Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Leigh of Hurley

Report stage
Tuesday 20th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

Although my noble friend the Minister has described me in very flattering terms today, for which I am grateful, I will not add to the flattery, as his noble kinsman is no longer sitting next to me. I just want to add a note of caution, because it is on the record in Amendment 93 from my noble friend Lord Agnew, on the possibility of HMRC taking AML to be of equal priority to tax collecting, essentially. I declare an interest as chairman of the Finance Bill Sub-Committee of the Economic Affairs Committee that investigated R&D tax credits, which led to HMRC’s accounts being qualified given the level of uncertainty. I just want to put it on the record that we all want HMRC to focus on tax collection, with fraud focused on in other areas.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

The Minister will be blushing with the fulsome praise that he has received. I think he described it as a significant package of improvements and as major steps. The noble Lord, Lord Agnew, went further and described them as revolutionary changes. The Minister can be sure that he has hit an important nail very firmly on the head with this set of amendments. I think we all believe that this makes the Bill a much better Bill, and for that, we are very pleased.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Leigh of Hurley

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th May 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly because we have heard some excellent speeches from the noble Lords opposite.

I just want to say, observationally, that we have debated a number of different groups where inequality of arms has been at the centre. When we talked about SLAPPs, we talked about inequality of resources. We have just talked about whistleblowing, where it is the same issue, and here we are again. In a sense, the Government are in different places with different elements of this. We need to have some sort of integrated response on how all people can be equal before the law because they can afford to do it—in other words, they can afford not to win, which is the issue here. We have our law enforcement agencies, we have perfectly innocent people going about their businesses trying to blow a whistle, and we have people who are trying to report issues publicly but are being SLAPPed. All of these important elements are being blocked through the inequality in access to the courts.

To refer back to this group of amendments, it seems to me that, if this amendment is not the answer, there must be some other answer. I look forward to the response from the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, because it is quite clear that unexplained wealth orders have failed to deliver on whatever promise they may have had. Perhaps the Minister can explain how many of them there have been and what exactly the barrier has been, as well as what the cost per prosecution would be; that is an interesting point of view.

In the end, this is about inequality of arms. The first point here is that the Government must recognise that this is an issue; they then have to settle down and find ways of working with people who understand the law in order to eliminate that inequality. Otherwise, most of what we are talking about here will not happen.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, I am prompted to rise by the words of the noble Lord, Lord Trevethin and Oaksey. I think he was referring to Amendment 106C, which we will come on to later this afternoon and which would extend the costs cap beyond UWOs. In the certainty that my noble friend the Minister will seek to ensure that Amendment 106C is agreed to, let me simply say that the amendment we are debating now, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier, would be complementary and extremely helpful to Amendment 106C.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Leigh of Hurley

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th April 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, I will not join the complete love-in but I will focus on the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, in particular on his provision that covers the point about SIC codes and the requirement that those are accurate. I will echo and perhaps take further his remarks about the problems that exist with SIC codes.

I appreciate that it would not be in the Minister’s remit to answer on this during our debate, but perhaps he might take time to write to us afterwards to comment on SIC codes. As he knows, they came into operation in 1948, when there was a very different business environment. They have been refreshed since then but the last refresh was in 2007 and a huge amount has happened since then. The Ron Kalifa report commented that about 50% of fintech companies do not have an appropriate SIC code. Many companies fall into a number of SIC codes, but a company can choose only four. In fact, out of the 5.3 million companies at Companies House, 3.9 million have chosen only one code, which says to me that they are just not taking it seriously.

Companies are not taking it seriously because they do not see SIC codes as particularly relevant or helpful to them. They often just repeat the previous year’s one, or indeed the one of incorporation, which an accountant may have chosen almost at random. As a result, many companies are choosing the SIC codes starting with “Other”, such as 82990 for other business services. In some areas, one-third of companies are going just for “Other”.

