Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill

Matt Hancock Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My right hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head, and I am going to come to some of that in my remarks shortly. If he will just bear with me, I would like to make some progress. I am conscious of the protected time we have today, so I ask all colleagues to bear with me.

This legislation is concise and tight for very good reasons, hence the number of amendments that have been made; we want to move at pace. But we cannot stop there, and for the benefit of this House—I know colleagues are aware of this—let me say that there will be a second economic crime Bill, a follow-on Bill in the next parliamentary Session, with further measures. We simply cannot get all the measures in right now. We have focused on the ones that will have the greatest impact and enablement.

[Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

In respect of the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, many of the problems that we face today are due to amendments made in the other place, and it has subsequently come to light that many of those amendments came from those who are acting for oligarchs and then legislating for loopholes. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the other place should listen very carefully to the elected House on this matter and make sure that this Bill, with these amendments, gets sent back here forthwith, without more loopholes being put in place by the other place, as they were years ago?

[Priti Patel]

I wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. Friend on that. We could do a rerun of exactly what happened back in 2018, but, in the interests of time, we want to crack on with where we are going with this Bill. It will enable the greatest changes to the companies register since it was established nearly 200 years ago. Companies House will be reformed and we will verify the identity of every company director and beneficial owner. I know that Members of this House have been calling for that for a considerable time. No criminal or kleptocrat will be able to hide behind a UK shell company ever again—those infamous brass plates will go. This will be a boost to all legitimate businesses in the UK and, importantly, it will make it easier for them to get the information they need.

The next Bill will bring forward reforms to prevent the abuse of limited partnerships; new powers to seize crypto-assets from criminals—that is a new and emerging area where we have so much more to do; and measures to give businesses more confidence to share information on suspected money laundering. It will be a very substantial piece of legislation. I assure the House that we are already drafting that legislation and it will be brought forward as soon as we are able to do so and we can get the time in the House. Today’s Bill and our commitment to a second Bill will show that in this Government, we are all acting collectively and unitedly to root out the dirty money in our economy and, importantly, to hobble Putin and his cronies.

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[Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

I rise to support the Bill, and I am delighted to hear the full-throated support across the House for it. As the anti-corruption tsar in 2015-16, I had some role in putting together the policies that are finally making it on to the statute book now, in what I regard as the first half of an economic crime Bill. I pay tribute to the current anti-corruption tsar, my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), who has done a magnificent job of making progress since.

While I welcome many parts of the Bill, I focus in particular on sanctions, because the action taken on sanctions against Putin’s cronies by the UK so far is among the strongest in the world. We have designated £258 billion and more than 200 individuals, entities and subsidiaries, and 3 million companies are debarred from raising funds in the City of London. The Government and the Prime Minister deserve credit for their leadership, but I believe that measures can and should go further, whether tonight or in the second half of the legislation. For instance, I am attracted to amendments 26 and 27 and new clause 29, and I would love to hear from the Minister the Government’s attitude to those.

I also put on record the answer to the question of why we have to act legislatively at such pace. It is because the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 was riddled with holes by the other place during its passage. If we look back now at the speeches made in the other place then, some of those that looked unwise at the time look extremely unwise now. For instance, there was an explicit argument for more judicial review. On Report, the question was asked:

“Can the Minister explain why sanctions should be imposed on a person simply because they are connected to a specified country”?—[Official Report, House of Lords, 1 November 2017; Vol. 785, c. 1394.]

I think we have an answer to that question now. There was opposition to delegated powers, when Ministers need discretion to act quickly in relation to sanctions. Even the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), described those who act for oligarchs and then legislate for loopholes as “clever lawyers”. I hope that the other place listens to this debate and hears the strength of feeling. The same thing must not happen this time.

One further point—perhaps it is a point of detail—is that I am surprised to discover that some of those who spoke so powerfully for putting loopholes in place, and who made the case for confusion and delay in law, are also those who stand to benefit from confusion and delay in law, and they do not declare this conflict. Simply declaring earnings from the Bar is not good enough. Parliamentarians should make their interests crystal clear so that there is no confusion around them when they legislate in this area.

