Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [Lords] (Sixth sitting)
Debate between Alan Duncan and Anneliese Dodds(6 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan)
Unfortunately for the hon. Lady, she seems unaware that I was the Minister responsible for Turks and Caicos, as a Minister in the Department for International Development at the time. The reasons she cited for our intervention are completely inaccurate. There was a growing financial deficit of £30 million, forecast to be £60 million and then £90 million—it would have been half a billion pounds within a very short time. On that basis, we stepped in and parachuted in a chief financial officer to get the public finances back into shape. It was a great success and is a good example of us intervening in a perfectly proper way in co-operation with the Governor and the Government there.
Anneliese Dodds
I am grateful to the Minister for those comments; I might agree with the second half of them. I wonder whether his remembering of the time is the same as that of the relevant FCO Minister. I am terribly sorry; I do not know who the individuals were, but I was not in the House at the time. He or she commented:
“These are some of the worst allegations that I have ever seen about sitting politicians”
and
“when things go badly wrong…we need to act”.
I suspect that they were not talking simply about a budget deficit at that stage; they may have been talking about other matters.
Sir Alan Duncan
The hon. Lady is conflating two separate issues. There was a parallel legal issue over the plight and fleeing of Mr Misick, but that was not the basis on which we intervened.
Anneliese Dodds
Whether the intervention was due to alleged corruption in the activities of the former leader or budgetary matters, the arguments point in the same direction. When the British Government saw there was a problem, they decided it was appropriate to take action. We are lucky to have the Minister here. We are grateful to hear of his experience, and I hope he will inform us of how, in that regard, we can use that experience, in a consensual, respectful manner, to deal with our associated territories in relation to ownership registers.
Sir Alan Duncan
This has been a lively and interesting debate on an issue that we all agree is of importance. It boils down to how we think it appropriate for the Government to act. I am grateful to hon. Members for tabling new clauses, and I appreciate the desire for the overseas territories and Crown dependencies to adopt public registers. However, we should acknowledge the significant steps already taken by those jurisdictions in this area and continue to build on that progress.
While we continue to push for public registers to become the global standard, we should recognise that the arrangements that the territories and dependencies have concluded with the UK exceed the international standards set by the Financial Action Task Force, which do not require private registers, let alone public registers. Nevertheless, should public registers become the global standard, we would expect the overseas territories and Crown dependencies to meet that standard.
As the Committee knows, the overseas territories and Crown dependencies are separate jurisdictions with their own democratically elected Governments. We have therefore legislated for them without their consent only in exceptional circumstances—for example, to decriminalise homosexuality in certain territories, to ensure they were compliant with international human rights obligations. By contrast, financial services are an area of domestic responsibility for territory and dependency Governments.
Legislating for those jurisdictions without their consent effectively disenfranchises their elected representatives and risks harming our overall relationship with them. It also risks leading to a flight of business to other, less regulated jurisdictions, with the undesirable consequence that our law enforcement authorities would not have the same level of access to beneficial ownership information as under the existing bilateral arrangements. Imposing public registers of company beneficial ownership on the overseas territories would carry with it the risk that the territories would be less willing to work with us on this important issue.
[Dame Cheryl Gillan in the Chair]
I would like to draw parallels with the devolved Administrations and the Sewel convention. The hon. Member for Glasgow Central addressed the point on Second Reading:
“Much as I do not wish the House to legislate on Scottish matters, I do not want us to legislate for overseas territories or Crown dependencies without consent.”—[Official Report, 20 February 2018; Vol. 636, c. 92.]
I agree with her that that is the right approach.
The overseas territories and Crown dependencies have already made significant progress on beneficial ownership. Since we concluded our exchanges of notes with them in 2016, they have passed new primary legislation and delivered technological improvements to comply with the terms of the arrangements. They have committed to provide UK law enforcement authorities with automatic access to beneficial ownership information within 24 hours of a request being made, or within one hour in urgent cases. Those arrangements strengthen our law enforcement authorities’ ability to investigate serious organised crime, including money laundering and tax evasion.
The hon. Member for Oxford East asked about what are termed similarly effective systems. Some jurisdictions have opted under the bilateral arrangements concluded with the UK to establish an electronic search platform, allowing them to gain access to beneficial ownership information held by their authorities or by corporate service providers.