The reason this is important is that a whole lot of government decisions are made on understanding what businesses do and how many are in a particular sector. During Covid, it was apparent from the events industry that large numbers of events companies had not properly registered their business within the SIC codes, so the Government were not able to assess the needs of those companies. Likewise, for searches helping businesses to market to other businesses, unless they know what those other businesses, particularly conglomerates, undertake it is difficult for such businesses to make progress.

Private enterprise has come up with its own version of SIC codes: rating agencies and others, such as The Data City, have created their own codes that they apply to businesses. I very much hope that this might be an area of focus in the near future, so that we can enhance the existing SIC codes and give effect to the amendment tabled the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. Then we can see what businesses actually do here in the UK.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, speaking to the Minister before the Committee commenced, I predicted that this group would be crucial, certainly to what we will be discussing in today’s set of amendments. Your Lordships have demonstrated that through the detail and the concern expressed on identity verification and more general issues. I am sure the Minister will have picked up that right across the Room, this is not a political issue. It is a practical issue about how this Bill, when it becomes an Act, will work—or, indeed, whether it will.

It is worth emphasising that authorised corporate service providers can and do provide legitimate services for businesses. We know that and that they are important. However, research by very many civil society organisations, not least Transparency International, has shown that in many cases those providers are at the spearhead of the abuse that happens in our society and have been the key enabler of the money laundering that we have seen across this country. They have built shell organisations of thousands of companies to be able to do that process, which is why, taken separately and together, these amendments all have something which I hope the Minister will be able to take away and discuss with your Lordships, with his colleagues and with the team. We have had some excellent speeches here.

National Security and Investment Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Leigh of Hurley

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, the Bill currently provides that the mandatory filing requirement applies equally to all investors, as my noble friend Lord Vaizey said. This is despite the Government stating quite rightly that domestic investors are inherently less likely to pose a national security risk. The Bill is ultimately about managing risk, so we need to ensure that the notifications that the ISU receives are the right sample. Exempting UK nationals from this process would be a far from proportionate approach. Since we are in the business of managing risk in a proportionate manner, we should consider whether investors from specific allies—Australia, Canada, the US and New Zealand have been suggested—should be exempt since, again, the evidence strongly suggests that such investments are less likely to pose a national security risk, although I will come on to one caveat at the end of my remarks.

This aspect would also align more closely with some of our competitor jurisdictions. In any event, since national security is always paramount, it is worth noting that these amendments concern only the mandatory filing requirement. The Secretary of State would remain fully empowered to call in such transactions for review even if they concerned our citizens or allies or were below the threshold for control. That is an important distinction. I hope it means that lots of potential acquisitions by UK players will not get covered by notifiable regulations if we approve these amendments.

I am sure that the legislation is not meant to cover the situation where someone starts a business with a great idea and, say, £1,000. That business might touch on a number of sectors including, say, defence. We know that the sector definitions are very widely drawn. This entrepreneur then goes to some family and friends to seek funding, which might be through an EIS or, even better, an SEIS or possibly an EIS fund. The family and friends are all local. I know one investor who has only ever invested—with great success—in businesses run by someone he has personally met in his local pub. Such investors are vital to the UK economy and, in my opinion, do not carry a risk to security any greater than the person who started the business. As we currently have no size threshold at all, they would be caught by the Bill. It would be a great shame if they decided that they did not want to wait the 30 days or more for the Secretary of State to opine.

We all know the purpose of the Bill and it is not to restrict UK investors investing in UK companies. If we go down the route of exempting UK companies, we need to look more carefully at the definition of a UK company, which Amendment 96 seeks to do. I recognise that this is difficult. For example, many companies have private equity investment in them. They are clearly UK companies with a UK HQ, UK board and UK business but because the general partner investor may be based in, say, Guernsey, for the limited partners requirement—and the limited partner is almost certainly based abroad—they would need to be treated as a UK company to ensure a level playing field.

