Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, with reference to the Sixth Special Report HC911, Tackling corruption overseas: Government Response to the Fourth Report from the International Development Committee, Session 2016-17, whether it remains the Government's policy to persuade the UK's Crown Dependencies to adopt public registers of beneficial ownership.

It remains the Government’s ambition for public registers to become the global standard. Our priority is to implement the new bilateral arrangements which were concluded with the Overseas Territories in 2016. Under the arrangements, the Overseas Territories have committed to establish, where they have not already done so, central registers of beneficial ownership information or similarly effective systems, and to give UK law enforcement and tax authorities near real-time access to beneficial ownership information on corporate and legal entities incorporated in these jurisdictions.

The Overseas Territories have also committed to systematic exchange of beneficial ownership information as part of a wider international initiative.