The exchanges of notes permit such similarly effective arrangements, provided that the following criteria are met. Law enforcement authorities can obtain beneficial ownership information without restrictions, and that information is available for use in both civil and criminal proceedings. Law enforcement authorities can also quickly identify all corporate and legal entities connected to a beneficial owner, without needing to submit multiple and repeated requests. Corporate and legal entities, or those to whom the beneficial ownership information relates, are not to be alerted to the fact that a request has been made or that an investigation is under way. We will monitor that arrangement to ensure that it does indeed provide the same results.
I hope that hon. Members agree that the overseas territories, in some cases in the most challenging circumstances, and the Crown dependencies have made significant efforts to move forward on this agenda. The effective implementation of the exchanges of notes will put them ahead of many G20 countries and many individual states of the USA, and demonstrates what can be achieved through working co-operatively.
Sir Alan Duncan
The hon. Lady is not being unreasonable; there are some arguments where some people say compel, and others say urge and consult. My argument would be that we are consulting—we do it all the time. We have a regular dialogue, and in that, we are urging them in the right direction. Anything that smacks of us in any way telling them what to do is counterproductive, because rather than imposing new requirements on these jurisdictions, it is better that to continue to focus our efforts on the consolidation of the existing arrangements.
The exchange of notes provide for the operation of these arrangements to be reviewed six months after they come into force. We are working very closely with the territories and dependencies on this review, and plan to conclude it by the end of March. That is a very good example of the sort of consultation we are engaging in on a regular basis.
Anneliese Dodds
When the Minister those letters are exchanged, will it include the logistics of this operation? I am trying to get my head round how we can genuinely say that contacting potentially myriad trust and company service providers and getting information from them is equivalent to having access to a register. How are the Government truly going to assess that in this exchange of letters? Will it be a question of time? We could be talking about hundreds of TCSPs.
Sir Alan Duncan
I am not directly involved in this, but as I have said frequently, I am very happy to offer the expertise of officials to the hon. Lady so that she can fully get to grips with the intricate detail of the question she has asked.
Hon. Members will recall that the Criminal Finances Act 2017 provides for a review of the effectiveness of the bilateral arrangements. That report must be prepared before 1 July 2019, and it will then be published and laid before Parliament. The reviews will provide a clear understanding of how the jurisdictions are meeting their commitments. At that point, we will be in a better position to consider what more might need to be done. I stress once again that we will engage with the overseas territories and dependencies; we do so already and we will continue to do so on a regular basis, with the clear objectives in mind of wanting consistent and constant improvements in the way in which their finances are organised.
A key feature of the Government’s approach has been to maintain a level playing field between all the overseas territories with financial centres and the Crown dependencies. As I have described, we have robust review processes regarding the implementation of these arrangements. If these reviews demonstrate that the full implementation of the exchanges of notes is not taking place in any individual jurisdiction, it would be right for hon. Members to consider this issue further. For the time being, however, we should continue to focus on the full implementation of the existing bilateral arrangements. We are on a good and solid track; therefore, I urge hon. Members to withdraw the new clause.
Anneliese Dodds
I beg your pardon. I am getting over-excited and trying to hurtle towards the end of the programme. I am sorry, Dame Cheryl.
Anneliese Dodds
No; we are very keen to have a thorough discussion on every one of our new clauses.
New clause 15 focuses on disqualification. The purpose is to ensure that directors specifically take responsibility for their organisation’s mistakes, and to ensure that the Secretary of State may hold them to account for a failure to prevent money laundering, in the instance where procedures have not been put correctly in place.
Many colleagues might have served as directors and will know the rules on being a director—that directors can already be disqualified if they display unfit conduct. Unfit conduct is defined as including allowing a company to continue trading when it cannot pay its debts, not keeping proper company accounts and so on.
With the new clause, we wish to extend that to include a commitment for every director to ensure that they are not ignoring money laundering concerns. We want to mirror what happens under competition law in Britain, where a director’s role is looked at in the event of a breach of the law. That is necessary because of the situation we find ourselves in today.
I am sure many colleagues will have talked to professionals on the frontline of anti-money laundering. I have talked to quite a lot of people who work in banks and other organisations who have anti-money laundering responsibilities. I am sure there are people who work in accounting and other walks of life for whom this is a concern. Very often the clear message I get, as I am sure colleagues do, is that those individuals are working very hard to prevent money laundering but they are not supported by the leadership team within their firm. Global Witness has stated that,
“responsibility for compliance with anti-money laundering and other regulations is usually allocated to compliance teams, rather than to senior executives, who actually wield power within banks over what customers they take. This is a serious problem because it gives compliance staff none of the authority but all of the responsibility, breaking the important link between decision making and accountability.”
