Paul Scully debates involving the Home Office during the 2019 Parliament

Violent Crime and Antisocial Behaviour: Carshalton and Wallington

Paul Scully Excerpts
Thursday 7th December 2023

(3 months, 3 weeks ago)

Commons Chamber
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Elliot Colburn Portrait Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
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May I begin by expressing how devastated I am that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is not here to intervene on me? I have heard that that is a staple of Adjournment debates, but I fear that I will miss out on the opportunity. Nevertheless, I will soldier on and do what I can.

I would like to address a growing concern in our community of Carshalton and Wallington: violent crime and antisocial behaviour, which demands our attention and is a huge concern to my constituents. I am delighted that my constituency neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), is the Minister responding today, because he will know about many of these issues already. I am also delighted to be joined by my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), who will know full well about some of the issues I plan to raise. I will start with a few recent examples of violent crime and antisocial behaviour in the constituency.

On 3 October, a man was fatally stabbed in Roundshaw, just a week after a tragic stabbing in the neighbouring borough of Croydon, which I know the Minister is aware of as the constituency MP for the area. That followed a number of recent attacks, not all of which took place in my constituency—some occurred in neighbouring Croydon, including the tragic case of a 15-year-old girl—involving several of the many teenagers who have been killed on London’s streets in 2023. Each one is a tragedy.

In Wallington, a man sustained a thankfully non-life-threatening chest wound and a woman suffered a hand injury in a knife attack on Birchwood Avenue last Saturday. I thank the police for their work. They always respond with the utmost professionalism, and they do a fantastic job. I also thank the air ambulance and NHS staff who cared for the victims. However, such incidents are of concern, because the London borough of Sutton, which includes Carshalton and Wallington, has long enjoyed a reputation as one of the safest in London, often competing with Richmond. Violent crime is not something we are necessarily used to, so seeing it happen on our streets over the course of the last few months is of real concern.

Like the inboxes of many of my colleagues across the capital, my inbox is often full of correspondence from residents, concerned parents and others who feel vulnerable and unsafe because of the crime that is happening in their area. It must not be allowed to continue. I vividly remember one constituent writing to me after the attack in Roundshaw to say that she did not feel safe enough to put her bins out in the dark. Another’s teenage daughter did not want to leave the house for fear of being attacked. We must not let that become the new normal in London—or anywhere, for that matter.

Paul Scully Portrait Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)
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My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. We have had the sad news of the fatal stabbing of a 17-year-old boy outside Sutton station, and a 15-year-old was recently killed in the Minister’s town of Croydon. Not only do we have to lean into knife crime, which is sometimes imported into Sutton; we also need to make sure that we can bring down the fear of crime. Often it is imported by gangs, but it is really important that we can reassure people that the police are there and that we have a holistic view of knife crime in Sutton.

Elliot Colburn Portrait Elliot Colburn
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Absolutely; I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for that intervention. He is absolutely right about the need to bring down the fear of crime and introducing measures to do that, and I would like to hear more from the Minister about what steps the Home Office is taking in that respect. My hon. Friend is absolutely right about providing reassurance, and I will go into that in a bit more detail. I pay tribute to him for his time as one of the longest-serving Ministers for London, and for the work he did in this space. He has been a fantastic champion of his constituency and the capital, and he is a great loss to the Government, but I am pleased to have him back on the Back Benches helping me to advocate for our fantastic borough of Sutton.

On 30 October—just a few weeks ago—a 15-year-old boy who was minding his own business was approached by another teenage boy, who led him to a block of flats, where three other teenagers armed with knives awaited. The young victim was robbed of his phone. That incident was one of many that underscores the vulnerability of our youth and the audacity of those who will prey on our children. Our children’s minds should be free to explore and not be occupied with threats to their lives, but, sadly, that was not an isolated incident.

Our community has witnessed rises in house break-ins and people trying car doors. One of the most common things that I see on social media is Ring doorbell footage of people trying car doors or front doors late at night in our community. That really makes people feel violated and scared in their own homes, and that cannot be right. These doorbell cameras deter crime in their own right. I often encourage my constituents to get them, because thankfully I have seen many videos where someone has clocked a Ring doorbell camera and turned away from the house. That is fantastic, but it is awful how often such footage comes up on social media.

Another fairly distressing incident was that of a four- year-old child who was slapped at a bus stop just a couple of weeks ago. Though details are still emerging, and I do not want to prejudice investigations in any of the cases I raise, that incident underscores the urgency with which we must tackle the root causes of knife crime and antisocial behaviour in our community. No child, no parent and no person should be left with the weight of that trauma or left feeling unsafe in their own community.