My noble friend Lady Noakes and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, have made some valid points. It is indeed true, for example, that many companies which are essentially Chinese are listed on NASDAQ. Would we call them American or Chinese? There has to be some very careful examination.

My last concern, which I mentioned in respect of Amendment 95, is to stop shell companies being created in countries such as Australia. Under these amendments, a shell company could buy a UK tech business and be sold immediately thereafter to a non-friendly company. Undertakings would therefore have to be put in to protect against that situation.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, that Her Majesty’s Government have underestimated the potential workload that this unit will get, but I am not convinced that his solution to reducing that workload is the right one. We have heard many speeches but I would single out those of my noble friend Lady Bowles, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, as reasons why we should not be separating out one set of companies due to their nationality. The noble Lord made the point clearly that the criterion should be: is it or is it not a national security risk, rather than, does it or does it not come from Hampshire or New Hampshire? That should be the rule running through this.

The noble Lord, Lord Leigh, when moving into caveat territory, started to explain why singling out foreign companies becomes an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. First, what is one, and is it a shell company? Is it listed on NASDAQ but actually resident in Beijing? Those kinds of complications start to point to the Government’s analysis that all companies are in. Clearly, it will be easier for the company whose owner your friend meets in a pub to get through the process and not be called in, compared with one that hails from the Far East, for example. Surely, the process should be the efficiency with which the unit can deal with and dismiss issues quickly, rather than accidentally filtering out things that we should not.

On the concept that, “Our friends are our friends, so we include them as ourselves”, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, made the wider point about access to the technology. Access can be cut off by our friends as much as by ourselves or, indeed, by external companies. I am sorry, but I am going to repeat the example I gave at Second Reading. A British company with a US-based subsidiary took the technology to the United States, started to produce it and made one small amendment to that technology. The use and sale of the technology back to the UK was then blocked by the Department of Defense under export controls, because it considered it to then be United States strategic technology. I am sure that such things happen all the time—this example is just one that I happen to know about.

Regional agnosticism, the gospel according to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, is the sensible approach here, and I hope that the Minister can explain his views on this issue.

National Security and Investment Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Leigh of Hurley

Committee stage & Lords Hansard
Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, we have heard from a chartered accountant, a banker and a lawyer all in unanimity; it is very worrying. As I understand it, this approach is consistent with some regimes in certain countries. The idea of having a transaction fully voided would lead to many innocent third parties being in limbo. Would it not be better that a transaction or certain parts of it were voidable, as some parts of the transaction may not be in any way relevant to national security. That gives HM Government more flexibility. By being voidable, it allows for negotiation, discussion and parts perhaps to be voided and not the whole thing.

Once again, insisting that the transaction could be voided in legislation will simply deter overseas investors and buyers because it is a huge amount of uncertainty to have such a black and white separation. The amendments still allow for the dictum of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, in respect of Clause 15 of non-notified acquisitions being able to be retrospectively validated rather than retrospectively invalidated. Giving the Government maximum flexibility seems a wise and good thing to seek.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

I want to pick up where the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, finished: it seems almost punitively value-destroying to have a mandatory process. There will clearly be times when voiding will be the inevitable consequence, but there are others when a retrospective approval would be best for the country, the value, the shareholders, the employees and all the other third parties connected to that business. To lock the Government into auto-voiding seems unnecessary. It may be designed to put people off from not reporting in future but, by their nature, those who do not report probably are not aware of these sanctions, so it is unlikely to have that deterrent effect.

On Amendments 41 and 44, the “Waste Land” amendments, certainty comes up again, as predicted. All they do is ask for a clear signal rather than something simply not happening being the signal. The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, raised external messaging, but such clarity would also help build a body of case law which would help future practitioners understand what they should and should not do. Having that case law and those examples clearly delineated by a full stop rather than the whimper that is currently enshrined in law would be a much better way of exposing such cases for the textbook.