and easier to get the material and so identify whether there is a case there.
Jackie Doyle-Price
And to address some of the questions we heard earlier—if you can act more quickly and establish whether a crime has been committed, that is clearly more efficient.
Michelle Crotty: It is more efficient and means that, if we follow the money and there is a reasonable explanation, we can screen a case out more quickly, rather than committing more resource and taking longer to reach that decision.
Alison Thewliss
Q
“Company formation and related professional services are therefore a key enabler or gatekeeper of”
trade-based money laundering. Is there enough in the Bill to remove that risk?
Simon Welch: It is difficult to say. We have heard about the verification processes going on. With the authorised corporate service providers, if we strengthen all that and make things more difficult, we target harm. At the moment, you can register a company from abroad, and there is little opportunity for us to follow that up, especially in a jurisdiction that it is difficult to get information from. The idea of having ACSPs in this country, where we can see them and start the inquiry from the UK, would be very desirable. I am not sure whether the Bill goes that far; I have not read that bit too much.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Thom Townsend: It is worth saying that countries that are doing very well on this typically have a national identity card system that is the foundation of their ID process. There are other ways of doing it. I think about Estonia, France, Germany—the list could go on, but it is based around their national ID card system. Clearly, we do not have that. The Government have done significant work on their own identity verification programme, which has had mixed results. We know we can do this. It does not necessarily need to be outsourced to that profession, which of course is supervised, but we collectively have severe misgivings about it.
On the second point around the accountability mechanism, we would like to see a very strong mechanism for Companies House to be coming to Parliament on a regular basis to talk about how this is looking and how it is performing. It is a much broader conversation about the kinds of indicators we would like to see reported on. That is a much longer conversation, but I will pass over to colleagues at this point.
John Cusack: I share Thom’s views, principally, on this. I spent 30 years working in banking as an MLRO—that is the previous history to my current role—and I spent many, many occasions trying to establish beneficial ownership. It is not easy, but it is the key to understanding risk and understanding who owns and controls a bank account, real estate or a company. That is absolutely key. I would like to see an obligation on the companies register that is essentially equivalent to that which a bank has in relation to knowing its customer, to the extent that that is possible. That is where we need to get to. Thom was explaining that some of the better countries are trying to get to that kind of standard.
Secondly, I believe that the registrar of companies needs to have a much stronger obligation than is currently set out in the proposed legislation—it needs, again, to be slightly similar to my old obligations as an MLRO. There needs to be an obligation to operate an AML programme that is worthy of the name, and to have strong and meaningful controls in order to be able to demonstrate that Companies House and the companies register are doing a similar job to what other people do in the private sector.
Dr Hawley: I would like to strongly back that up. It is essential that the “know your customer” rules that the private sector has to use are used by Companies House as well. There is no point having a registry that SMEs cannot rely on because it is not as accurate as it needs to be. That has been a problem now that the big companies simply do not use the corporate register because it is so inaccurate. There is a long way to go on that.
We also have real concerns, as Thom mentioned, about the authorised corporate service provider provision in the Bill. In essence, it relies on another part of the system—the anti-money laundering supervision system—and the danger is that we are just playing whack-a-mole. We are just pushing the problem down the road. We know that HMRC, in its supervision of TCSPs, has had lots of very serious questions about whether it is up to the job, and it just recently revised its average fine level down from £250,000 to £8,000. There are real questions about whether that is a serious deterrent. In its recent report, it found that nearly 50% of its cases that went up to the governance panel had to be returned to the case officer for serious work to be done again. Either the Bill needs to address the AML supervision regime—I can tell you some of our suggestions, because it would not be that difficult to come up with a transition—or there are real questions over whether that clause should be in it at all.
A final point, which was picked up earlier by colleagues from law enforcement, is about how this will be funded. The registry will be meaningful only if there are proper resources. It can be completely cost-neutral to the Treasury. We are heading into a difficult fiscal time, so it needs to be cost-neutral. As the gentleman from the National Police Chiefs’ Council said earlier, we have almost the lowest registry fee. We are the 6th lowest, in company with Rwanda, Timor-Leste, Ukraine and South Africa. Most other countries charge an average of £150 to £300, compared with £12. That could go an enormous way to getting the right IT infrastructure. We know a lot of this will have to be done with technology and AI. Making sure that the fees for Companies House are set at a realistic level to make this properly verified is essential.
