Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill

Kevan Jones Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I will give way shortly, but first I will make some progress, if I may.

This will be about hurting Putin and his vicious regime, which has robbed the Russian people of their chance for democracy, peace and prosperity—not only that, but even their own wealth has been used and abused by these kleptocrats and oligarchs. The reforms in the Bill will give us greater power and more information to identify and investigate the illicit wealth of Russian criminals, their allies and their proxies. The new property register will have an immediate effect, dissuading those intending to buy UK property with illicit funds. Oligarchs could be slapped with an unexplained wealth order—one of the tools that we will have at our disposal—and the Treasury will be better able to act when financial sanctions are breached. We are implementing the most severe package of sanctions ever imposed on Russia or on any major economy.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady spoke about unexplained wealth orders. Does she have a commitment from the Treasury to ensure that the National Crime Agency and other agencies that deal with those orders are well financed?

[Priti Patel]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point; I am pretty certain that he has raised several times in this House the need for legal protections, finance and an approach that gives law enforcement the tools it needs. The Bill is doing that, and we are acting not only through legislation, but through the wider way we help agencies and law enforcement to function, operate and go after those who have been undermining our system.

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[Alison Thewliss]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct to point that out. This money has been around the world many times and we may never ever find out where it has come from, but we could take further action to stop it coming through bank accounts in this country, helped by lawyers and accountants in this country, and the Bill does not go far enough to deal with the people who are facilitating this economic crime.

On the register of overseas entities, Members will know that I sat on the Joint Committee with the Lords on the draft Registration of Overseas Entities Bill, because I have mentioned it several times before. I cannot understand why it took so long before we had this legislation coming before us today—and in such haste, I should say. Introducing the registration of overseas entities is intended to shed light on the individuals behind overseas companies that control property in the UK, and that is welcome, but again it is too late. The proposals were discussed in detail in that scrutiny Committee, and I still do not understand—I would like some kind of explanation from the Minister, if he would stop chatting—why the Government twiddled their thumbs for four years instead of getting on with implementing such legislation.

I should note that the Scottish Government have moved on this. The register of persons holding a controlled interest in land in Scotland will come into effect and start operating, by taking names on the register, on 1 April. I seek some information from Ministers about what exactly will be the interaction between this register of property in Scotland, which includes overseas entities, and the provisions they are trying to pass today. It has been remarked by a number of organisations that the Scottish register will actually have transparency at its heart and has better transparency than what Ministers are proposing with their register. I would ask that they go to that higher level, rather than ask Scotland to level down on what we are putting on the register of persons holding a controlled interest in land.

Transparency International has estimated that £6.7 billion of questionable funds has been invested in UK property since 2016, of which at least £1.5 billion-worth has been bought by Russians accused of corruption or links to the Kremlin. When we take into account the secret nature of these transactions and how hard it is to get the actual information, the real figure is likely to be much higher.

The Bill as it stands will give the owners of about 95,000 foreign-owned properties six months to reveal their identities. I am glad that the Government have cut that back from the original 18 months they proposed in the draft Bill, but as things stand six months gives people an awful long time to move their money, down what Oliver Bullough calls the “Moneyland tunnel”, to hide those assets and to spirit them away to where they cannot be seen and cannot be found. Such secret jurisdictions will be used by the people who want to do this.

I would like to know from the Minister whether this register will be to the same standards as the Companies House register just now, because the Companies House register is basically full of guff. I have said this many times, but someone can register a company to “Anytown, Anyplace”. I could register one in the Minister’s name if I wanted to, and if I did not give any indication that I had done that, I would get away with it scot-free. The Minister really needs to tell the House what the standards of registration for these companies will be.

