Anti-corruption: Beneficial Ownership Registration

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Collins of Highbury]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they have taken following the anti-corruption summit to address the estimated $1 trillion a year lost to poor countries through illicit capital flows and through tax avoidance and crime, and whether they have a timeline for creating registers of beneficial ownership in the Overseas Territories.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, through our G8 presidency in 2013 and the Prime Minister’s recent anti-corruption summit, the UK has been at the forefront of international efforts to tackle corruption and tax evasion, and to help developing countries to do the same. All the UK’s Overseas Territories and Crown dependencies have agreed to provide UK law enforcement and tax agencies with full access to company beneficial-ownership information in their jurisdictions.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that progress report, but of course transparency is the key to tackling corruption. How can we demonstrate our leadership in the battle against corruption when our territories are the biggest facilitators of it? Public registers are required. We have only to look down the river at the St George Wharf Tower; two-thirds of it is in foreign ownership and a quarter is held through offshore companies based in tax havens. Will the Minister outline the steps that we will be taking to get full transparency and what timetable is to be set by the Government so that the Overseas Territories will be required to have public registers? Failure to do so will result in even more monuments to this corruption on our riverfront.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, there are two parts to the question: what are we doing about public registers of beneficial ownerships, particularly in our Overseas Territories? First, we should acknowledge that we made huge progress in getting them to have registers at all in some cases. All the Overseas Territories and Crown dependencies will share information with our tax and law enforcement agencies. As regards the tower mentioned by the noble Lord, the Prime Minister made a commitment at the anti-corruption summit that we will have the first public register of foreign-owned companies owning property in this country, and that will apply not only to new but to existing ownership by foreign-owned companies. It will also apply to a public register of public contracting. Lastly, I should say that, as a result of the anti-corruption summit, 12 countries have either agreed or are agreeing to have public registers.