Jackie Doyle-Price
Q
Dr Hawley: Absolutely. The key thing is what John alluded to—clause 88. What is the requirement in the Bill for how far the registrar has to go? If it is the minimum amount, the fees will be minimal. If we are going for the gold standard, the fees will need to be higher to reflect the greater verification work.
Thom Townsend: Just a quick thought: what strikes me, reading the Bill, is that it is not quite clear what Government want Companies House to be, when you delve into the detail. Is it around minimising criminal activity, as in the fourth objective? Is it about preventing, which comes up in clause 88? That needs to be resolved to give a very clear idea in primary legislation of what we want Companies House to be. It should be the first line of defence in the UK economy from the perspective of integrity and preventing crime.
Jackie Doyle-Price
Q
Thom Townsend: Absolutely. My point was just that countries that do have been able to go further and faster as a result of having the underlying infrastructure. But no, absolutely, you can do that. We have brought down the cost of identifying people in this country very rapidly, with KYC for new banking, and taking a video of yourself. We have a lot of technology and lots of ways to achieve that end. It does not have to be done through the trust and corporate service provider industry—it simply does not.
Jackie Doyle-Price
That is helpful.
John Cusack: I will just add to Thom’s point about clause 88. The language concerns me greatly. This will be dependent on the registrar’s diligence and, essentially, on the financing that the registrar has in order to carry out their activities. The language—that the
“registrar must carry out such analysis of information within the registrar’s possession as the registrar considers appropriate”—
is extremely timid. If there is no money for it, the registrar will not be doing anything. That is really problematic. We would not apply that in any other circumstance; we would want to set out the obligation—the expectation—and to fund that appropriately, not the other way around.
Alison Thewliss
Q
Dr Hawley: We focused more on what is not in the Bill. I do not know whether John or Thom want to address that.
Thom Townsend: I would hand over to John on this one.
John Cusack: The Bill is positive. It is one of the contributions that will definitely help, and it is trying to fix a long-standing problem. At the end of the day, however, if we want to deal with financial crime, economic crime, we need convictions—investigations, prosecutions and convictions—and asset recoveries. That comes from resourcing the public sector, as well as demanding high expectations from the private sector. I am worried that in the UK the financing of law enforcement, and of the FIU in particular, is insufficient to assure the objectives that we all want, which are to mitigate, manage and reduce harms from economic crime. This is a long-standing weakness in the UK, as it is in many other countries, and that would definitely help, but let us not kid ourselves that it will make a material difference to the economic crime situation in the UK.
The Chair
Q
Oliver Bullough: I agree with Bill that the UK has a shameful record when it comes to its failure to investigate and prosecute financial crime. I would add, however, a fourth explanation to Bill’s list of potential reasons why that is not happening. For many years or perhaps many decades, there has been a belief in Britain that making things as simple as possible is good for business—the idea that it is simple and cheap to set up a business and better to have less regulation than more regulation is invariably good for Britain’s business climate.
Alison Thewliss mentioned Scottish limited partnerships earlier. We saw this phenomenon when Scottish limited partnerships were discussed in the House back in 2017 after the exposing of the Moldovan laundromat. There were suggestions by her colleague then—the SNP’s Treasury spokesman, Roger Mullin—about trying to tighten up the rules around SLPs, but they were torpedoed by the Treasury because of concerns that that would lead to investment funds having to spend extra money on meeting regulations.
I believe the estimates for each fund would be between £14,800 and £27,600 per investment fund. That is the cost supposedly to the UK economy. If you compare that to the cost of fraud to the UK economy, which is estimated by the University of Portsmouth at approximately £130 billion, you see how absurd it is to be worried about saving £14,800: we are faced with a problem that is costing us more than £100 billion.
The cost of fraud, which is rampant—40% of known crimes—is a huge tax on businesses and individuals in the UK. It is made possible by the fact that we have been failing for so long to do anything about economic crime. If you look at that quantity of fraud, as estimated by the academics in Portsmouth—there are higher estimates—it is equivalent to about a fifth of the total tax take. It is like adding another VAT to the UK economy, or twice as much again as all taxes levied on corporations. That is the cost of economic crime on the British economy.
There has been a philosophical failure to realise that making things easy is not always good. At some point, you are making things so easy for criminals that you are essentially making things difficult for honest people. In this case, by adding regulation we will be deterring criminals and therefore making things easier for honest people. That is something that, for far too long, people in public life in the UK have failed to realise.