Finally, while we legislate rapidly in this case, we must also understand the cause of the challenges faced by Ministers trying to sanction Putin’s cronies. The cause is not the technology and how money is held, but the weakness in the law due to the 2018 Act and the flaws introduced to it during its passage. For instance, the shadow Home Secretary mentioned the challenges around cryptocurrency, but cryptocurrency is not a cause of avoiding sanctions. By contrast, by its nature and the nature of the technology, there is potential for more transparency in some of these new financial assets, so long as the legal framework is correct. Indeed, cryptocurrency exchanges can find out and follow the flow of the money more easily than can be done with traditional forms of finance, because of the nature of the technology, as the FBI has recently demonstrated with some excellent actions to crack down on economic crime in the United States. Let us put the right law in place and give Ministers the discretion they need to act fast. Let us get this legislation through fast, and then let us use it, because with shells raining down on innocent Ukrainians, there is not a moment to lose.

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[Paul Scully]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that because the now shadow Chancellor boasted afterwards how she managed to weaken the Government’s approach during the passage of that Bill. I believe we have gone as far as we can, but we need more measures, which is what today is all about. This is the first half of those measures to make sure we can introduce the remaining economic crime Bill, which includes Companies House reform.

We have tabled an amendment to reduce the transition period from 18 months to six months, but I will outline a little further how we can make this work effectively to ensure that people cannot just move money out of this country.

[Matt Hancock]

Will the Minister welcome the conversion of the Labour party to supporting strengthening the sanctions regime, because a strong Bill was introduced in this House by the then Foreign Secretary, but it was watered down in the House of Lords with the support of the Labour party? I do not like to make party political points out of this because we should be united on it, but that is a matter of fact.

Alcohol Strategy

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Friday 23rd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

It ill behoves an Opposition Member, given the extra burden that the police felt as a result of the Licensing Act 2003, to stand up and refer to policing. The hon. Lady talked about the strategy being only about what has already been passed. No, it is not. Of course, we have brought together a number of issues, some of which we have already legislated for, such as changing local authorities’ powers in relation to the 2003 Act, and some of which we have not yet introduced, such as minimum unit pricing. Also, we have included more action with industry and on public health, dealing with health issues related to the harm that can be caused by excessive drinking. This is the first time that the Government have produced a cross-Government strategy across the board, addressing every way in which this Government can deal with the problems of alcohol which, sadly, we see in too many people in this country.

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

Pubs in West Suffolk and across the country are not only economically important but often vital hubs of the local community. Can my right hon. Friend tell me a bit more about what impact this statement will have on pubs, where so much, in many cases mostly, responsible drinking happens?

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making the point that pubs play a very important role in our communities. Pubs have nothing to fear from the minimum unit price that is being introduced today. That will not have an impact on them. I hope that we will see more people feeling able to go to pubs, particularly those in town centres which until now people have often felt unable to visit because of the brawling that they see in the streets. However, we will be looking very carefully in a number of areas to ensure that what we are doing is very clearly focused on those outlets that are bulk-discounting cheap alcohol, which enables people to get drunk before they go out, not affecting the pubs.

Border Checks Summer 2011

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

If this is what the hon. Gentleman calls improving things—dearie me. We should be strengthening controls. Those controls had been strengthened, year on year, but in my view they should have gone further. We should be doing more to roll out e-Borders and extend biometrics. He does not seem to realise that his Home Secretary removed the biometric checks. She has been undermining many of the checks that should have been taking place.

Secondly, we need to know who authorised what, because serious allegations have now been made, both by the Home Secretary against a senior civil servant and by a senior civil servant against the Home Secretary. Her advisers seem to have briefed the newspapers that Brodie Clark was a rogue official. She told the House that he had taken responsibility and that she would make sure that “those responsible are punished”. He has said that her statements were wrong. The Home Secretary has a history of high-level spats, but this is considerably more serious than a political row over immigration and the future of cats; this is a dispute over the security of our borders. We need to know what advice she was given. What were the precise terms of the pilots that she signed off? What was communicated to the UK Border Agency about her decision? Was the memo—which I know she is aware of—from the Border Agency saying that it would cease routine biometric checks of EU citizens cleared by her, the Minister for Immigration or Home Office officials? Is it an accurate or inaccurate reflection of the instructions that were sent out from her office, or the description of the pilot in the submission that she received and signed off?