Our new clause 4 suggests that Companies House should be an anti-money laundering body, and it should use the Government’s Verify scheme to make sure that a person is a real person when they register a company at Companies House. I want to know what this register of overseas entities is going to look like and how we can make sure that the data put in will be maintained.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does the hon. Lady agree that full transparency at Companies House of who owns companies is in everyone’s interests? It was only because of the investigation undertaken by Caroline Wheeler of The Sunday Times that we discovered that Viktor Fedotov was one of the beneficial owners of Aquind, a company that has given huge sums of money to individuals in this House as donations. Does the hon. Lady think it would perhaps have helped some of those individuals decide whether to accept that money if they had known that Fedotov was an owner, especially because of his track record of alleged corruption in the Transneft gas pipeline deal?

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[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I too welcome the Bill, but it angers and saddens me that it has taken the invasion of a European sovereign nation, and the fact that women and children in Ukraine are being bombed as we speak, to bring it forward.

We have heard the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) say that this Bill is about closing “loopholes”. No, it is not. This situation is because of a choice that was made. My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) said that action should have been taken earlier, and it should have been. The ISC, the Committee I sit on, said in its annual report of 2019-2021 that

“the extent of Russian influence in the UK is very clear—the previous Committee found it to be ‘the new normal’, as successive Governments have welcomed the Russian oligarchy with open arms. As a result, there are a lot of Russians with very close links to Putin who are well integrated into the UK business, political and social scene… Yet…few, if any, questions have been asked regarding the provenance of their considerable wealth and this ‘open door’ approach provided ideal mechanisms by which illicit finance could be recycled through the London ‘laundromat’”.

This situation has not happened by accident; it has happened because we have had a Government who have turned a blind eye to what is going on. It now comes as a great shock to some people that we are going to have to legislate. The Prime Minister says we are going to bring in the toughest sanctions against oligarchs, and the hon. Member for Meriden (Saqib Bhatti) has repeated that we will have the toughest rules in the world. No, we will not, because this Bill will not do that. We will have another economic crime Bill to bring in further legislation, but this issue has been around for years and this Government have turned a blind eye to it. It is no good crying crocodile tears for the people of Ukraine and saying that we are going to react now, when we could have reacted years ago and this Government took a political choice not to.

As the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) said, this is also about having the right culture of enforcement, which we do not have. The hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) is correct that it is not just about Russian oligarchs; it is about cleaning up the entire system. For the past 10 years, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and I have been campaigning on landfill tax fraud—another area that has been completely ignored. This Government have had a light touch on economic crime.

The security implications of the money that is around Putin were well documented in the ISC’s Russia report. All I will say—because I cannot say any more—is that this is further well documented in evidence in the secret annex, which will not be published, quite rightly, for security reasons. The Government say, “We don’t know who to go after; we don’t know what the actual extent is”, but they do.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) said, as part of the will to have enforcement, we must ensure that any of the measures in the Bill are properly financed. It is no good the National Crime Agency taking a knife to a gunfight when going up against some of these individuals. That is exactly how it has been described to me by some of the individuals who work for the National Crime Agency. When I asked the Home Secretary whether she had extra resources for the NCA to implement these measures, she ducked and weaved around the answer. Without that, these measures will not be effective.

If we want a lasting testimony to do something really good and ensure that the people now suffering in Ukraine know that we are doing everything we possibly can—not the glib words of the Prime Minister, which we know are just soundbites that do not stand up to a great deal of scrutiny—then we need to ensure we bring in this Bill and very quickly bring in any other provisions to stop this illicit finance. That not only will have an effect in this area but—I agree with the hon. Member for Amber Valley on this—will clean up this country, and that is long been overdue.

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[Jonathan Reynolds]

The right hon. Member pre-empts my comments about the timescale for implementation and the worries relating to that, and there have been some very interesting and valid speeches from all sides pointing out such dangers.