I am here talking only about the effect on the UK. On top of the cost of fraud to the UK, hundreds of billions of pounds are laundered through the City of London every year; that is the National Crime Agency’s estimate. It clearly a guess—a round number—and it could be more; it could be less. That is money being stolen by criminals, drug traffickers and kleptocrats, and laundered through the UK. They are keeping this money. Essentially, it is being taken away from good people and kept by bad people. If we could stop this happening—instead, confiscate the money and keep it for ourselves or return it to the people it is taken from—it would be what is called in rugby a 14-point swing. We would be taking it away from one team and simultaneously giving it to the other one.
I agree that the three suggestions that Bill made for why the UK has been so bad at fighting economic crime are all possibilities, but my favourite fourth one is that we have been simply philosophically failing to understand why economic crime is a problem. This Bill is a real opportunity to do something about that. I was listening to some of the earlier panels; I would like to second what was said by almost everyone, which is that a new law is very good, but a new law is definitely not enough on its own. We need far more resources for Companies House, the National Crime Agency, the Met, the City police, the Serious Fraud Office and all the police agencies to be able to use this Bill.
As I understand it, the funding per officer at the National Crime Agency is estimated at one third of their counterparts at the FBI. Leaving aside the fact that there are far fewer of them, just per officer they are funded at a third of the level of the FBI. If we want them to be able to do the same job that the Bill is talking about, and that American prosecutors and investigators are able to do, we need to fund them adequately. We should at least be funding them as well as their colleagues at the FBI if we want them to be able to do as good a job.
Jackie Doyle-Price
Q
Bill Browder: People are very simple: they operate on the basis of rewards and punishments. There are big rewards for people in the City of London to launder money. Banks make money off transactions and accounts and so on. Company formation agencies make money off selling directors and forming companies. Lawyers make money setting up these structures. There is no consequence if they are involved in in dirty business—none. Nobody faces any consequence.
What we have just seen at Companies House is remarkable: thousands of companies being registered for no commercial purpose other than to launder money. These companies then set up foreign bank accounts. We know who the directors are. Some of the directors are UK citizens. The company formation agencies are UK company formation agencies. We report it to the police, and nothing happens. If nothing is going to happen, then you are not going to change the culture.
America has the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Most American corporate executives do not want to be prosecuted and therefore do not make bribes abroad. Austria does not, and so they do. We are in a situation where there is no consequence for doing any of this type of stuff. It does not matter what is written in this law; it does not matter what was written in the previous law. There was a great law passed called the unexplained wealth order. It is a beautiful law, which solved a huge problem, which is not having to get evidence from the bad guys in the kleptocrat countries, and just using the evidence that we have here. We have used it in four or five cases, and most of the cases have actually been on behalf of dictators going after their enemies. We have a total failure of law enforcement. It probably should be studied as a separate issue: why is law enforcement not doing its job? Why is it failing?
You can write as many great laws as you want—there is some good stuff in this law, and good stuff in the previous laws—but if no one is going to enforce it, then you are never going to change the risk-reward and people are going to carry on doing stuff. All this will continue, and I will sit here 10 years from now making the same allegations about how this is a centre of money laundering.
Oliver Bullough: I would like to agree with everything Bill just said. People are more or less rational: they act according to their incentives. We can try and change the culture in the City of London as much as we like but, essentially, if there is no prospect of being arrested, prosecuted and jailed, or at the very least given a large fine, for committing these kinds of crimes, then someone will always be available to commit them because the reward will be sufficiently large and there will be no downside.
I gave a talk to a school a couple of years ago. One of the kids had been sitting silently throughout, and he put his hand up and asked me at the end, “Yeah, Mister, if you know all this about money laundering, why don’t you just go and do it?” I still do not really know the answer to that question, because there is no real reason not to do it. It is a gimme of a crime. You are 99.9% likely to get away with it.
What is particularly frustrating is that when we have prosecuted fraud and put resources into prosecuting fraud, it not only pays for itself, but is a huge profit centre. We saw that from Lord Agnew, who ran a small anti-fraud office from the Cabinet Office during the covid pandemic. He had a small anti-fraud budget that returned tenfold the amount of money that was paid. It is a complete no-brainer to go after this money and these crimes. We would be benefiting the country in every way.