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

Again, I notice that the Home Secretary is silent, so I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Matthew Hancock]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way. However, she has not yet mentioned the fact that Rob Whiteman, Mr Clark’s boss, has said that Mr Clark overstepped and did more than was authorised by Ministers. That is why he had to be suspended.

[Yvette Cooper]

We now have different accounts from different officials, the Home Secretary and the memos from the Border Agency that have been revealed. What the public want to know is the truth. That is why we need the information to be published. We need to know what information the Home Secretary gave to the Border Agency, what instructions were given to the Border Agency and what instructions were given by the Minister for Immigration. What information was provided to Ministers from the Border Agency? What monitoring did they ask for? What monitoring did her Minister for Immigration do? By the way, it is good to see him here today. He has been completely silent and absent from this entire debate. Indeed, in the light of these revelations, we wonder what job he is in fact doing. What information did either Minister ask for when they decided to extend the pilot just six weeks ago?

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[Mr Clappison]

I am sorry to tell the hon. Lady this, but at the time of the Balkans conflict, net migration was negative. The policy decisions to increase the number of work permits to workers from outside the European Union are crucial; there is a close correlation. Those are the facts.

[Matthew Hancock]

I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend’s speech. Does he agree that nobody will believe a single word from Labour Members until they apologise for the mess they made?

[Mr Clappison]

Yes.

Coming back to this motion, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) has thrown everything but the kitchen sink into this debate. I am afraid that she and her party have failed to produce a single fact or any evidence in support of the motion. They have not even bothered to wait for the evidence of the Home Affairs Committee or for any of the three inquiries that the Home Secretary has rightly put in place, including the one by John Vine, who is the chief inspector and an appointee of the previous Government.

In trying to throw the kitchen sink into the motion, the right hon. Lady even mentioned the 100,000 legacy figure. She asked who was responsible for how the 100,000 people under the legacy exercise have been dealt with. She need not have looked much further than the person sitting next to her—the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne)—because the former Immigration Minister was partly responsible for the legacy exercise. The question she really needs to ask is how she thinks the 500,000 cases arose before 2006, which had to be dealt with in the legacy exercise. Asylum cases had not been properly dealt with. Some of the people involved had waited for many years and some had been refused permission to remain in the country. Now, however, the right hon. Lady is trying to blame the Government for that. She made some comment about 2006 being a starting point, but who had been in power before 2006? She need look no further this time than the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), who has been in his place for this debate. He was the Home Secretary who put the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 in place. Against that background, how did we reach a position whereby 500,000 people’s cases were lingering, mouldering, waiting to be dealt with and had to be the subject of a legacy exercise in 2006?

Oral Answers to Questions

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

10. What progress the Government has made in reducing the level of immigration.

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

15. What steps she is taking to reduce the level of immigration.

[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I will answer question 10 together with what I profoundly hope is question 15 on the Order Paper.

The Government introduced reforms to economic migration, including a limit, from April this year, and we have begun to implement significant changes to the student visa system. We are also consulting on changes to family migration, to break the link between work and settlement, and on overseas domestic workers. Taken together, those measures present a comprehensive package to tackle abuse and reduce net migration.

[Damian Green]

Along with the list I just read out, that is a long-term issue that we are tackling. Our consultation on employment-related settlement, which was published on 9 June, sets out proposals for breaking the link between work and settlement, including making the skilled migrants route, tier 2, a primarily temporary one. One problem that this country has had is that people come here and are not sure whether they are on a permanent or temporary route. That problem does not affect most countries’ immigration systems, and we are determined to drive it out from our country’s system as well.

