Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill

Debate between Baroness Kramer and Lord Coaker

Committee stage
Monday 14th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Sikka, who again comes forward with a number of amendments that are common sense and seek to shine a light on what is actually going on, and would deliver the transparency that so many of us seek in the Bill. We come to the transition period and the retrospective application, which is the subject of one of the most important groups, if not the most important group, of amendments this evening. It relates to the speed at which the register is implemented, as well as new measures that will apply during a proposed six-month transition period.

My noble friend Lady Chapman, along with the noble Lord, Lord Fox—we are grateful for his support—tabled Amendments 56, 61, 80 and 83. They seek to accelerate the implementation of the register of overseas entities, requiring initial registration within 28 days of commencement—again, seeking to avoid a situation where individuals or entities simply circumvent the law. This is not just a view held by us: the ICAEW, an accountants’ body, in the briefing that it sent your Lordships, also supported three months as a new transition period, with the ability to extend it for a further three months, were there a need to do so.

It is also worth noting that the sanction provisions—Part 1 of the Bill—will not commence on Royal Assent. Rather, they will require a commencement order laid by the Secretary of State. We understand that various steps need to be taken before that order can be laid. Can the Minister indicate how many steps there might be and roughly how long that will take? Is the upcoming Prorogation of Parliament, for example, likely to delay the introduction of any of the enabling regulations? When the Government moved from 18 months to six months in the other place, that left many thinking that the register would be active before the year end. Could it not actually be longer, given the need to implement various IT changes, inform people of the new requirements and so on? The House requires some reassurance about the commencement: in other words, when do the six months actually start? It could be six months now before the six months start: that would be a year for the implementation period. That is of real concern to us all, given the concerns that there are about the six months; so while we welcome the measures outlined in government Amendments 86 and 87, they do not prevent land being sold, gifted or transferred, and neither do they further reduce the current six-month implementation window. As many noble Lords said at Second Reading, a register of overseas entities has been promised for a number of years, and we certainly do not want any further delay, but there are serious questions to be asked.

Along with the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, we also tabled Amendment 92. This is an evolution of the David Davis amendment considered in the other place. We accept that one very high-profile person of interest was Roman Abramovich. He is now subject to sanctions, and he plans to leave Chelsea under whatever arrangements he manages to make—or not, given the sanctions on him. However, one of the concerns around his case was that the Home Office was actually studying his affairs, but had no powers to take interim action while that assessment was being carried out. Is there therefore not a great deal of merit in our amendment, which seeks to freeze assets on an interim basis where there is good reason for doing so? In other words, if we are looking to sanctioning somebody, surely we would want to freeze their assets to prevent them from getting rid of them before a full order is put in place. At the moment, as I understand it, that cannot happen. I am not sure that under the Bill it would able to take place either, without this amendment. The Government might wish to look at the interim freezing of assets.

It might be, for example, that a person of interest hails from Belarus, which continues to enable the actions of Russia’s armed forces. What can be done about that? Does the legislation cover people in that situation as well? Again, we pose these questions to be helpful to the Government and raise serious concerns. We want the initiatives to succeed, but it is only with scrutiny—and the Government reacting and responding to the scrutiny, and acting on the various amendments that noble Lords have put forward from across this House—that we can have confidence in them. There might be only a few bad individuals among the applicants to the new register but the truth is, as my noble friend Lord Sikka and others have said, that we simply will not know what the case is unless there is maximum transparency. That transparency cannot come quickly enough.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, my colleagues are doing all the heavy lifting from these Benches, and I am incredibly grateful to them. I have signed Amendment 92 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, which I think found itself in drifting into the wrong group: it is actually part of group 3. One of the reasons why I signed it is this frustration, which I know the Government share, that, before a sanction is actually put in place, the individual who is likely to be sanctioned has, in a sense, plenty of warning signs and can use that opportunity to move various resources to a safe haven.

Much of the conversation around this Bill has been on fixed assets that are difficult to liquidate—property or complex companies—and I can understand why they might be less concerned about people knowing they are about to be sanctioned having the opportunity to move those. However, those same individuals tend to have very large investments in far more easily transportable assets—cash equivalents. I know that the Government are going to be looking at cryptocurrencies, which I have been very concerned about, when they get to the second phase of this Bill. It would, however, also be wrong to ignore such assets as jewellery and art. That is not just a tale from an Agatha Christie novel. I was a banker for many years in the mid-west, and most of my clients were exemplary people, but we certainly had one scoundrel who made the slight mistake of trying to impress a very charming young woman with an English accent and, as a consequence and with the aid of specialists, I was able to seize something worth close to half a billion dollars in artwork and jewellery against an attempt to defraud the bank. I ask therefore that the Minister think about these liquid assets, which play a part of the picture, but have been very little part of the discussion.