Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing legitimate interest access filters for beneficial ownership registers.

Please refer to my Written Ministerial Statement of 3 July which provides an update and details of next steps.

It remains our expectation that the Overseas Territories (OTs) and Crown Dependencies will ultimately implement fully public registers. Where OTs are implementing registers of beneficial ownership accessible to those with legitimate interest, we have set out that we expect access to be granted to a wide range of legitimate users, that registers should enable proactive investigations and should act as a deterrent to those seeking to conceal illicit gains.