Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Robert Buckland

Report stage
Wednesday 25th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Robert Buckland]

I was going to spare the blushes of the Minister for Security, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) and the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), but my hon. Friend has said it for me, and he is right. They know that what I am saying does not just have force, but that they agree with it. That will no doubt carry great weight—

[Tom Tugendhat]

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Sir Robert Buckland]

Of course.

[Tom Tugendhat]

What I am enormously enjoying in this Session is the way in which Bills are being picked up and put down by different Ministers. When they are on the Front Bench, they do one thing; when they are on the Back Benches, they say another—sadly, that is the nature of our current political system. It is taking a little while, I admit, for many of us to realise quite how long it can take to get things through in government. Those who have been in government for many years are sharing their knowledge very generously.

[Sir Robert Buckland]

Well, my right hon. Friend must speak for himself. I will tell the House a story: I remember when the present Secretary of State for Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace), held the office of Minister for Security, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling now enjoys. We used to have cross-governmental committee meetings—this was during the Government of my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May)—and I remember having a very fierce argument with a very senior permanent secretary at the Treasury about this very issue. I will not name them, because that would be wrong, but they told me that there was concern about the proliferation of criminal offences in this area because somehow it would add more of a regulatory burden to business. I disagreed hotly with that civil servant then, and I disagree hotly now.

The Minister for Security now has a great opportunity. It is a great privilege as a Minister to get on with a job that others would have wished to finish. We have passed the parcel to him, and he can open it and enjoy the gifts within.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat]

I thought that we were to have the joy and the privilege of hearing from the hon. Member for Aberavon, who can never say too much in this Chamber, or indeed anywhere else—which is lucky, because he very rarely says too little.

It is a huge pleasure to have been here this afternoon. Members in all parts of the House have made extremely powerful points, but I will touch on just a few of them, because many have been covered at length and in detail on numerous other occasions. If Members will forgive me, I will deal straight away with a few of the matters that I think require immediate attention.

I thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) for tabling new clause 6 and for the way in which he has approached the area of corporate criminal liability, in which he and I agree that reform is required. That is why the Government commissioned a review by the Law Commission, which my right hon. and learned Friend cited and which showed a definite need to clamp down on economic crime conducted by commercial organisations. We have been working closely across Government and with prosecutors in carefully considering its recommendations and how improvements can best be made. It is vital that any reform can be used by law enforcement agencies, does not duplicate what already exists and avoids placing unnecessary burdens on legitimate businesses, but we must also operate within the constraints of the Bill.

I share my right hon. and learned Friend’s passion for change. I am immensely grateful for his thoughtful input, and I greatly value my engagement with him, and with other Members, on this issue. I can assure him that the Government intend to address the need for a “failure to prevent” offence in the other place, and I would welcome further discussion with him about the most effective way in which that can be done.

[Sir Robert Buckland]

I am extremely grateful for what my right hon. Friend has said, but may I gently press him on the issues of “failure to prevent”, fraud, money laundering and false accounting offences—I accept that they may well have to be separate—and a further discussion on the identification doctrine? If so, I will not need to press my new clauses to a vote.

[Tom Tugendhat]

My right hon. and learned Friend is certainly more learned than me, and I will certainly be listening to his views. There are a number of areas that I am sure we will be able to discuss, and I am sure we will reach a conclusion that is acceptable to all sides.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Robert Buckland

Tuesday 14th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

The Lord Chancellor speaks very well on many matters of sentencing, but one of the things that came up in the manifesto that I would be particularly interested in hearing him speak about is extending sentences for some of the worst offences. On page 18 of our manifesto, as he will remember—indeed, I am sure he wrote it—there is a call for extending child cruelty sentences as well. I would be very grateful if he tried to introduce Tony’s law, named after baby Tony Hudgell, who was so brutally assaulted by his birth parents before, thank God, he found love with his true parents, the Hudgell family.

[Robert Buckland]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his consistent campaigning on this issue. He will remember my own involvement in getting child cruelty law updated to cover psychiatric and psychological harm because, frankly, it was out of date. I would be happy to talk to him about it. It is important to remember that there is an interrelationship between this offence and very serious offences of violence that tragically are inflicted on children and for which, for example in section 18, the maximum sentence is life imprisonment.