Companies: Overseas Territories Registration

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, I am going to sit down and I suggest that somebody gives way.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, clearly, there is progress to be made on that very point. My right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer wrote to the G20 members last week with regard to the G5 initiative on the automatic exchange of beneficial ownership information, exactly in line with what the noble Lord proposes. The initiative is still very new, but we are going to start discussion with the overseas territories and Crown dependencies shortly and I hope that our EU partners will take note.

[Lord Naseby]

Since it is an international conference and we are in the chair, will the UK Government be pressing the US to explain and to rectify the situation where the states of Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming allow no transparency of information on any subject, to the detriment of our overseas territories? Undoubtedly, if that continues, we will see a loss of business from our overseas territories to those three US states.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, we will be pressing all those who attend the conference to pursue greater transparency. We have made it clear that the global gold standard ought to be public, central registers of beneficial ownership. We will say that to our great friends and to those who are not perhaps such close friends but will be there and will, I hope, be our close friends by the end.