Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill (Eighth sitting)

Debate between Margaret Hodge and James Daly

Committee stage
Thursday 3rd November 2022 Public Bill Committees

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a practising solicitor and a partner in a firm of solicitors. The right hon. Lady has essentially said that everybody involved in the legal sector and financial advisers are potentially dishonest. They absolutely are not. The vast amount of people involved in the sector are honest, decent people who have a lot of regulation and try their damnedest to abide by all of it. The picture that the right hon. Lady paints is not correct.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

That is not what I said. The hon. Gentleman may have chosen to interpret it that way—

[James Daly]

You said we cannot trust people in the sector.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

No, I did not. I said that none of the professions has sufficient supervisory or regulatory capabilities, policies or practices in place to pull out the bad apples. I have nowhere ever stated that that applies to everyone, but I hope the hon. Gentleman agrees that the extent of people setting up shell companies —we are talking largely about shell companies—as vehicles to move illicit finance, whether through drugs, kleptocrats or people trafficking, is shocking.

Let me tell the hon. Gentleman my most egregious story, which has been mentioned—the Savaro story. We had this terrible explosion in Lebanon, with hundreds of people killed and lots of property destroyed. We were told that it was fertiliser held in the warehouse that was going to Mozambique. A couple of months after the explosion, I was rung up by a Reuters journalist with whom I have worked down the years, who said, “Did you know it was a UK limited company—Savaro Ltd?” He went on to say that not only was it a UK limited company, but, interestingly enough, it had told HMRC it was dormant, so it had not filled in its tax returns. It was registered in the name of a company service provider, a woman who lived in Cyprus. There were two lies in the system: a lie about the company service provider, and lying to HMRC.

I gave the usual quote and was then overwhelmed by people from Lebanon contacting me, including the Bar Association, all of whom were trying to find out the origins of what had happened. It then emerged that three Ukrainian Syrians—this was before the Ukrainian war—were the real owners. There was no way the fertiliser was going to be used in Mozambique; it was going to Assad to drop as barrel bombs on the civilian population of Syria. That is the sort of shocking outcome that comes from lack of proper regulatory control.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Margaret Hodge and James Daly

Committee stage
Thursday 27th October 2022 Public Bill Committees

[James Daly]

Q The reason I ask is that the example was given on Tuesday of a chip shop in Barnsley—great town that it is—has 50 legal entities registered to it. There are thousands of examples all over the country. It would take one investigator months to investigate the information for every separate legal structure attached to that chip shop. What do you feel about that, Ms Berry?

Elspeth Berry: There will always be a problem, but that does not mean we should not tackle it and it does not mean that we cannot tackle it, and I appreciate that the Bill is attempting to tackle it. All of the things it is trying to do are good, but almost all of them could be significantly improved. We have to deter the wrongdoers. We have to stop looking as though this is a good jurisdiction to do this in. For example, there have been arguments about the fees. It is generally accepted that they should go up, and if your business plan cannot cope with £100 or £500, what kind of businesses are being set up here?

If we are not checking the identity of shareholders and applying PSC legislation to partners, there are still so many loopholes. It is not that there is something there that would be a sanction if they ever caught you—we know this from police and crime; if people think there is only a vanishingly small chance of anyone ever noticing, it is worth taking the risk. I suppose that brings us back to the point about the registrar’s powers, which are great, but they are not duties in most cases. How will we know if she has done it, or what she can reasonably do to minimise the risks of various things—to check information?

One of the things we need is a clear database of things that are red flags—things that Transparency International and lots of journalists have identified that the registrar should be looking for, some of which the legislation still allows, such as things like overseas registries and multiple formations, and the use of company service providers. The problems with those were talked about during the earlier session, and the Bill is not going to entirely resolve those, if at all. If we can tighten down on a lot of those, we will reduce—never eliminate, but reduce—the amount of wrongdoing that is here because of problems we have either created or left in our laws.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

Q I very much take your point, and I hope some of the amendments we put in address what you said about wanting to tighten up on the proactive role of Companies House.

I wanted to ask about shareholders and then about the disappearance of limited companies if they dissolve. I agree that shareholder information is really important—Usmanov brought that home to me. When we sanctioned Usmanov, he just gave everything to one of his daughters or something—anyway, it disappeared into other people’s hands. Can you explain a little what we need to do on shareholder information? At the moment, there is a 25% shareholding barrier. Should that be reduced to 5% or 10%? That is my question.