In our area in the last year, thefts are up by 31%, sexual offences are up by 43% and robberies are up by 58%. Those statistics are alarming—and more so because they are not part of a national trend. Across the whole of the United Kingdom, crime has fallen since 2010—the Minister will want to expand on the Government’s record in bringing crime down—so we must ask ourselves why it is only within London that we do not see that trend being played out. Some responsibility—in fact, I would argue quite a lot—must rest on the shoulders of the police and crime commissioner for London, who also happens to be the Mayor of London.

We have seen London benefit from the massive increase in police officers—we met our manifesto commitment of 20,000 new police officers, and 3,666 of those are working on the streets of London—yet we see this worrying trend with crime levels. Even just this past week, the Mayor of London was caught out misleading Londoners on statistics about crime in London. He may not be prepared to put the work in and would rather spend his time jetting off around the world trying to sell his book, legalise weed or whatever it is he is interested in doing other than getting on with his job. However, we cannot leave criminals to take over the streets of London, so I would really like to understand what work the Home Office is doing with the Metropolitan police to recapture the trust of Londoners and get on with the job of deterring and catching criminals, ensuring that our constituents—those of the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam, and mine—are kept safe.

I absolutely welcome the increase in police numbers, but we face unique challenges on the fringes of London, from which a significant number of officers are regularly transferred away for major events in central London, where help is needed for policing, leaving only a minimal presence in outer London. I would like to hear a bit more from the Minister on the work that he is doing in the Home Office with the Metropolitan police to address that promptly so that when big events happen in central London, neighbourhood and local policing in outer London does not suffer.

Collaboration between the police and local communities is also paramount, and policing is only half the battle. I absolutely want to continue advocating for an increased police presence. We all want to see bobbies back on the beat, and it is great to see those new police officers getting out there in our communities and doing just that, but we must also tackle the causes of crime and antisocial behaviour along the way. Education is a crucial step in doing that. We have seen how that has worked in other parts of the world, and even here in the United Kingdom. Glasgow was once the most violent city in the whole of Europe. It took a different approach to violent crime, and has turned that reputation around and driven down that number.

In London, we were promised a violence reduction unit that would tackle knife crime in a similar way, yet we have seen no results from that violence reduction unit. There is little transparency about who sits on it and what work they are doing, whether they have met, what they have spoken about and when they meet. The violence reduction unit for London has not achieved anything because, as I said earlier, London is not following the national trend for crime at the moment.

The challenges that we face are daunting, but the spirit of our community is always resilient. We must do all that we can to tackle violent crime and anti-social behaviour and reclaim the safety and security of my constituents in Carshalton and Wallington, and across the whole of London. We need to ensure that we have a constant and visible police presence on the streets of Sutton. We need to ensure that people are aware of the consequences of criminal activity, and educate them to prevent their turning to crime in the first place, particularly our young people. I will not stop raising these issues, and nor will my hon. Friends, because until no one lives in fear, our community thrives, and people value and protect each other, we will not have achieved our aims.

Paul Scully Portrait The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
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It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) and I thank him for his engagement over the last week, because it is important that, despite any differences in terms of finessing this Bill, we are all in agreement, as I think we are, and it is very important that this Parliament and this House are united in our drive to right the wrongs done to the people of Ukraine and to drive Russian money out of London and indeed to punish the oligarchs. I shall cover as many of the points raised by hon. Members as I can in the time available, but first I want to remind the House about what the Bill signifies and what we are hoping to achieve and believe it will achieve.

The Bill will improve transparency about the ownership of companies and property in the UK and strengthen the enforcement of financial sanctions. It will create a register of overseas entities to crack down on foreign criminals using UK property to launder money. The new register will require anonymous foreign owners to reveal their real identity to ensure criminals cannot hold property behind secretive chains of shell companies. By legislating now, we will send a clear warning to those who have used, or are thinking of using, the UK property market to launder ill-gotten gains, particularly those linked to the Russian Government.

John Baron Portrait Mr Baron
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The Minister is absolutely right and this Bill is of course welcome, although many of us believe it should go further. However, putting that to one side for the moment, do he and his Front-Bench colleagues accept that all these well-intended regulations and rules will come to nothing if not enforced properly? When will the Government bring forward concrete figures on the proper increase in funding required to make sure that these rules and regulations, and others, have full effect?