I agree with Bill; it is very frustrating to hear talk about changing culture, when what we really need to do is to change people’s incentives. The way to do that is to enforce the laws that we have.
Tom Tugendhat
Q
We will be listening for further ideas in the future, but do you agree that the Bill at least sets out the first steps to where we really do need to be going to make sure that the crimes begin to be prosecuted? Just to answer your question, Oliver, the reason you do not launder money is that you are and remain a person of integrity; sadly, you are not very rich for it, but there you go. That is the price.
Bill Browder: I have never had any trouble with the laws as they are written here. We probably do not even need this. It is a great law—congratulations; I applaud you on putting it together. It is 252 pages of mind-numbing stuff—
Jackie Doyle-Price
Q
Thomas Mayne: Transparency is incredibly important. We know that, and we know that what has happened to Companies House in the past 15 years is ludicrous. We have heard examples of that today. We are one of the first countries in the world to have a beneficial ownership register, and I think that the Bill will take us to the next stage in verifying the information that is put on to Companies House, but, as Dr Hawley said earlier, will we still be able to rely on that information? There is also a risk that it just becomes another layer of what we might call zombie transparency. We have all this data, but so what? If it does not lead to enforcement actions or to people who are breaking the rules and submitting false information being penalised—sanctioned, fined, jailed—it will be all for naught. It needs to be accompanied by robust enforcement action. We have heard that from many speakers today.
Jackie Doyle-Price
Q
Thomas Mayne: Absolutely. If we take the PSC register, which has been in for a few years now, we can point to that and say, “This person has to be the controller of that company. Why is this person living in a shed in Siberia when £100 million is going through their company?” Before the PSC register, we could not say that. Now we have verification procedures coming in, we should be able to say that somebody at least—Companies House or whoever—has checked that this person is real and is the person they say they are, in terms of the information submitted to Companies House. We should definitely have this, but it is only the first step.
Professor Heathershaw: To emphasise that point, we know that even where there is transparency—even where we know the money is going—there is an enforcement gap. For example, Tom and I obviously work together, and we have provided your Committee with two of our most recent reports: one on unexplained wealth and one looking comparatively at the Dariga Nazarbayeva and Zamira Hajiyeva cases, in which we demonstrate that the reason why one failed and the other succeeded was simply the incumbency status of the two. The one who remains in power, has a good relationship with the law enforcement authorities back home and has privileged access—one might argue, an unfair advantage there—is able to defend themselves against that measure.
Unfortunately, the UWO reforms that came through earlier this year in the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022 do not fit that part of the problem. It is also part of a bigger problem. When we look at our dataset of £2 billion-worth of properties in the London and the south-east—included at the end of the Chatham House report, the blue one that you should also have—we find that the 73 cases of incumbents, the people who remain in good favour in the kleptocratic states from which they come, get to retain their properties, but 13 out of the 15 cases of exiles, of those who have fallen out of favour, lose their properties. That is not explained by exiles being more corrupt and incumbents less corrupt, so there are problems there around enforcement.
That means, effectively, that however much transparency we have, the measures that are being adopted are not really introducing rule of law at all, because what determines the outcome for people—whether they get to keep their property—depends on whether they are in political favour back in the kleptocratic state. That is a real indictment of the way in which the UK system has hitherto functioned. It shows the limits of what transparency can achieve. As Tom mentioned, with this Bill the UK will be a gold standard of transparency across the world, but it will still lack in terms of accountability and enforcement. That is the real challenge.
Jackie Doyle-Price
Q
Thomas Mayne: Yes.
Professor Heathershaw: Yes, I would agree with that statement entirely.
Alison Thewliss
Q
Thomas Mayne: I think so. Where do you cut it off? It certainly should if there have been large-scale, egregious actions. Oliver mentioned somebody registering companies in the name of a dead person, and I found an example of that in an investigation years ago. People should be penalised for really fraudulent misuse and prevented from registering companies again in the future.
Floating Offshore Wind Projects
Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Jackie Doyle-Price)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I thank you for making sure that I behaved in an orderly way at the beginning of the debate; I am very grateful. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) for securing the debate, and all Members who have taken part.