Then, on limited partnerships disappearing, that was brought home to me very much as a result of the terrible incident in Lebanon—the explosion in Lebanon. It was found that a British-owned company was behind that, with a beneficial owner in Cyprus who happened to be a corporate service provider. It then turned out that it was a nasty situation where the actual owners were some Syrians, and the fertiliser was not going anywhere near Mozambique—which was where it was meant for—but was being used for barrel bombs to kill Syrian citizens. The moment that happened, they tried to dissolve the company and get it to disappear, and obviously in that area of wrongdoing, we need to hang on to any knowledge that we have.

This is for both of you: what amendments do you think are necessary to enable us to stop people dissolving companies and to force information out, so that where there has been that terrible terrorist wrongdoing, we can pursue the wrongdoers? That said, I take the view that a lot of what we are trying to do is prevent these things from happening in future.

Elspeth Berry: On the PSC point, a reduced percentage would be a vast improvement, but I think a zero percentage could be considered. You can have a lot of influence in all sorts of ways while not necessarily hitting those targets, because you are connected with somebody else in a way that we do not catch through the legislation. But I certainly think that a reduction would be a big improvement to try and catch more people who are de facto PSCs, but not in law.

On the limited partnerships point, there are a lot of things we could do. The Bill makes a start in doing those, but given that a lot of this started with the limited partnerships consultations, I am slightly concerned that they got put aside because it was a case of, “Here comes all the corporate stuff,” and that is where all the money and excitement is. There is this small area of limited partnerships where there is a strong lobby for those people dealing with limited partnerships for particular purposes—quite legitimately—who do not necessarily want this to be made too difficult, but we get things like the restrictions on corporate partners not being applied to LPs. I had to read the provisions several times. I dread explaining them to my students, because of the difficulty in trying to get at who owns limited partnerships and who is in control of what is going on in them.

That level of “corporate partner on corporate partner on corporate partner” exists, and we know it is a problem. It is going to continue, depending on what we do with LLPs, and it is a big problem that they are just not in the Bill at all. It is like, “Oh, well, we’ll just apply the legislation to them later,” but which bit of the legislation? The corporate bit? The partnership bit? LLPs have a history of having the bits they want—the nice bits of corporate law and the nice bits of partnership law. Things can get missed because we think, “We have done the big task with the Bill.” PSCs can be applied to partnerships; they haven’t been here, and there is an assertion that it is not possible legally, but as a lawyer I would say that that is not correct.

You even have a provision here saying that people who have been disqualified under the company directors disqualification legislation can still act as limited partners. Limited partners have a limited role by definition if they are behaving properly—of course, they may not be—but even if they are behaving properly, a limited role is not no role for someone who has actually been disqualified from acting as a company director.

Chris Taggart: To pick up on an earlier question, the best information sharing is going to be information sharing in public. A lot of the great work that was done on people after the invasion of Ukraine was done using public domain information. There is a risk to lying in public. The fact that criminals will lie is also an opportunity to catch them out, because it is quite hard to lie consistently.

We get people all the time saying, “We don’t want our information to be on OpenCorporates”—even though it has come directly from Companies House and other places—“I don’t want people to know that my last two companies went bust,” “I used to have a company running a brothel in Germany, and I don’t want my new employees to know that” or, “I don’t want people to know that I am running a company on the side or working for someone else.” There is a cross-over here with data usage. When something is in the public domain, it needs to be functionally public. “Functionally public” means that you can use it and reuse it, and have it as data so that you can combine it with other datasets.

The shareholding data is so important, not just in and of itself, but because it allows you to ask, “Wait a minute. How is that happening with that?” Having it as data allows you to do that programmatically so that you can see trends.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Margaret Hodge and James Daly

Thursday 27th October 2022 Public Bill Committees

[James Daly]

That is very helpful. Thank you.

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

Q ICAEW represents what proportion of the accountancy profession, do you reckon?

Angela Foyle: I do not know the proportion, but there are about a hundred and something thousand members.

Mike Miller: Yes, about 110,000 members. I am not sure of the proportion.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Daly]

Q So such a process—light-touch regulation at its finest—is certainly open to fraudulent activities.