[Matthew Hancock]

What assessment has the Minister made of the economic impact of uncontrolled immigration over the past decade, and what is he doing to ensure that managed migration is, in future, a boost rather than a burden to the economy?

[Damian Green]

The problem for the previous Government was that, in letting in uncontrolled numbers, they did not differentiate between those who would bring benefits to the British economy and those who would act as a drag on it. At the heart of our policy is the distinction between those whom we want in this country—the brightest and the best—to study, work and bring long-term benefits to this country, and those whom we do not want, who either evade what they are supposed to be doing, coming here pretending to study but wanting to work, or still more, who come here to live off our benefits system. We will have a much better focused immigration system, as well as significantly lower net migration.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

I am happy to accept my hon. Friend’s clarification on that point.

The context for this legislation includes the largest cuts to policing that we have seen, police officers losing their jobs through A19 powers and a freeze on recruitment across the country, at a time when the security threat is rising. The Home Secretary and the business managers have chosen the day on which the cuts have been announced to ask for support for the risky experiment in police accountability that is elected police commissioners. The coalition has no mandate and no evidence base for that reform. It has not done a proper consultation and it has failed to win the active support of either the police or the public.

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

Before the election, when the then Home Secretary was asked whether he could promise that police numbers would not be cut under Labour, he replied “No.” Is not that and this nonsense about the Olympics budget why nobody is listening to the right hon. Gentleman as shadow Home Secretary?

[Ed Balls]

No. I know that the hon. Gentleman knows about Treasury matters, but he ought to read his brief a little more carefully before making such interventions, which reveal his lack of knowledge on our position.

[Matthew Hancock]

rose—

[Ed Balls]

I will answer the hon. Gentleman’s previous erroneous intervention before I give him a second go to see whether he can do better. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, an independent body, said that it was possible to make reductions of 12% in the central Government grant over four years, without cutting front-line policing, as we heard last week. The Government are pushing through savings not of 12% but of 20%, and they are doing so not over four years but by front-loading them, so that the biggest cuts are in the first two years. As police authorities say, it is impossible to make such cuts without cutting front-line policing capability. If what we proposed was being done, cuts to front-line police numbers—indeed, cuts to all police numbers—would be avoided. Under the coalition, there will be cuts to front-line policing. No Government Members were elected on such a manifesto, and they will be held to account in the coming months and years. I happily give way to the hon. Gentleman so that he can have a second go.

[Matthew Hancock]

I do not mind being held to account for sorting out the nation’s finances. The right hon. Gentleman should answer the question. He said that my intervention were erroneous. When the previous Home Secretary was asked whether he could guarantee to protect police budgets from being cut, did he not say, “No”?

[Ed Balls]

The hon. Gentleman knows the answer to his own question. He can wave his arms around in a histrionic way, but the reality is that the previous Home Secretary said that he could not guarantee the individual decision of every chief constable of the 43 forces. However, he said that on the basis of a 12% reduction over four years, there would be no need for any reduction in police numbers. Under the coalition, the Police Federation estimates that 20,000 officers will be cut. We know that 1,100 officers will be cut in Birmingham and that 1,400 will be cut in Greater Manchester. The difference is that under our proposals there would have been no cuts to police numbers, and under the coalition proposals there will be cuts in every constituency and in every police force in the country. Those cuts will be made worse by the additional expenditure on the ridiculous and flawed proposals before us.

Oral Answers to Questions

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

If the hon. Gentleman accuses me of engaging in soundbite politics, may I be allowed to use the Dispatch Box to advertise my Royal Commonwealth Society lecture this evening, in which I will make quite a long and detailed speech on immigration policy, to which I invite him—[Interruption.] I will have a word with the doorman and get him in. The points-based system was indeed a step forward, but he fails to recognise that it was nothing like enough, as we saw in the immigration figures that came out during the summer recess. Despite the assurances of Labour Ministers during the election campaign, net migration is up, at 196,000. That is too high a level and is unsustainable for this country.

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

14. How much the identity cards programme has cost since its introduction.

[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

Between April 2006 and March 2010, a total of £251 million was spent on projects to establish identity cards, second biometric passports and other related programmes. Prior to that, the Home Office spent an additional £41 million developing the policy, legislation and business case for the introduction of identity cards.