As the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) just said, this has been a very sensible debate. I would say it has been a very mature debate in which we have reflected on what needs to be done to properly take advantage of the huge opportunities that we have around this island for floating offshore wind, and I want to highlight some of the contributions that we have heard. There was an absolutely fantastic advertising pitch for Aberavon from the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), and I heard about the freeport application from both his representations and those of my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire. Obviously, that is not a decision for me, but from the agenda that they both articulated, it seems to tick all the boxes for what we are expecting from freeports. I say that as a former chair of the maritime and ports all-party parliamentary group, which has been involved in many of the bids. I wish them all well with the application, which is a competitive one.
At the heart of it, both the hon. Member for Aberavon and my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire articulated a clear vision for what freeport status would do for the bid—a clear vision based on a port that is based on energy. Frankly, what better objective could we have in these times, when energy security is such a challenge? It is great to see such imagination and, more to the point, such a practical application of policy to fix a significant strategic problem. We will wait and see.
I was very struck by what the hon. Member for Aberavon said about British ownership of these industries. As a Minister in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, this is something that I reflect on very often. Yes, we are an open, free-trading nation and open to inward investment, but we also need to recognise that maximising those opportunities for this country means that we have to be very careful about making sure that we are doing everything we can to encourage homegrown investment. We have seen too often that some of these investments are made by state-owned overseas players, which is something to reflect on.
We heard from the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill) and the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn) about the net contribution that Scotland can make in this area, and long may that continue. I will take away the points about what that means in terms of compensation.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) reflected on the environmental implications. As we realise the benefits of floating offshore wind, we absolutely have to address the environmental consequences. We in Government have to look at all this in a very joined-up way, and sometimes the silo culture does not necessarily make for the best decision making, but laying cables once is sensible and cheaper. A more strategic approach might be necessary and the way to go.
I will reflect on the reference to investment zones by my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory). Of course, we are in a position whereby investment zones are a vehicle for securing the investment needed to achieve the kind of supporting infrastructure that we need if we are to properly exploit floating offshore wind. This is going to be a significant industry, and the sector could give a completely new lease of life to the port infrastructure at Port Talbot and Milford Haven. We must make sure that we are properly looking at everything, rather than just at what we can do to exploit new energy sources. It is about what floating offshore wind can do to contribute to economic regeneration and development more widely.
We have heard a great deal, and the Government would completely agree that renewable energy is central to the UK’s decarbonisation and economic growth, with floating offshore wind remaining a part. I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire referred to it as FLOW. I absolutely hate acronyms, but it just so happens that this one conveys exactly what we are talking about and is a very good description of floating offshore wind, which is a bit of a mouthful. It provides secure, low-cost and domestically generated electricity, and reduces our dependence on imports from overseas—there is no better lesson than the one we have learned over the past year—so what is not to like? It is absolutely essential that the Government get behind this source.
Offshore wind generates 11% of our electricity, and through the development of floating offshore wind, that figure will grow. As we have heard, we can be proud that the UK is already a world leader in offshore wind deployment. We have the most installed capacity in Europe, and we currently generate enough to power nearly 10 million homes. As I mentioned, it also has an important role to play in delivering the Government’s growth agenda by generating jobs and attracting significant private investment. According to the WindEurope trade association, the UK attracted investment worth €56 billion over the past decade, making it the biggest offshore wind market in Europe for capital spending commitments.
The Government intend to build on that success through the ambitions set out in the British energy security strategy for developing up to 50 GW of offshore wind by 2030, of which 5 GW will be from floating offshore wind. We estimate that will bring in £25 billion to £32 billion of private investment to the UK, and we expect it to support about 90,000 jobs by 2030. Those jobs will mainly be in coastal communities, which are in most need of job creation as they have traditionally been more reliant on heavy, high-carbon industry.
On that point, I was struck by what my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire said. We often talk about those communities as if their greatest days were in the past, but they are not; they are in the future. If we get our offering right for these new industries, those communities can be the powerhouses they were at the time of the industrial revolution. We should not be modest in our ambitions. This is a great country, and we need to make the best of our assets. We really need to put our shoulder to the wheel for this sector.
Stephen Kinnock
All hon. Members raised concerns about the national grid, and landing and integrating power. Can the Minister say something about what action the Government are taking to resolve that issue?
Jackie Doyle-Price
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman intervened, because that is the one thing I was really tackling in my head. I really worry about the grid’s ability to respond to the demands we are making of it through our transition to renewables. We collectively need to give it enough support and oomph to make sure it delivers that. I am acutely aware of companies that have been doing the right thing by investing in renewables, but then have difficulties finding connections to the grid. It is a bit chicken and egg: if we are to exploit offshore wind, we must ensure that the grid connections are there and are effective, not least because otherwise we lose so much in terms of transition.