Peter Swabey: I think it is fair to say that at the moment it is nothing like as secure as any of us would like it to be, and the Bill is a big step forward in tightening that up. I would still like to see it go further in some ways.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

Q It is the beneficial ownership that is revealed to Companies House, not necessarily even all the directors, as I understand it. The way you are talking, you obviously deal with big companies. The whole purpose, which I think we all share across the room, is that we want SMEs and the growth of new companies. The idea that every SME will have a company secretary is not really a viable alternative. That means it is really important that we can have faith in the company service providers, who are the people who check the data. Given the way the Bill is constructed, do you think you would have such faith, in particular given all we know from the Panama leaks onwards?

Peter Swabey: It is really important to make sure that the hoops through which those authorised company service providers go before they become authorised are significant, to make sure that we can have confidence in that.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Daly]

Q Just in general, using the banks as an example, should we be looking to put in the Bill requirements for them to play their part in the partnership to tackle money laundering?

Professor Jason Sharman: Again, banks have had these requirements to establish the beneficial owners for a while. I think this is good, but it is the enforcement that is key there.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

Q Following on from that, I completely take the point about enforcement, but would a failure to prevent power make any difference, assuming it was enforced?

Professor Jason Sharman: I probably differ from many of the other people who have spoken in that I am not a fan of failure to prevent. I think that the goal of these laws is to make life hard for bad people without making life hard for good people at the same time. To the extent that you have really onerous regulation or weaken the presumption of innocence, that is something of an own goal or collateral damage. Before you put people in jail, you should be pretty serious about it. There should be a mental intention there—a mens rea.

I am not really comfortable with the strict liability. There is strict liability in anti-bribery, which means I have to do pointless anti-bribery training every year for the University of Cambridge. It does not do me any good and it does not stop corruption, but it is one of the things that Cambridge feels it has to do because of the strict liability. Again, it is a cost to society that is not included in legislation or in regulatory impact assessments.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Margaret Hodge and James Daly

Committee stage
Thursday 27th October 2022 Public Bill Committees

[James Daly]

That is very helpful. Thank you.

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

Q ICAEW represents what proportion of the accountancy profession, do you reckon?

Angela Foyle: I do not know the proportion, but there are about a hundred and something thousand members.

Mike Miller: Yes, about 110,000 members. I am not sure of the proportion.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Daly]

Q So such a process—light-touch regulation at its finest—is certainly open to fraudulent activities.

Peter Swabey: I think it is fair to say that at the moment it is nothing like as secure as any of us would like it to be, and the Bill is a big step forward in tightening that up. I would still like to see it go further in some ways.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

Q It is the beneficial ownership that is revealed to Companies House, not necessarily even all the directors, as I understand it. The way you are talking, you obviously deal with big companies. The whole purpose, which I think we all share across the room, is that we want SMEs and the growth of new companies. The idea that every SME will have a company secretary is not really a viable alternative. That means it is really important that we can have faith in the company service providers, who are the people who check the data. Given the way the Bill is constructed, do you think you would have such faith, in particular given all we know from the Panama leaks onwards?

Peter Swabey: It is really important to make sure that the hoops through which those authorised company service providers go before they become authorised are significant, to make sure that we can have confidence in that.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Daly]

Q Just in general, using the banks as an example, should we be looking to put in the Bill requirements for them to play their part in the partnership to tackle money laundering?

Professor Jason Sharman: Again, banks have had these requirements to establish the beneficial owners for a while. I think this is good, but it is the enforcement that is key there.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

Q Following on from that, I completely take the point about enforcement, but would a failure to prevent power make any difference, assuming it was enforced?

Professor Jason Sharman: I probably differ from many of the other people who have spoken in that I am not a fan of failure to prevent. I think that the goal of these laws is to make life hard for bad people without making life hard for good people at the same time. To the extent that you have really onerous regulation or weaken the presumption of innocence, that is something of an own goal or collateral damage. Before you put people in jail, you should be pretty serious about it. There should be a mental intention there—a mens rea.

I am not really comfortable with the strict liability. There is strict liability in anti-bribery, which means I have to do pointless anti-bribery training every year for the University of Cambridge. It does not do me any good and it does not stop corruption, but it is one of the things that Cambridge feels it has to do because of the strict liability. Again, it is a cost to society that is not included in legislation or in regulatory impact assessments.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Margaret Hodge and James Daly

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Public Bill Committees

[James Daly]

Q I am assuming, Mr Searle, that as somebody in your position, you want to see the transformation of this organisation from a passive organisation to a partner that will work with law enforcement to do what we require.

