Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps he is taking to ensure that UK Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies introduce public registers of beneficial ownership; and whether he will set a timetable for their introduction.

The UK Government works closely with the Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies on tax and transparency issues. Our priority is the implementation of the new bilateral arrangements concluded with them in 2016, which are due to come into effect by June this year. Under these arrangements, Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories with a financial centre 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 their jurisdictions. Nevertheless, it remains the Government’s ambition for public registers to become the global standard. If this happens, we would expect the Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies to follow suit.