The Government are working with Ofgem and the National Grid Electricity System Operator to bring forward a series of strategic network designs to determine what the required infrastructure will be to support our net zero targets. A holistic network design was published in July, which includes the 1.5 GW Mona project off the north Wales coast, and an indicative network design for floating wind in the Celtic sea with a connection to Pembroke dock. It is being planned for, but we collectively need to ensure we execute that in order to realise the benefits as soon as possible. I will invite the responsible Minister to write to the hon. Gentleman fully about that, because it is a very real concern, given our experience with renewable energy in the past.
As I said, we recognise the potential of floating wind technology playing a key role in our energy mix as we move towards net zero. The floating wind deployments we have identified in Scotland and the Celtic sea represent a major development opportunity for the sector, which will create major employment opportunities.
Our support for floating offshore wind is demonstrated by the floating wind pipeline being supported in the previous contract for difference allocation round with a ring-fenced budget. That resulted in the first ever contract for difference-supported floating wind project, the 32 MW TwinHub project in Hayle, Cornwall. My Department has also joined the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult’s floating offshore wind centre of excellence. We are providing the centre with £2 million over four years and strengthening its mission to accelerate innovation in the UK’s floating wind sector. I hope that will put us in a prime position to capitalise on a growing export market as other countries look to use this technology. Our pipeline project is growing. This year’s ScotWind seabed leasing round for Scottish waters resulted in 28 GW of new projects, of which 18 are floating wind projects.
We have heard much reference to the role of the Crown Estate. As we speak, Crown Estate Scotland is running a leasing round for innovation projects to decarbonise, which could result in another 6 GW. There are more than 400 MW of floating pathfinder projects already leased in the Celtic sea next year. The Crown Estate will run its Celtic sea floating leasing round, which will bring forward 4 GW of this innovative technology in the waters around south west England and south Wales. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire said, there is potential for a further 20 GW of floating wind by 2045. That is transformational in terms of decarbonisation, and we must ensure we do what we can to secure it.
Our fixed-bottom pipeline is also strong, and we have 12.7 GW already operational, with a further 6.8 GW under construction and due to come on line by the mid-2020s. The world’s largest wind farm, Hornsea 2, became operational off the Yorkshire coast this summer, and offshore construction has already started on Dogger Bank, which will eventually take over Hornsea 2’s mantle as the world’s largest wind farm.
However, it is important that we do not rest on our laurels. This summer, the Government published results of the latest allocation round of contracts for difference. This year’s auction was by far the most successful yet, at a combined capacity of almost 7 GW. The successful offshore wind projects represent a significant step towards meeting our increased 2030 ambitions. Those projects are now finalising procurement and construction plans.
I am grateful to all hon. Members who contributed to the debate. This is just the start, and I look forward to continuing the dialogue to ensure that we realise the capability of floating offshore wind to contribute to our energy mix. I wish everybody well with the projects that they are supporting.
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy: Departmental Spending
Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
We in this House are very good at talking about what is going wrong, and talking this country down, but for many of our workers the last few months of dealing with covid have been business as usual. I thank all those workers who have carried on going to work and serving us in our shops. In particular, I thank my constituents who work in the ports and logistics sector, and who carry on unloading those ships and ensuring that our supermarkets are stocked.
As we move out of this crisis, it is important that we do so in a spirit of ambition and positivity, because that is what will get us through it. It will not be the Government; it will be the energy and commitment of all our entrepreneurs and workers, who will seize those opportunities if we give them leadership and encouragement. As an example, just in the past couple of months we have opened a brand new port facility at Tilbury in my constituency. We have seen the opportunities that will be created by Brexit, and invested in them. We got planning permission one year ago, and one year later a £250 million investment has been made, creating new jobs and taking advantage of those opportunities. Take an example from south Essex’s competitive and entrepreneurial spirit, and we will get out of this. It is the job of Government to ensure that they do not get in the way of that.
I would like to raise two points with the Minister. First, we need to find lots of money to pay for what we have invested to get us out of this crisis, but we must ensure that we continue with a competitive taxation system. BEIS needs to act as that entrepreneurial champion and not be a regulator, and it was with some dismay that I heard that 42 pages of regulation were given to hairdressers to help them reopen. We must do much better than that.
