Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Pickles and Desmond Swayne(8 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Swayne
We have advanced a huge amount by agreement and leadership, not by having recourse to compulsion. The overseas territories are now well in advance of many of our major trading partners. It is better to proceed by agreement. Much of the information will be available through the initiative for automatic exchange of beneficial ownership registers, to which 33 countries have now signed up.
Sir Eric Pickles (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need to look very carefully at the purpose of this? Its purpose is not simply to deal with excessive avoidance and evasion schemes—they often mask deeply corrupt and criminal activities. What has been achieved is the ability for our law enforcement agencies to get in there and get that information, without tipping off the criminals we are seeking.
Mr Swayne
I pay tribute to the National Crime Agency, and the unit within it paid for by DFID, for tracing that international corruption. My right hon. Friend is right. Huge amounts of revenue are being denied to the poorest countries in the world, and we have to do something about that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Pickles and Desmond Swayne
Mr Pickles
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his words of welcome. We have indeed known each other for a very long time, but at least he is still recognisable from his photographs from those days, unlike myself. I wish him well in the forthcoming elections to the shadow Cabinet.
The right hon. Gentleman operated an extremely effective burnt earth policy within the Department. He left a legacy in which the cupboard was bare. All that was missing was a note of apology. The cuts that we have had to make have been imposed on us by him. We have managed to ensure that formula grant has not been touched and that no authority will face a revenue cut greater than 2%. That is much better than the £50 billion of unallocated cuts that was the legacy left to our Department.
Mr Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
T4. I understand that, notwithstanding the announcement that the Standards Board will be abolished, the big cheeses of that organisation have written to chief executives of local authorities asking them to supply more business in the form of complaints against accountable and elected representatives. Has the Treasury Bench considered making an example of this quango for its impertinence?