[Matthew Hancock]

Given the state of the public finances, many people will think that is a staggering amount of money to waste. Will the Minister say what the future saving is from scrapping the ID card scheme—not only to the public purse but to individuals—on top of the enormous cost to our civil liberties that would have been incurred?

[Damian Green]

There will be net savings of approximately £86 million over the next four years—[Interruption.]. From a sedentary position, the shadow Home Secretary describes that as “diddly squat”. [Interruption.] He keeps doing this: £21 million a year of public money is of no consequence to the Opposition Front Bench. On top of that, £835 million would have come out of citizens’ pockets directly, as that is what people would have been forced to pay for these wretched ID cards if the previous Government’s policy had been allowed to continue. Labour Members do not recognise the difference between spending public money and spending taxpayer’s money that they have taken directly out of their pockets. We do recognise that distinction.

Identity Documents Bill

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

As this is the second time I have had the honour to speak in the Chamber this week, I am very grateful to you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am particularly grateful to be able to speak in this debate to take part in rejecting the Identity Cards Act 2006 and the proposal for identity cards introduced by the previous Administration. Many Government Members have spoken on this issue and it is telling that the Opposition Benches are entirely empty of people prepared to defend what the previous Government had planned to introduce. [Interruption.] I look forward to seeing which way the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) votes in the Lobby.

There are three solid reasons to support this Bill to abolish the prospect of identity cards. Those reasons tell us a lot about the Government formed in the past month and have given me great hope regarding their strength and underlying motives for the years to come. The first reason, which has been touched on, is the cost of the ID card scheme. The official estimate of £800 million was bad enough, but independent experts came up with another estimate of £20 billion for the total cost of the scheme. Given the current state of extremely tight national finances, the idea of spending £800 million on such an unnecessary scheme is something that we should reject.

What is more, I clearly remember the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) trying to argue, when we proposed abolishing ID cards to save money, that that would not save money because the cost would be borne entirely by those forced to take up the cards. That says an awful lot about the attitude of anyone who could say that, because whether the cost would have been £800 million to the Exchequer or £30 to everyone in the country, it would eventually have been borne by the same people—the taxpayers. It was greatly to disregard the taxpayer to put forward a scheme that clearly was not going to work, as several of my hon. Friends pointed out, with so little regard to its cost.

The second reason why it is such good news that the scheme is being abolished is the risk involved. I clearly remember the then Chancellor of the Exchequer standing at the Dispatch Box about three and a half years ago and admitting to the whole country, with his hands shaking and his papers quivering, that two data discs containing information and bank account details for every single child in the country had been lost. I also remember the national outrage that followed. That demonstrated—I hope that we do not have to demonstrate it again—the danger of keeping sensitive and private information all on one huge database in this age when it is so easy to transfer information electronically. That danger, and the contingent liability that comes with holding that information is a great risk not only in an extremely practical sense in that it can be lost—we all know that data discs can be lost and get into the hands of national newspapers—but because holding it in one place can be extremely risky.

The final and most exciting reason why this is the first Bill that the new coalition Government have introduced is that it reveals the faith in human nature of the Government who have put it forward. The fact that some think that the way to solve crime and to regulate our society better is to have an enormous state database and to force everybody to hold a card in their pocket is extremely revealing of the view of human behaviour held by those wanting to make such laws. We must understand that people are all individuals and are all different, and that society is best organised by the people in it coming together rather than by the people at the top telling them what to do. That is an extremely strong principle that we on the Government side hold dear. That is demonstrated in the fact that the rejection of the Identity Cards Act is the very first Bill being debated under this Government. On those bases alone, I should be in favour of a Bill to reject identity cards. The situation is best summed up by the now shadow Chancellor, who obviously understands the costs. I rest my case on a statement he made before—for some reason—he changed his mind. He said:

“I don’t want my whole life to be reduced to a magnetic strip on a plastic card.”

I could not put it better myself. I commend the Bill to the House.