I also wish to associate my voice with those who have already called for the reopening of the beauty industry. It has been disappointing to hear the reaction of fellow Members of Parliament when that issue has been raised in the past. Is that because those business are run by women who employ women? I sincerely hope not, but it certainly looks like that to the public. Beauty is a major industry, and if people want our hotels to reopen and be profitable and sustainable, they must also open their spas. This is not just about nail bars; the beauty industry offers a whole range of treatments. More to the point, with office workers still staying at home, people need a reason to go to the high street and continue that footfall in shops. I encourage the Minister to look favourably on that sector.
The Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth (Kwasi Kwarteng)
It is a pleasure to respond to this excellent debate, and I commend all hon. Members who have spoken for their thoughtful contributions. In particular, I thank the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) for opening the debate.
I will deal first with the series of questions posed by the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook). His first question was about the energy White Paper, which we fully expect to be published this year. He will understand that after the new Government took office in July last year, we had the summer recess, followed by the Prorogation debate, debates about the election, then the general election, the Budget and then covid. There were substantial reasons—they are regrettable, I accept—why the White Paper was delayed. We fully expect it to be published this autumn.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the decarbonisation of heat. I refer him to the fact that we have a heat in buildings strategy, which will outline the policies clearly and simply. There is certainly a great deal of movement in that area.
The hon. Gentleman said that there are lofty ambitions for day-to-day spending, and suggested that our spending is perhaps more carbon-emitting than it should be. We have actually had great success on the carbon emissions front, particularly in electricity generation. He will know that in 2010, when I entered in the House—he entered in 2015—offshore wind seemed like a fantasy, but in 10 years we have massively ramped up capacity. People say flippantly, “Oh, well, the cost is £39.50 per MWh”—the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) said that—but that did not just happen by accident. It was a serious attempt by a serious Government to construct an auction—a CfD round—and it managed to drive down costs. It was led by policy and evidence. It has been very successful and is admired throughout the world. That is an example of BEIS delivering substantial change and innovation on carbon emissions reduction and the climate change debate.
On the open-cast coal mine that the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich mentioned, that was a difficult question that involved the local community and consideration of the amounts of coal and jobs. He will accept that, as far as the coal ambition is concerned, the initial date for removing coal entirely from the electricity generating network was 2025, but we will deliver it a year in advance. How often is a Government anywhere in the world able to say in a parliamentary assembly such as this, “We are going to do better than our target”? That is another area where he is on very shaky ground.
Jackie Doyle-Price
The fact of the matter is that there are industrial processes that still require coal for generation. Is it not better that we mine coal in this country, rather than ship it from Siberia and Australia?
Kwasi Kwarteng
That may well be the case, but I think taking coal off the electricity generating system—the power generation network—is historically one of the most significant things that this country has done. If we look back in our own lifetimes, we see that coal and industrial questions relating to it were a dominant part of industrial and political debate only 20, 30 or 40 years ago, but in 2024 we hope to remove coal entirely from electricity generation. That is a huge success. We typically do not get the credit we would like in this House, but that is a significant achievement.
I want to talk briefly about some of the broader questions relating to this debate. It would be invidious of me to single out individual speeches, as there were so many good ones, but there are one or two areas where I want to reconfirm Government policy and give a good account of what we have achieved.
Many of the speeches I heard as I sat on the Treasury Bench were understandably focused on the Government’s response to the covid-19 outbreak. At the start of the crisis, the Government made it perfectly clear that we would do whatever it took to support our businesses and economy, and we have substantially delivered on that. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun mentioned the £330 billion commitment from the Treasury and said that it is an example of failure because the amount of debt—the loans that we have given—is a fraction of that, but of course the £330 billion also includes the furlough scheme, which was not in the form of a loan. It was the Government intervening and paying wages. It was a huge intervention, and it had nothing to do with loans. I am sure the hon. Gentleman understands that. This has been a cross-Government effort, and we in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy have played our part in delivering a range of Government-backed finance schemes.
Let me re-enumerate those schemes: the coronavirus business interruption loans scheme, the bounce back loans, the coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme, and the future fund, which is an equity-to-debt scheme. As of this week, £45 billion-worth of loans have been approved through those schemes, backed largely by Government guarantees.