That is certainly what I find when I talk to individuals who are in that responsible position. They find they are often not supported by senior managements. That has also been discovered in some of the big corporate scandals—I referred to the HSBC case a moment ago. In his written evidence to the UK Parliament, David Bagley, who led on compliance at HSBC during the period of the failings we were just talking about, stated:
“as the Head of Group Compliance, my mandate was … limited to advising, recommending and reporting. My job was not—and I did not have the authority, resources, support or infrastructure—to ensure that all of these global affiliates followed the Group’s compliance standards”.
Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting)
Debate between Alan Duncan and Anneliese Dodds(6 years, 9 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan)
Unfortunately for the hon. Lady, she seems unaware that I was the Minister responsible for Turks and Caicos, as a Minister in the Department for International Development at the time. The reasons she cited for our intervention are completely inaccurate. There was a growing financial deficit of £30 million, forecast to be £60 million and then £90 million—it would have been half a billion pounds within a very short time. On that basis, we stepped in and parachuted in a chief financial officer to get the public finances back into shape. It was a great success and is a good example of us intervening in a perfectly proper way in co-operation with the Governor and the Government there.
Anneliese Dodds
I am grateful to the Minister for those comments; I might agree with the second half of them. I wonder whether his remembering of the time is the same as that of the relevant FCO Minister. I am terribly sorry; I do not know who the individuals were, but I was not in the House at the time. He or she commented:
“These are some of the worst allegations that I have ever seen about sitting politicians”
and
“when things go badly wrong…we need to act”.
I suspect that they were not talking simply about a budget deficit at that stage; they may have been talking about other matters.
Sir Alan Duncan
The hon. Lady is conflating two separate issues. There was a parallel legal issue over the plight and fleeing of Mr Misick, but that was not the basis on which we intervened.
Anneliese Dodds
Whether the intervention was due to alleged corruption in the activities of the former leader or budgetary matters, the arguments point in the same direction. When the British Government saw there was a problem, they decided it was appropriate to take action. We are lucky to have the Minister here. We are grateful to hear of his experience, and I hope he will inform us of how, in that regard, we can use that experience, in a consensual, respectful manner, to deal with our associated territories in relation to ownership registers.
Sir Alan Duncan
This has been a lively and interesting debate on an issue that we all agree is of importance. It boils down to how we think it appropriate for the Government to act. I am grateful to hon. Members for tabling new clauses, and I appreciate the desire for the overseas territories and Crown dependencies to adopt public registers. However, we should acknowledge the significant steps already taken by those jurisdictions in this area and continue to build on that progress.
While we continue to push for public registers to become the global standard, we should recognise that the arrangements that the territories and dependencies have concluded with the UK exceed the international standards set by the Financial Action Task Force, which do not require private registers, let alone public registers. Nevertheless, should public registers become the global standard, we would expect the overseas territories and Crown dependencies to meet that standard.
As the Committee knows, the overseas territories and Crown dependencies are separate jurisdictions with their own democratically elected Governments. We have therefore legislated for them without their consent only in exceptional circumstances—for example, to decriminalise homosexuality in certain territories, to ensure they were compliant with international human rights obligations. By contrast, financial services are an area of domestic responsibility for territory and dependency Governments.
Legislating for those jurisdictions without their consent effectively disenfranchises their elected representatives and risks harming our overall relationship with them. It also risks leading to a flight of business to other, less regulated jurisdictions, with the undesirable consequence that our law enforcement authorities would not have the same level of access to beneficial ownership information as under the existing bilateral arrangements. Imposing public registers of company beneficial ownership on the overseas territories would carry with it the risk that the territories would be less willing to work with us on this important issue.
[Dame Cheryl Gillan in the Chair]
I would like to draw parallels with the devolved Administrations and the Sewel convention. The hon. Member for Glasgow Central addressed the point on Second Reading:
“Much as I do not wish the House to legislate on Scottish matters, I do not want us to legislate for overseas territories or Crown dependencies without consent.”—[Official Report, 20 February 2018; Vol. 636, c. 92.]
I agree with her that that is the right approach.
