Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jim Shannon and Geoffrey Cox

Thursday 31st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

My hon. Friend must remember that the financial action taskforce in December carried out an evaluation of system responses to money laundering. Of the 60 countries assessed, the United Kingdom emerged first for having the most effective system in the world for combating money laundering. Set against that background, we can make improvements and I hope to make them through the governance changes that I am introducing. We are instituting a ministerial board, which I shall chair. We shall have a much stronger grip on information coming from the Crown Prosecution Service, and we hope to anticipate problems before they arise.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the Attorney General further outline how much money seized from criminal assets in the assets recovery scheme has been reinvested into community funds in the past year?

[The Attorney General]

Last year, £80.1 million was recovered by the Crown Prosecution Service, but I am afraid that I am not in a position to help the hon. Gentleman with regards to the community funds. I can undertake to write to him with those details, and I hope that he will be satisfied with that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jim Shannon and Geoffrey Cox

Thursday 13th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

The request of the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) was for the final and full advice. As I understand it—I read what he said in Hansard—he requested all the final advice. In other words, he requested that it should not be summarised, and it was not. The House had all the final advice given to the Cabinet.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the Attorney General further outline when the legal opinion on changes to the withdrawal agreement sought by the Prime Minister will be released, to clarify any change in his legal advice?

Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position

Debate between Jim Shannon and Geoffrey Cox

Monday 3rd December 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

I was puzzled as to what I was to answer. I disagree with my hon. Friend. We will leave legally on 29 March. To get back, we would have to apply for accession under article 49. We will be in a fundamentally different position on 30 March, if we can get there—and we have to get there, because that will honour the verdict given by the British people on 23 June 2016. The best way of ensuring that we do that, whatever the unsatisfactory elements that I accept are involved in this deal, is to take the key to the door of the cell, and get out on 29 March. This deal is the best means of doing that.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

In the Attorney General’s somewhat bombastic responses to hon. Gentlemen and hon. Ladies, he has not addressed the issue to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds) referred: the backstop down the Irish sea. Will he outline the legal implications of Northern Ireland entering into a customs union with no voice or vote for an indefinite period of time, which to all intents and purposes would create a united Ireland without the mechanism of a border poll, a vote called for within the Belfast agreement?

[The Attorney General]

The hon. Member puts his finger on something that I do regard as being one of the undesirable features of the backstop, which is that there will be rules passed relating to goods. The trade in goods is a narrow field of human and public life, but rules will be passed and the people of Northern Ireland will not have the right of representation in their passage. That is why I think it is essential it should be temporary, why we must strive to make it so, why the extension of the implementation period is a real option in those circumstances, and why I believe, for the reasons I have already given, we can avoid it or avoid it being of any great length.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jim Shannon and Geoffrey Cox

Thursday 1st November 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

I meet the Director of Public Prosecutions regularly, and counter-terrorism is one of those things upon which we focus most closely. I have also met the head of the terrorism division, Deborah Walsh. This is a well-led, well-resourced division. Its prosecution and conviction rate is of the highest in the CPS. I am confident that it has the resources, and if it needs more, we will find them. This is a national priority.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

To address terrorism and paramilitarism, we have to remove the money. What is being done to remove the financial criminal empires that finance terrorism and paramilitarism?

[The Attorney General]

The Crown Prosecution Service this year recovered between £80 million and £100 million of illicit assets. Organised crime and the illicit financing of terrorism is one of the Government’s priorities. It is being co-ordinated by the National Crime Agency. It is being met with a range of new tools, including unexplained wealth orders, which we will be using as hard and as impactfully as we can in future months.