EU: Money-laundering Directive

Debate between Lord Davies of Oldham and Lord Willoughby de Broke

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, on introducing this debate. The degree of sharp interest shown by all noble Lords in this issue may have surprised him. Passion has been aroused, and so it should be. It is interesting that it has been identified that the evils that the Government should address are tax avoidance and money laundering. We were also greatly concerned about money flowing towards terrorist activities. That agenda has come very much to the fore over the past decade. If we are not concerned about those issues and whether our law is adequate to control them as best as it can, we are clearly not playing our full role in the public interest.

I congratulate the Government on the work done last year. It is quite clear that they are already committed to creating a public register of the beneficial ownership of companies and therefore a substantial part of the issue is being tackled. I am quite sure that all parties subscribe to that position, with the notable exception of the party that is exceedingly well represented in this Room but is not normally well represented in Parliament by elected Members. Although this issue is complex, the Government have made some considerable strides, and it is clear that we have a slightly more difficult issue, which the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, identified, because of our common law than is the case with countries on the continent. We will wrestle with these issues.

Trusts fit into a very distinctive and different pattern compared with organisations elsewhere, but the point is obvious. If trusts are not included in the legislation, they will become the default mechanism whereby all miscreants will carry on their practices. We know that they go on to a significant extent and that the wider public out there expects Parliament to tackle these issues once they have been revealed. It is therefore of the greatest significance that we keep the momentum up. I understand entirely the anxieties of the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, but they are overwhelmed by the need of our society for protection against proven misdemeanours in the use of companies and trusts.

I should emphasise that this is not a new issue. Some people will defend freedom to the nth degree and say that you should not intrude upon private arrangements. Between $8 million and $10 million was secreted away in trusts by an individual, General Pinochet. I doubt whether many people in our country think that he was entitled to the privacy vouchsafed to him at that time; nor should we underestimate the dangers that are implicit in defective and ineffective law. That is why we have to tackle these difficult issues, and I am glad that noble Lords today have pressed the Minister with clear questions about the difficulties that have to be overcome.

It is clearly the case that people enter trusts, particularly family trusts, on the basis of an understanding of privacy. It may therefore be necessary for the Government to tackle trusts in more than one category: those that are capable of being used for nefarious purposes and those that clearly come into the common category of a very large number of people who are merely seeking to safeguard relationships in their family and their resources. However, there is no alternative. We particularly need international action because, whatever we do, if it is not carried out by other advanced economies, all our efforts will be insignificant. Automatic exchange agreements, which would leave the miscreants concentrating on the weakest link in the chain, the country that they identify as being least able to enforce such agreements and implement them, would be used. Financial tax laws are all voluntary. We have nothing that is compulsory, which is what this directive and the amendments are directed at.

I recognise that this is a complex issue and that the Minister is bound to indicate that there are areas in which it is more straightforward to act than in others, but we should bear in mind the strength of the majority opinion in this debate, which has been very forcibly expressed, that we cannot have a situation where the significant holders of real wealth are able to avoid their obligations to the wider public and to the consumers and nations that they serve. It is important that we have legislation that carries out the action that we all regard as essential.

[Lord Willoughby de Broke]

My Lords, some noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and to a certain extent the noble Lord, Lord Davies, have missed the point that I was trying to make. There are already, under the Money Laundering Regulations 2007, absolute requirements on financial intermediaries and lawyers to report to the relevant authorities if they suspect that there is any illegal use of trusts. They already have the weapons; the idea that there is absolutely no legislation to deal with trusts is entirely misplaced.