Paul Scully Portrait Paul Scully
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I will come to those figures because I totally agree with my hon. Friend that the rules and new laws must be enforced. We can talk as much as we like, but this is about action, and we are leading the way on action.

This Bill will also reform unexplained wealth orders by removing the key barriers to their use by law enforcement and include amendments to financial sanctions legislation, helping to deter and prevent breaches of sanctions.

Questions have been raised today about why it has taken this long to come up with the legislation. We had prelegislative scrutiny on the register of ownership a couple of years ago, which obviously was interrupted by the pressures of covid on parliamentary time. None the less, that means we have been able to adapt the paragraphs that have already been drafted, undergone prelegislative scrutiny and had a clean bill of health from Committees in this place to the new norm following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Angela Eagle Portrait Dame Angela Eagle
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We on the Treasury Committee have just published a report on economic crime and some of the evidence we took highlighted a great deal of frustration among those working in this area and trying to make the system work, in particular at the Minister’s Department’s lack of progress with reform of Companies House. That is in the Minister’s own specific bivouac; why has more not been done faster?

Paul Scully Portrait Paul Scully
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I am thinking of the word bailiwick rather than bivouac, but I hope the hon. Lady will agree that our being able to reflect on that legislation and align it with the broader reforms of Companies House that we have subsequently announced has enabled the broader legislation to work together and be more effective. That has been absolutely essential in ensuring that the new requirements are workable and proportionate and the register strikes the right balance between improving transparency and minimising burdens on legitimate commercial activity.

Peter Dowd Portrait Peter Dowd
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On Second Reading of the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, the Prime Minister, who was then Foreign Secretary, said:

“The aim of the Bill is to grant Her Majesty’s Government full power over British sanctions policy after we leave the EU and, in a memorable phrase, to take back control.”—[Official Report, 20 February 2018; Vol. 636, c. 77.]

Does the Minister think we have used the full power in the fullest way to take sanctions against those we think are a threat to us in economic terms?

Paul Scully Portrait Paul Scully
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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 Portrait Matt Hancock
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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.

--- Later in debate ---
Paul Scully Portrait Paul Scully
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I agree that it is, but let us come back to a sense of unity. We have had some ding-dongs throughout, but it is time now to make sure we can come together and send the most powerful message as a House and Chamber to the oligarchs that their behaviour will not be tolerated for a moment longer.

It is also important to remember that the majority of property held by overseas entities will be owned by entirely law-abiding businesses and people. We are talking about 95,000 properties in England and Wales owned by 30,000 or so overseas entities. Only a tiny fraction of them are likely to be held by criminal or corrupt interests. The transition period is an important protection of the rights of those legitimate owners of property. The Government do not interfere with individuals’ rights lightly and the interference could not reasonably have been expected when rights over the properties within scope of the register were acquired, so we must ensure that we respect those rights in a way that cannot be challenged. No doubt those who wish to avoid these requirements and who are able to afford expensive legal teams will take any advantage of opportunities to do so.

Kevin Hollinrake Portrait Kevin Hollinrake
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The transition period—the debate on the timescale of 18 months, six months or 28 days—is key. Does the Minister agree that the most effective way of dealing with this and preventing the asset flight we are all concerned about is through something along the lines of manuscript amendment 64, which would require people who want to sell or transfer their asset to disclose the beneficial owner prior to doing so to Companies House and therefore Her Majesty’s Land Registry could block it? Will he accept that that is the right way forward?

Paul Scully Portrait Paul Scully
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He will, and I thank my hon. Friend for his work and for raising that. I will come back to his point shortly.

There will also be law-abiding British companies that have adopted such structures and that type of ownership for legitimate commercial reasons, including real estate investment trusts, which are public companies, whose core business is to manage and own properties that generate income, and in particular pension schemes holding land and properties. Others will be British nationals who have adopted the arrangements for legitimate reasons of privacy—as we have heard, perhaps celebrities who do not want their address to be known publicly. They may wish to apply to Companies House for their personal details to be protected from public view on the new register, but the threshold for exemption from the public register will be high, so it is right for individuals to have time to seek advice on their options and how to make a case to the registrar.