Adrian Searle: For sure. It is a really fundamental change. I already have folk from my intelligence and investigative teams in the National Crime Agency working with colleagues in the Companies House teams to help them to set the road map for how they will transform.

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

Q Martin Swain, I think that many of us on both sides of the Committee think not that it has to be more regulation, but that it has to be smarter regulation. If there are businesses operating that are pursuing economic crimes, that does not help business creation or the wealth of the economy. I am a bit concerned that you think the new regulatory measures are more burdensome. Are they not just smarter? [Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[James Daly]

Ms Crotty?

Michelle Crotty: The same—anything that allows us to identify the people behind it and then to use that to follow up with lines of inquiry. Capacity is certainly something that we would be concerned about, but the work that the NCA and the NECC are doing with Companies House should help with that, in terms of training Companies House staff.

Simon Welch: It would also be nice to be able to data wash some of the registrations through law enforcement indices before they were actually registered. That is obviously another quantum leap from where we are now. I think we are looking at sharing that data, but that is another thing for Companies House to work out, in liaison probably with the NECC. I think that would be preferable for us. Then we could prevent these companies from opening up in the first place, and stop them being used as vehicles for criminality.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

Q Michelle Crotty, what would you feel about the introduction of an offence of failure to prevent economic crime?

Michelle Crotty: We are very strongly on the record as saying that that is an offence that we would like to see. We have seen good results with it in relation to bribery and corruption since its introduction in 2010. Nine of our 12 deferred prosecution agreements have involved a failure to prevent bribery offence. We think that it not only punishes but helps to reform corporate behaviour. What we have seen with the Bribery Act 2010 is that companies have very much focused on putting adequate procedures in place because that is the defence that it provides them. The prosecution is one part of it, but actually the preventive work in terms of adequate procedures is as important, if not more important.

The other thing that we would say in terms of the impact on business is that for a failure to prevent economic crime offence many of the adequate procedures would already be in place in terms of anti-money laundering and other areas. Clearly that is something that the Committee, and guidance, would need to work through, but the impact on business may not be as heavy as some might fear.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Margaret Hodge and James Daly

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th October 2022 Public Bill Committees

[James Daly]

Q I am assuming, Mr Searle, that as somebody in your position, you want to see the transformation of this organisation from a passive organisation to a partner that will work with law enforcement to do what we require.

Adrian Searle: For sure. It is a really fundamental change. I already have folk from my intelligence and investigative teams in the National Crime Agency working with colleagues in the Companies House teams to help them to set the road map for how they will transform.

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

Q Martin Swain, I think that many of us on both sides of the Committee think not that it has to be more regulation, but that it has to be smarter regulation. If there are businesses operating that are pursuing economic crimes, that does not help business creation or the wealth of the economy. I am a bit concerned that you think the new regulatory measures are more burdensome. Are they not just smarter? [Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[James Daly]

Ms Crotty?

Michelle Crotty: The same—anything that allows us to identify the people behind it and then to use that to follow up with lines of inquiry. Capacity is certainly something that we would be concerned about, but the work that the NCA and the NECC are doing with Companies House should help with that, in terms of training Companies House staff.

Simon Welch: It would also be nice to be able to data wash some of the registrations through law enforcement indices before they were actually registered. That is obviously another quantum leap from where we are now. I think we are looking at sharing that data, but that is another thing for Companies House to work out, in liaison probably with the NECC. I think that would be preferable for us. Then we could prevent these companies from opening up in the first place, and stop them being used as vehicles for criminality.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

Q Michelle Crotty, what would you feel about the introduction of an offence of failure to prevent economic crime?

Michelle Crotty: We are very strongly on the record as saying that that is an offence that we would like to see. We have seen good results with it in relation to bribery and corruption since its introduction in 2010. Nine of our 12 deferred prosecution agreements have involved a failure to prevent bribery offence. We think that it not only punishes but helps to reform corporate behaviour. What we have seen with the Bribery Act 2010 is that companies have very much focused on putting adequate procedures in place because that is the defence that it provides them. The prosecution is one part of it, but actually the preventive work in terms of adequate procedures is as important, if not more important.

The other thing that we would say in terms of the impact on business is that for a failure to prevent economic crime offence many of the adequate procedures would already be in place in terms of anti-money laundering and other areas. Clearly that is something that the Committee, and guidance, would need to work through, but the impact on business may not be as heavy as some might fear.