Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Eatwell

Consideration of Commons amendments
Monday 11th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak in favour of my Motion D. I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his ongoing dialogue with me as we grind to the end of this Bill: he has been patient and courteous, as ever. My problem is that the Government continue to say one thing and then do something different. Just to remind noble Lords, the reason I pressed my original amendment was that a gaping hole had opened up in this newly created register of overseas interests. It is barely a year old and we have more than 50,000 properties owned by an entity whose beneficial owners are withheld from public view. That is approaching one-third of all entries. It is rapidly becoming the default advice from cute law firms to their overseas clients to use a trust structure that is opaque.

In rejecting my original Commons amendment, the Government claimed refuge behind the principle of financial privilege. This is bizarre, if not worse, but in a spirit of collaboration I will not use the word that I had planned to use. The costs to Companies House of publishing trust information are estimated on the back of an illusory envelope at between £600,000 and £2.8 million—a figure supported by absolutely no methodology—but under the Bill, Companies House funding is going to rise exponentially. The current filing fee of £13 will rise to anywhere between £60 and £90 if the guidance we have been given is followed. Taking the bottom-end number, £60 means an increase of £47 a year times 4 million companies, or £188 million a year, against this odd figure of £600,000 to £2.8 million. Even if the higher filing fees deterred some company creation or dissolution for non-viable entities, the additional cost, frankly, is a rounding error. Indeed, if the Government were to approach this logically and calculated that as a transparency cost, it would be around about 70p per registered company per year, or about 1.25%.

I give this example only because I continually worry that I get very clear assurances from the Minister but the actions taken by the Government are rather different. I accept through gritted teeth that we cannot debate that amendment as I was blocked from tabling it. This leaves us with a much watered-down proposal to try to hold the Government to account to get on with the consultation they say they need to ensure that there are no legal challenges. The Government have accepted that they need to start straightaway, in this calendar year, but they do not yet accept the principle of my proposed new subsection (2) that the consultation includes the principle of public access to protected data on a bulk basis.

This sounds arcane, but it is crucial because currently HMRC is not providing the information when requested, and it can be requested only on a case-by-case basis. As I have shown, there are already more than 50,000 hidden owners where the public are being denied the information, so doing it individually is simply not practical. I have consistently said that those with a bona fide need for confidentiality should have it, but this would be a very small proportion of the 50,000.

On the terms of the consultation, there are a couple of elephant traps that the Government should be aware of. A few years ago, when the consultation was issued to tighten up the non-dom loopholes, the lawyers’ excuse for not tightening them up was that anyone who declared non-dom status should have a reasonable expectation that it should last in perpetuity. That sounds pretty sinister to me, but apparently that argument has already been rolled out to civil servants on the issue of more transparency with trusts. I warn the Minister to be alert because, as I understand it, civil servants have already expressed their compliance with this idea. I hope that we as politicians are still running the country, not the civil servants.

We have heard from my noble friend the Minister and he has given commitments, which I very much appreciate. However, I hope he understands why I am extremely nervous: what he says and what the Government do are not always totally aligned. I will take his words exactly as he says them, though, and I ask him to keep a very careful eye on this process over the next few months. I think he has learned enough about me to know that, for all my many weaknesses, one thing I am is dogged. We will keep a careful eye on this. On that basis, I will withdraw my amendment.

[Lord Eatwell (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Agnew. I do this as a former chair of the Jersey Financial Services Commission. In Jersey we made a major effort to increase the transparency of trust information so that beneficial ownership could be accurately identified. One of the inhibitions for cleaning up, if you like, the register in Jersey was the behaviour of the Government in the United Kingdom, and their persistent obfuscation of the way in which trusts were to be treated.

The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, contains exactly the process that needs to be dealt with in a consultation. I understand the assurances he may have received and that he may feel it appropriate to withdraw his amendment, but I hope he proves as dogged as we know him to be in pursuing this. I assure him of my continuing support.

Net-zero Emissions Target

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Eatwell

Monday 11th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot speak to the detail of the Budget in a few weeks’ time, but we have a strong message, which we have been consistent with over the last few years. We have made clear, for example, the recently announced emissions trading scheme, which provides a clear road map for heavy users of carbon. We are about to introduce the plastic packaging tax, which again is clear, for industry to get behind. We will continue to send those messages, but I think they are pretty clear. Indeed, we are seeing dramatic change by business. For example, coming up to COP 26, three huge companies have made very strong commitments: GSK, Hitachi and Microsoft have all committed to get to net zero in the next few years.

[Lord Eatwell (Lab)]

My Lords, in the development of environmental fiscal policy, do the Government accept the fundamental principle that the polluter pays?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, ultimately, that has to be the direction of travel for us, but we cannot get there overnight. To implement that sort of stringent regime now would dramatically increase costs, which would then come back to consumers in other ways.

Health and Social Care Levy Bill

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Eatwell

2nd reading & Order of Commitment discharged & 3rd reading
Monday 11th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

I respectfully disagree with the noble Baroness on that. Your Lordships are having a much more detailed debate on health reform very shortly, so I am sure that will be teased out in those discussions.

The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, asked about the White Paper. As I said, we certainly hope to see that out in the next few weeks.

The noble Lord, Lord Desai, asked about the taxation of carried interest and private equity firms, but I suspect he was being slightly disingenuous as he knows we are not extending this to capital gains tax, only to dividends. No doubt there is a separate debate to be had on that, but at the moment it is a capital gain.

The essence of this debate is the fairness of the way the tax is being structured—

[Lord Eatwell (Lab)]

It is fortunate that the Minister just brought up once again the issue of fairness and the discussion of it in the House. At the beginning of his speech, he referred to the proportion of the total raised from—I think he said—the top 14% of payers. This is a completely bogus statistic and has nothing to do with fairness. Let me give him an example. Let us suppose that someone earns £1 million and there is a 10% levy. They pay £100,000 on the levy and have £900,000 left. Then let us suppose that someone earns £10,000 a year—they would still be caught by this levy, by the way—and, to keep the numbers easy, that they still pay 10%. Their income has gone down from £10,000 to £9,000 and, as Marcus Rashford has said, they are choosing whether to eat or to stay warm. To understand fairness is to understand the impact on individuals of the measures taken. Using these absolutely bogus numbers, which are not at all representative of fairness, simply distorts and degrades the debate.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

I take on board the noble Lord’s points, but the reality is that the highest-paid in this country are paying the largest contribution to this tax and indeed PAYE itself. I accept entirely what he says about the impact being disproportionately greater on poorer people, but that is why we have designed the structure to protect as many people as possible. As I mentioned in my opening comments, some 6 million people will not be subject to this at all, and we have kept 40% of smaller businesses out of it. Those on higher earnings will pay a lot more, and that is an important principle, but I absolutely accept the point he made.

I am grateful for the opportunity to explain the Bill and address the issues that have arisen today, and I now commend the Bill to the House.