The overseas territories and Crown dependencies have already made significant progress on beneficial ownership. Since we concluded our exchanges of notes with them in 2016, they have passed new primary legislation and delivered technological improvements to comply with the terms of the arrangements. They have committed to provide UK law enforcement authorities with automatic access to beneficial ownership information within 24 hours of a request being made, or within one hour in urgent cases. Those arrangements strengthen our law enforcement authorities’ ability to investigate serious organised crime, including money laundering and tax evasion.
The hon. Member for Oxford East asked about what are termed similarly effective systems. Some jurisdictions have opted under the bilateral arrangements concluded with the UK to establish an electronic search platform, allowing them to gain access to beneficial ownership information held by their authorities or by corporate service providers.
The exchanges of notes permit such similarly effective arrangements, provided that the following criteria are met. Law enforcement authorities can obtain beneficial ownership information without restrictions, and that information is available for use in both civil and criminal proceedings. Law enforcement authorities can also quickly identify all corporate and legal entities connected to a beneficial owner, without needing to submit multiple and repeated requests. Corporate and legal entities, or those to whom the beneficial ownership information relates, are not to be alerted to the fact that a request has been made or that an investigation is under way. We will monitor that arrangement to ensure that it does indeed provide the same results.
I hope that hon. Members agree that the overseas territories, in some cases in the most challenging circumstances, and the Crown dependencies have made significant efforts to move forward on this agenda. The effective implementation of the exchanges of notes will put them ahead of many G20 countries and many individual states of the USA, and demonstrates what can be achieved through working co-operatively.
Sir Alan Duncan
The hon. Lady is not being unreasonable; there are some arguments where some people say compel, and others say urge and consult. My argument would be that we are consulting—we do it all the time. We have a regular dialogue, and in that, we are urging them in the right direction. Anything that smacks of us in any way telling them what to do is counterproductive, because rather than imposing new requirements on these jurisdictions, it is better to continue to focus our efforts on the consolidation of the existing arrangements.
The exchange of notes provides for the operation of these arrangements to be reviewed six months after they come into force. We are working very closely with the territories and dependencies on this review, and plan to conclude it by the end of March. That is a very good example of the sort of consultation we are engaging in on a regular basis.
Anneliese Dodds
When those letters are exchanged, will they include the logistics of this operation? I am trying to get my head round how we can genuinely say that contacting potentially myriad trust and company service providers and getting information from them is equivalent to having access to a register. How are the Government truly going to assess that in this exchange of letters? Will it be a question of time? We could be talking about hundreds of TCSPs.
Sir Alan Duncan
I am not directly involved in this, but as I have said frequently, I am very happy to offer the expertise of officials to the hon. Lady so that she can fully get to grips with the intricate detail of the question she has asked.
Hon. Members will recall that the Criminal Finances Act 2017 provides for a review of the effectiveness of the bilateral arrangements. That report must be prepared before 1 July 2019, and it will then be published and laid before Parliament. The reviews will provide a clear understanding of how the jurisdictions are meeting their commitments. At that point, we will be in a better position to consider what more might need to be done. I stress once again that we will engage with the overseas territories and dependencies; we do so already and we will continue to do so on a regular basis, with the clear objectives in mind of wanting consistent and constant improvements in the way in which their finances are organised.
A key feature of the Government’s approach has been to maintain a level playing field between all the overseas territories with financial centres and the Crown dependencies. As I have described, we have robust review processes regarding the implementation of these arrangements. If these reviews demonstrate that the full implementation of the exchanges of notes is not taking place in any individual jurisdiction, it would be right for hon. Members to consider this issue further. For the time being, however, we should continue to focus on the full implementation of the existing bilateral arrangements. We are on a good and solid track; therefore, I urge hon. Members to withdraw the new clause.
Anneliese Dodds
I beg your pardon. I am getting over-excited and trying to hurtle towards the end of the programme. I am sorry, Dame Cheryl.
Anneliese Dodds
No; we are very keen to have a thorough discussion on every one of our new clauses.
New clause 15 focuses on disqualification. The purpose is to ensure that directors specifically take responsibility for their organisation’s mistakes, and to ensure that the Secretary of State may hold them to account for a failure to prevent money laundering, in the instance where procedures have not been put correctly in place.
