Criminal Finances Bill

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 9th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the Government for introducing this Bill. I support it. The Government have led on tackling corruption since the then Prime Minister set the issue of tax transparency at the heart of his G8 summit in 2013. He should also be thanked for hosting the anti-corruption summit in May last year. The Bill follows this good record and takes some further welcome steps to try to tackle corruption. The unexplained wealth orders will provide stronger powers for UK law enforcement to seize and repatriate the proceeds of grand corruption. The new corporate offences of failure to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion should be particularly praised because they will apply all over the world. I hope that in due course these offences will apply to all economic crime.

As bishops, we often travel to our linked dioceses all over the world. The global church is present in many developing countries, where corruption can often be a real problem. Some estimates say, as we have heard, that around $1 trillion annually leaves the developing world in illicit financial flows. That is a scandal. The secrecy enabled by tax havens across the world costs developing countries at least $100 billion a year, according to the UN. Along with other noble Lords, I press the Government to go further and faster in this area for the sake of the very poorest. Until the UK Government go further in tackling the secrecy that is still enabled by UK tax havens, we cannot claim to be doing all we can to tackle corruption. As we have heard, Ministers have made some progress in recent years in getting overseas territories and Crown dependencies to list who owns which company within their jurisdiction, but unless these registers are published—as the UK’s now is—people in developing countries, who are losing out the most, will never be able to see where their money is going.

Christian Aid and other charities have campaigned vigorously on these themes over a number of years. They tell me that a relative of one African president took and spent $38 million of his country’s money on a private jet using an anonymous company in the British Virgin Islands, according to the case against him made by the US Department of Justice. Without a public central register of beneficial ownership in the British Virgin Islands, we would not know what that company is or who benefits from it, and we would have no guarantee that UK law enforcement would be making the right request to get the information needed. Public registers of beneficial ownership will put this information out into the open, and people in developing countries will be able to see the information that is important and relevant to them, which should be their right.

I urge Ministers and others to aim still higher. We should aim to have public registers of beneficial ownership in the UK’s overseas territories, at the same time as getting the private registers in place by June. I shall be supporting noble Lords who try to use this Bill to put in place a timeline for when we will have that transparency.

I urge all noble Lords to reflect on the scale of the problem. Tax havens are costing developing countries at least $100 billion a year, according to the UN. I read a recent statistic that said that around one-third of rich Africans’ wealth is currently held in tax havens. If this money was held in Africa and taxed properly we would be able to employ enough teachers to educate every child on the continent. That is the scale of the problem we are looking at here and the scale of the good that can yet be done. I welcome this Bill and urge Ministers to act while the Bill is in the House of Lords to ensure that these issues are further addressed in this legislation.

Islam

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I agree with my noble friend. This Government, and indeed the previous coalition Government, have built on the previous opposition Governments’ work in bringing communities together. It is about fighting hate in every guise in which it is found. I am therefore delighted that in October the Prime Minister himself announced—I am sure many noble Lords followed it—that, from April 2016, along with anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim crime will be recorded as a specific hate crime by all 43 police forces across England and Wales.

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, I strongly agree with the question raised by the previous speaker and the Minister’s reply. Does the Minister agree that encouraging education and dialogue across a broad front should be a key part of our strategy, including: encouraging relationships not only between the faith communities but between all the faith communities and civil society; encouraging agencies such as the Islamic Society of Britain—which does such powerful good work in education in schools and other areas; raising the levels of religious literacy at all levels; further analysis of why people of faith do, in a minority of cases, resort to violence; and building on the excellent work of the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, in his recent book Not in God’s Name?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The right reverend Prelate raises a very important issue about education. I think that education is the cornerstone of all progressive societies. The Near Neighbours scheme, for example, run by the Church of England, is a great scheme which brings communities together, irrespective of faith and denomination, to ensure that good and sensible values—the prevailing values; we often talk about British values but ultimately they are the human values we all share—prevail in a modern, progressive Britain.