However, I want to address the fact—we have not actually heard about it in the debate today, such is the seriousness of the issues—that there is, and we should acknowledge this, an argument against the transparency that all of us are seeking. It is that there are some celebrities or people of high net worth who will cite concerns about privacy in relation to this measure. They would say that they are worried there will be potential risks to them from this register coming into effect.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

On transparency, and I raised this with the Home Secretary when she was here, there is the issue of Companies House. It was only because of Caroline Wheeler from The Sunday Times that we actually found out who the other shareholder is in Aquind, a company that has donated tens of thousands of pounds to individual Members of this House. That was because, strangely enough, the Luxembourg register is more open than ours. Does my hon. Friend think that, if Members wish to accept donations, this would be helpful to them, because at least they could then discover where the money actually came from originally?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

My right hon. Friend’s point about donations is absolutely well made. His earlier point was about how some of the things we are seeking to address with this legislation we know about because of whistleblowers and investigative journalists. It is only because of them that we have been able to get some sense of the scale of the problem, and that is what should worry us, because we have to decide, as British Members of Parliament, about the proportionality of the concerns about this. I would ask those people who have such concerns to understand that the lack of transparency in the UK, as things currently operate, does not just open us up to risks of criminal activity, but is now a threat to our national security.

Like many people, I once believed that, as countries developed and became wealthier, that created an irresistible pressure for political reforms—for strong institutions, independent courts and the rule of law—but the fact is that that has not happened in many parts of the world. We are all too familiar with stories of people who have looted the national wealth of their countries, and then stashed those assets safely here in the west. There are examples from Nigeria, Kenya, Indonesia, China, Afghanistan, Russia and many others, and I would like to thank Transparency International for its campaigning and advocacy on these matters. Ukraine itself was once a major victim of this under the corrupt presidency of Viktor Yanukovych. Such corruption often leaves behind countries that are poor and dysfunctional, where the state is starved of the resources and legitimacy it needs to function properly, and where millions are denied the path to prosperity that they deserve. In that space, extremism and terrorism can thrive, so we simply cannot allow this to go on.

Tackling this properly clearly requires international co-operation, but when it comes to registers of beneficial ownership, that co-operation does now exist. That is why there is clear consensus on this happening in relation to property in the UK. This debate has shown that the principal difference of view between ourselves and the Government, which we will obviously discuss in Committee, is what length of time is reasonable to give people to register the beneficial ownership of the near 100,000 properties that will be affected. I think people know that we want 28 days. The Government originally proposed 18 months, and I do acknowledge that they have moved some way in reducing that to six months. I also acknowledge that this is a significant change for some people in relation to their property rights.

However, I would say that this change was announced in 2016 by David Cameron. The pre-legislative scrutiny took place in 2018, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) outlined some of the history of that. So this change has been a long time coming, and people have known it was coming. It is not really the 28-day implementation period we are seeking, but the six years and 28 days that that adds up to. That is why I believe it is reasonable, proportionate and necessary to ask the Government to act at speed.

The second part of the Bill proposes changes to unexplained wealth orders. I raised the problems with these orders when we had the urgent question. I am pleased to see them included as part of this Bill, and I again acknowledge that the Government have already accepted several Labour amendments on this matter. The problems with these orders relate to issues with implementation that have occurred in the courts, so it is clearly good to see those addressed. However, many Members went further in their speeches because there are concerns, because of the way that Russia operated in the 1990s, that it can be hard to use unexplained wealth orders to take the action required now. Several Members have proposed a new set of powers that could freeze relevant assets while cases are made, and again we can deal with those amendments in Committee, but I am sympathetic to the arguments put forward.

The third part of the Bill relates to sanctions and their application. People are asking us as Members of Parliament why those who have been subject to sanction by the US and the EU are not currently sanctioned by the UK. The debate today recognises that the regime laid out in the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 is not sufficient. There is clearly a widespread desire to see this improved, and proposals in this area are welcome. However, I would also say, separate to this, that there are the issues of resources and enforcement. My right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) made that point in detail. My understanding is that, as a country, we are under-powered in the resources and capacity we devote to this. Just last month, the former Leader of the House—now the Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency —said he wanted to cut 65,000 civil servants over the next three years. However, this is a clear example of an area where we need more capacity, as well as the right legal regime, to do what is required. The seriousness of these matters means that the Government must devote the resources required to do that.