Money Laundering

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Viscount Waverley

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness will probably be aware, in 2018 we created a helpfully named quango oversight group called OPBAS, the professional body supervision group. It produces an annual report, which is always hard hitting on any failures—as indeed its most recent one was. This illustrates that we are entirely self-critical, to ensure that we are watching these developments carefully.

[Viscount Waverley (CB)]

My Lords, in assisting the World Alliance of International Financial Centers, I have found that while we may not think that the UK, as a non-EU financial centre, is a money laundering hub, apparently the rest of the world does. Might inconsistent definitions globally between regulators, legal jurisdictions and international law about who or what is a money launderer be a major part of the problem? As a financial centre, we should ensure the same levels of compliance for all industries, including the property sector, to dispel the notion that money launderers’ illicit money or investments can be under cover here.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, it is a harsh judgment to say that we are a honeypot for international money launderers. We are one of the largest financial centres in the world, so the volume of money passing through our system is colossal. We have been judged by the FATF as one of the most effective regulators of this area in the world. We have the second- highest level of fines so far. As I mentioned in response to earlier questions, we continue to review the situation carefully. For example, at the moment we are looking at Companies House legislation to make sure that registrations there are more carefully vetted.

Economic Update

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Viscount Waverley

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I do not have those figures to hand, but there will be ongoing economic Statements and my right honourable friend the Chancellor will address this in his Budget in a few weeks’ time. It is perhaps worth pointing out international comparisons; the way the ONS uses data here has had a detrimental impact on how it has reported on the shrinkage of our economy, because it considers outputs instead of inputs on things such as the salaries of teachers and other civil servants, who were not necessarily working because of the crisis but were still being paid. There will be more information on this, particularly in the Budget.

[Viscount Waverley (CB)]

My Lords, noting the expected but regrettable economic downturn, is it not excellent economic news that Unite has suspended strike action at Rolls-Royce at Barnoldswick, saving 350 jobs? Hurrah to that. But how will the Government address the challenge, talking more in UK terms rather than taking a four-separate-nations approach, of how we will unite the four kingdoms to speak with one voice on economic priorities and an implementation strategy?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con) [V]]

I share the noble Viscount’s view that we need to talk more of a single nation. I fear we will hear more of this up to the devolved elections over the next few months, but I hope that, after that, we can get back to speaking more as a single country.

Future of Financial Services

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Viscount Waverley

Wednesday 11th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

I take on board my noble friend’s comments. In relation to flood defences, I must declare an interest: my farm runs down to the sea and I have some three miles of coast, which is under continual attack by the elements. But we have increased the commitment of funding for flood defences; I think it was in the Budget in March, and it certainly recognised that this is a major element of our national infrastructure. In terms of seeing an allocation into these kind of assets, this falls partly into the previous question about ensuring that we get a wider allocation into infrastructure and of course into sea defence and indeed flood defence.

[Viscount Waverley (CB) [V]]

My Lords, if fluency in fintech will define the future prosperity of the UK, policy alignment and regulatory equivalence are essential with the EU and global counterparties. Does the Minister agree that a key goal is to encourage digital trade, and then to help our SMEs access global markets? I refer to my declaration in the register. The range of financial interventions from Governments and regulators has expanded in an unco-ordinated fashion, underlining the need to strengthen regulatory co-operation. What incentives and assistance will be available to promote standardisation, reusability and rationalisation of technology to standardise taxonomies, document digitalisation, implementation of distributed ledger technology and artificial intelligence?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, we absolutely acknowledge the role of fintech in the economy. It generated some £11 billion in 2019 and employed more than 76,000 people. The 2020 report has highlighted the UK as a global leader. Likewise, in the payments landscape, we are also highly innovative because we again are a large economy. In 2018, more than 230,000 faster payments were sent every hour, compared to fewer than 3,000 10 years earlier. The noble Viscount is concerned about regulation. The financial regulators continue to provide a platform that facilitates innovation in this space. For example, the Financial Conduct Authority has accepted a significant number of DLT-based projects into its regulatory sandbox to enable the adoption of this technology to deliver better financial services with appropriate consumer safeguards.

Economy Update

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Viscount Waverley

Tuesday 10th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

I share the concerns of the right reverend Prelate about jobs. The honest answer is that we do not have enough visibility on the impact to the economy beyond March. Coming out of lockdown, we saw a steady reduction in the number of people using the furlough scheme. It dropped every month from July to August to September. I do not have all the information yet, but hopefully it will be published shortly. The key is whether we can avoid extending this awful lockdown beyond 2 December. I am confident that if we can avoid that, we will see a rapid pick up of the economy, which will hopefully reduce the number of job losses that the right reverend Prelate is so concerned about.

[Viscount Waverley (CB) [V]]

My Lords, could the Minister set out the vision from the perspective of his department as to how the various help initiatives, including the job retention and self-isolation schemes, can impact UK trade in delivering a sustainable economy at national and international level, given that our economy is in the eye of a perfect storm of incomplete Brexit-related negotiations, a changing of the guard in the US, direct and indirect consequences of Covid, including supply chain complications, and a worsening employment situation?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

I agree with the noble Viscount that we face an unprecedented storm of events, and I share his concern. On the role of the Treasury and, indeed, my other department, the Cabinet Office, we are doing a great deal to try to ameliorate some of this. For example, project speed, on which I deputise for the Chancellor, has brought together a number of initiatives to pump prime the economy—and we have published our first initiatives on that. We have a further possible 80 projects, which will be used to pump prime the economy, dealing with blockages to infrastructure, speeding up infrastructure, the commitment to building additional schools and accelerating the building of 40-odd hospitals. We have announced through the IPA some £37 billion of infrastructure, and I hope that we will announce around the time of the spending review the national infrastructure strategy, which will show further the investment that the Government are making.