UK Anti-corruption Plan

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Minister to make a statement on the Government’s anti-corruption plan.

[The Minister for Business and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)]

I am delighted to tell the House that we are today publishing the UK’s first anti-corruption plan. The Government are doing more than ever before to tackle the blight of corruption here and around the world and the new cross-government plan sets out 60 actions for Government and partners over the year ahead. I pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), for their work on this issue.

The new anti-corruption plan sets out how we will build a better picture of how corruption affects society and the economy; strengthen our legal and operational tools and activity; enhance our law enforcement response; deny use of our financial system to those trying to abuse it; and step up efforts internationally. I will deal with those points briefly and in turn.

First, it is crucial that we know better the breadth of corruption and how it affects the economy. It is clear that corruption harms prosperity and undermines societies where it is rampant, so we are establishing a new intelligence capacity based in the National Crime Agency with a global reach to investigate and collate evidence in a single place and to make that information available to investigators, potentially worldwide. We will merge the resources currently split between the City of London police, the Met and the National Crime Agency into a new international corruption unit based in the NCA and we are considering what further funding can be directed to support and enhance this work.

We are strengthening our operational tools and the legal framework. We are currently legislating for a new offence of police corruption and operationally pooling investigators who have previously been split among difference forces and agencies. Through the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill we are leading the way on establishing the first public central registry of beneficial ownership, recording who owns companies registered in the UK. That will help law enforcement agencies to remove the corporate veil that too often is used to cover up corrupt activities.

Britain will be the first country in the EU to provide transparency to payments made by multinational companies in the extractives sector and, finally, we will step up our efforts internationally. We are working with partners around the world to build on the G8 commitments at Lough Erne to drive this agenda internationally and strengthen the global system. Britain will lead the way in her historic role of providing the secure, transparent and fair basis of law to govern how we do business, to stamp out corruption at home and abroad so that all can prosper in a truly free economy where the legitimate hard-working business cannot be undercut by the dishonest and the corrupt. For centuries, Britain has played this role and we must do so again. I commend the anti-corruption plan to the House.

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[Stephen Barclay]

I thank the Minister for his statement. The plan is welcome and includes a number of welcome measures, such as action 47, which changes the legal test that applies to restraint orders. Will the Minister confirm that there are a number of notable omissions? For example, the plan does not address the introduction of unexplained wealth orders. Does he accept that 38 days to prove that a complex international transaction is corrupt is a pernicious time limit?

Does the Minister accept that the plan is silent on limited liability partnerships used as shell companies? Does it address the lack of judicial powers identified in the recent judgment from Lady Justice Gloster? The Minister mentioned resourcing, so will he confirm how many people have agreed to transfer to the new unit, given that the police do not have TUPE powers and that it has been suggested that only two of the 35 had agreed to that transfer?

Will the Minister address the fact that the plan refers to a review of the regime on suspicious activity reports, when the issue is what happens when SARs are reported? Out of the 316,000 reported, only 110 were subject to investigation by the proceeds of crime unit. Why does the plan appear silent on that issue? Will he also address issues such as beneficial ownership? The Prime Minister has given welcome leadership on beneficial ownership, but the plan seems to ignore the fact that about 45% of London property over £2 million is owned by offshore companies. It is silent about the time scale on the overseas territories, other than pushing it back to the end of 2016.





Finally, the Minister wrote a very good book—I am sure it is still available in all good bookshops—calling for much tougher sanctions against those in banks guilty of regulatory breaches. Why, when he proposed criminal sanctions in his book, does the plan stay silent on the fact that the biggest fine in the past decade, on a money laundering reporting officer, was £17,500? Was my hon. Friend’s plan not an opportunity to preach about what he wrote?

[Matthew Hancock]

That is the second time in two days that somebody has referred to my book, which I thought was long forgotten. I am delighted not to have to promote it myself and that others are doing so for me.

My hon. Friend raises a series of important points. This is the first UK anti-corruption plan that brings together actions across government. It takes significant steps forward, but nobody would say that the job is complete. Everybody would say that there is further work to do, and I look forward to working with him and other right hon. and hon. Members to do that. Ultimately, we have to balance the need for transparent and non-corrupt contracts with the fact that Britain gains great advantage around the world from having the legal system on which many, many international contracts are based. So we need to draw up the plan carefully and sensibly, but at the same time firmly.

On overseas territories, I can confirm that conversations are under way with overseas territories to ensure that progress is made, and we are indeed making good progress. On the transfer of new units, the two units in the police that have the biggest impact on corruption are in the Met and the City of London police, and both of those units will be part of the National Crime Agency. We are undertaking an additional piece of work to review how much further we need to go in the institutional arrangements. For too long all the work on anti-corruption was split between a multitude of forces and agencies. I am sure my hon. Friend would agree, as he was previously an investigator of such activity. Instead, that work is being brought together in the NCA.

On the point about the number of alleged offences taken forward, the purpose is precisely to raise that number. I hope that further action will be taken. On beneficial ownership, following the Lough Erne agreement, the clauses being considered in the other place, which went through this House in the autumn, are among the most advanced in the world in making sure that corporate transparency is the order of the day—the standard practice. We will see how those clauses bed down. I have no doubt that in years to come we will want to review the effectiveness of those clauses to make sure that they are used appropriately and that the functioning of the register works. Crucially, we must make sure that we continue to drive forward the actions in the UK that have relevance around the world to make sure that we stamp out corruption wherever we find it.