Companies: Overseas Territories Registration

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, this Government are leading the way in ensuring that there is transparency in tax matters internationally. We often find ourselves leading but not necessarily having the support of all those around the world. The overseas territories are indeed separate jurisdictions with their own democratically elected Governments, under which they are responsible for financial matters. We have worked in partnership with them on this matter and have made great progress on having central registers of beneficial ownership. When my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer met the G5 in the United States last week, he made it clear that further reforms can be made in the future. So this is a work in progress for everybody, but let us recognise the great strides already made by the overseas territories.

[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.

[Lord Rooker]

I am grateful. The Prime Minister deserves substantial credit for the actions taken so far, but why are only UK law enforcement authorities involved in this? What is the problem with our partners? Some weeks ago I went on the first kleptocracy tour in London to view the properties bought with laundered stolen money through our overseas territories. Our partners in the EU have as much of an interest in finding out who the beneficial owners are as we have, so why is access to this information restricted to UK law enforcement authorities? Gibraltar and Montserrat are opening up their registers to the rest of the EU, so why can we not go a bit further than that? Even if we cannot allow journalists and other interested bodies access to this information, surely the law enforcement authorities of other, friendly partner countries should have access to those registers.

[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.