None Portrait Several hon. Members rose—
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Paul Scully Portrait Paul Scully
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Before giving way further, I want to acknowledge that I am very aware of the strength of feeling that corrupt people must not be allowed to set up ways to escape the transparency this register will bring. I can therefore see merit in requiring all who are selling property to submit a declaration of their details at the point of the transfer of land title during that transition period. That would mean we would give anyone selling a zero-day transition period; that goes further than the 28 days, but it is an acknowledgement of the work done across this Chamber, in particular with the help of my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake). They would have to register ownership if selling, and in that way we would either get their ownership details, or if they did not sell, we would get it at the end of the transition period in a way that still protects legitimate owners. We will give this further consideration ahead of finalising the Bill in the Lords next week, because it is not right for British businesses to bear the brunt of Her Majesty’s Government’s pursuit of the Russian cronies.

Margaret Hodge Portrait Dame Margaret Hodge
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I am interested in where the Minister has got his information from, because I have not seen that data. I understand about the Hollywood stars and those people who do not want their ownership of property to be revealed, but my understanding from both Transparency International and Global Witness is that most properties are bought through shell companies—often located in the British Virgin Islands—probably as a mechanism for laundering money. I wonder where he gets his data. Some of the British companies that choose that structure do so to avoid stamp duty, and the House does not want to endorse that, either, does it?

Paul Scully Portrait Paul Scully
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No, indeed. If the right hon. Lady looks at the Panama papers, I think she will see that they cite Emma Watson as having bought a house under a shell company owing to security risks, and the Pandora papers cite a former Prime Minister of this country buying a house in Harcourt Street and ultimately saving £300,000 in stamp duty. We clearly should not support that. So we have to get the balance right. There will be legitimate reasons, and there will be people avoiding tax, which we want to stamp out, but, in repurposing these measures, we want first to ensure that we are stamping out oligarchs’ money.

Layla Moran Portrait Layla Moran
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The Minister will be aware of amendment 4—we will discuss it in Committee—which asks why there is an exemption on the so-called economic wellbeing of the UK. He will be well aware that many of these oligarchs own big companies that employ thousands of people, so the exemption could be used as a loophole. Will he accept the amendment? If not, will he explain why the loophole is there in the first place? We are very confused.

Paul Scully Portrait Paul Scully
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I will happily talk about that amendment in Committee. However, I take the hon. Member’s point and the spirit in which she makes it. Perhaps we can debate that later, because I totally get what she is saying.

In respect of Russia specifically, we have swiftly implemented the strongest set of economic sanctions ever imposed against a G20 country, including the recent sanctioning of Kremlin associates Alisher Usmanov and Igor Shuvalov. That is worth a combined $19 billion with immediate effect. The Government’s new amendments will also streamline current legislation so that we can respond even more quickly.

We had discussion about funding and resource. The Government have developed a sustainable funding model, including about £400 million over the spending review period. We have announced new investment of £18 million in the next financial year and £12 million in the years after that for economic crime reforms, in addition to £63 million over the spending review period for the Companies House reforms. Since 2006-07, just under £1.2 billion of the assets recovered under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 have been returned to law enforcement agencies.

Paul Scully Portrait Paul Scully
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I will give way one last time.

Gavin Robinson Portrait Gavin Robinson
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I am grateful to the Minister. He will know—I raised this with him earlier—that there was confusion in Northern Ireland about whether, without a legislative consent motion, some of the Bill would not apply to Northern Ireland, creating another loophole that would allow oligarchs to retain assets in the United Kingdom through the back door. Will he confirm that, through the transition period, and knowing that the majority of the Bill does extend to Northern Ireland, he will ensure that there are no loopholes or back doors?

Paul Scully Portrait Paul Scully
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Yes, the Bill does contain provisions relating to the register of overseas entities and unexplained wealth orders that engage devolution powers in both Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Government are engaging closely with colleagues across all three devolved Administrations, who are all supportive of the Bill’s measures, and we continue to work closely with Scotland and Northern Ireland to complete those respective legislative processes at the earliest opportunity.

We clearly want to ensure that we have that Companies House reform, which will be the biggest since its inception 200 years ago. It is a complex area of law, and we will return to it at the earliest possible time. I thank right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions to this excellent and informative debate. I look forward to discussing the Bill in Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time; to stand committed to a Committee of the whole House (Order, this day).

Further proceedings on the Bill stood postponed (Order, this day).

Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill (Money)

Queen’s recommendation signified.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a),

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill, it is expedient to authorise:

(1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any expenditure incurred under or by virtue of the Act by a Minister of the Crown or a government department; and

(2) the payment of sums into the Consolidated Fund.—(Amanda Solloway.)

Question agreed to.