Many colleagues might have served as directors and will know the rules on being a director—that directors can already be disqualified if they display unfit conduct. Unfit conduct is defined as including allowing a company to continue trading when it cannot pay its debts, not keeping proper company accounts and so on.
With the new clause, we wish to extend that to include a commitment for every director to ensure that they are not ignoring money laundering concerns. We want to mirror what happens under competition law in Britain, where a director’s role is looked at in the event of a breach of the law. That is necessary because of the situation we find ourselves in today.
I am sure many colleagues will have talked to professionals on the frontline of anti-money laundering. I have talked to quite a lot of people who work in banks and other organisations who have anti-money laundering responsibilities. I am sure there are people who work in accounting and other walks of life for whom this is a concern. Very often the clear message I get, as I am sure colleagues do, is that those individuals are working very hard to prevent money laundering but they are not supported by the leadership team within their firm. Global Witness has stated that,
“responsibility for compliance with anti-money laundering and other regulations is usually allocated to compliance teams, rather than to senior executives, who actually wield power within banks over what customers they take. This is a serious problem because it gives compliance staff none of the authority but all of the responsibility, breaking the important link between decision making and accountability.”
That is certainly what I find when I talk to individuals who are in that responsible position. They find they are often not supported by senior managements. That has also been discovered in some of the big corporate scandals—I referred to the HSBC case a moment ago. In his written evidence to the UK Parliament, David Bagley, who led on compliance at HSBC during the period of the failings we were just talking about, stated:
“as the Head of Group Compliance, my mandate was … limited to advising, recommending and reporting. My job was not—and I did not have the authority, resources, support or infrastructure—to ensure that all of these global affiliates followed the Group’s compliance standards”.
Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting)
Debate between Alan Duncan and Anneliese Dodds(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Sir Alan Duncan
If I can set this out again to the hon. Lady’s satisfaction I hope she will draw a conclusion. Under the UK’s constitutional settlement, matters of foreign policy are reserved to Westminster. This Bill will provide the UK Government with powers to be used in pursuit of the UK’s foreign policy as well as to ensure that our national security is intact and to deal with money laundering. The Bill therefore relates to matters that are accordingly reserved. The devolved Administrations were consulted during the Bill’s preparation, and they have not disagreed with our assessment that the Bill deals with a reserved matter. Amendment 37 would mean that the consent of the relevant devolved Administration was required for any sanctions or anti-money laundering regulations that made a consequential repeal, revocation or amendment to any law created by the devolved Administrations. This would effectively give devolved Administrations veto rights over legislation relating to UK foreign and security policy, or to anti-money laundering policy. That is contrary to the established devolution settlement between Westminster and the devolved legislatures.
With regard to regulations under the Bill, any amendment to laws created by devolved Administrations would only arise as the consequence of the sanctions or money laundering measures under the Bill. Regulations cannot make free-standing changes to devolved legislation. Their primary purposes will always be a reserved matter. Such consequential amendments are entirely consistent with the constitutional settlement, and it would not be consistent with our devolution settlement to give the right of veto to devolved Administrations. Given that the effect of this amendment would be to rewrite the devolution settlement without consulting other devolved Administrations or seeking their consent, I do not agree with it and I urge the hon. Lady to withdraw the amendment.
Anneliese Dodds
We have had an interesting exchange of views. The Minister, however, did not explain a couple of things that would be helpful for the Committee to understand. He indicated that there was consultation with the devolved Governments, but did not spell out what kind of arrangements he anticipates in future that might fall short of the requested veto but that could constitute consultation. This is important, because we have just been talking about the fact that money-laundering regulations in particular span a range of Government issues, not all of which are reserved. They cut across a number of different powers and it would be helpful to know whether, for example, he anticipates that these matters would be part of the ongoing dialogue between the Westminster Government and the devolved Governments, and whether there is regular exchange of information.
The Committee has discussed SLPs, and there is huge concern about whether there is sufficient action in Westminster on that. Devolved Administrations have raised the issue, and it would be interesting to know whether that was part of a structured dialogue or whether it was something that occurs in an ad hoc way, and how the Minister anticipates that developing in the future.
Sir Alan Duncan
We have continuous discussions with the devolved Assemblies and, of course, with Scottish Members of this House. Once again, I must make it clear that clause 48 is focused entirely on reserved matters, so it does not affect our devolution settlement in any way, whereas the amendment moved by the hon. Member for Glasgow Central most certainly does.
Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [Lords] (Fourth sitting)
Debate between Alan Duncan and Anneliese Dodds(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Sir Alan Duncan
The hon. Lady makes a perfectly fair request, and I think I can give her the reassurance she is seeking. Clause 41 enables an appropriate Minister to alter the legislation to introduce new types of sanctions measures where the UK has been subject to a UN or other international obligation to do so. That, I think, is the basis of her concern, but the power is for types of sanctions measures that have not previously been predicted and therefore cannot be and are not included in the Bill.
Common types of sanctions include asset freezes, travel bans, arms embargoes and prohibitions on aviation and maritime transport. These types of sanction are included in the Bill. A recent example of where the international community developed a new type of sanction was in the UN sanctions imposed in respect of North Korea. A recent UN resolution, which we are obliged to follow, requires that UN member states do not grant work permits to North Koreans, save where the UN agrees in advance on a case-by-case basis. That type of restriction did not exist prior to the resolution, and in the future there may be other unforeseen types of sanction that we would be under an obligation to introduce.
Under the powers in the clause, new types of sanction can be introduced only if the UK is, or has been, under a UN or other international obligation to impose them. The clause does not enable any modification to be made to the purposes for which sanctions can be made, as set out in clause 1(1) and (2). Changes will be made through regulations via the draft affirmative procedure, to ensure that Parliament is given a full role in scrutinising such changes.
The clause will ensure that we remain in close co-ordination with our international partners and can respond to changes in how sanctions are used as a foreign policy tool. That will help to maintain the UK’s leading role in this field and to address global challenges in collaboration with our partners.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 41 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 42 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 43
Money laundering and terrorist financing etc
Anneliese Dodds
I beg to move amendment 38, in clause 43, page 33, line 12, at end insert—
“(1A) Provision made under subsection (1)(a) may in particular include provision for enabling or facilitating the detection or investigation of money laundering, or preventing money laundering, through limited partnerships registered in Scotland.”
This amendment would ensure that regulations under this section made in relation to money laundering particularly applied to money laundering through limited partnerships in Scotland.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I will probably try to move around a little bit while I am speaking to warm myself up. It is wonderful to be able to speak to amendment 38. As colleagues will have seen, it is designed to ensure that regulations made under clause 34 in relation to money laundering also apply to money laundering through Scottish limited partnerships—SLPs, as they are commonly known and as I will call them for the purpose of this speech.
SLPs are a unique form of company. We tabled the amendment because we are concerned that, in addition to their use for modern business purposes—particularly by private equity firms and property investment funds—there appears to be considerable evidence that the huge surge in their use may be linked to money laundering. That concern has certainly been raised extensively in Scotland. It needs to be heard in the House, and action surely needs to be taken.
The key difference between SLPs and other forms of limited partnership is that they have a distinct legal personality; an SLP is able to sue and be sued, but the liability of the directors is still limited. In many respects, principally on tax, the partners within an SLP behave as they would elsewhere in the UK as part of a normal partnership, but the structure enables the company to maintain secrecy. They can also carry out other activities that other partnerships cannot—it can open bank accounts on its own account, for example. SLPs also have limited management participation requirements; the limited partners do not have to be involved directly in management, so there is less of a necessity for accountability there.
There has been some suggestion that SLPs initially proliferated partly for tax reasons. They reduce the liability of partners to UK or foreign tax on income and chargeable gains, as well as to stamp duty land tax. However, the recent increase in their number has been quite astonishing. The number of limited partnerships in Scotland has more than doubled, from just over 6,000 to nearly 15,000, since 2009. Now Scotland has more of those partnerships than England and Wales put together have ordinary limited partnerships.
Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)
Debate between Alan Duncan and Anneliese Dodds(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)
Like my hon. Friend, I am grateful to you for chairing the Committee, Mr McCabe.
I am also grateful to the Minister for his explanation. Very briefly, he referred to the Isle of Man’s treatment under the CHIEF system, but we are moving to the contractual disclosure system—CDS—for customs policies. That should have happened by last year, but it has been delayed and there are many concerns about it. Will the Minister assure me that the Isle of Man will be treated properly in any new customs arrangements, and that is the Government’s understanding of the situation?
Sir Alan Duncan
Although I am not familiar with the exact details of the system the hon. Lady mentions, I think I can say confidently that the Isle of Man will be treated in the way that I described in my previous remarks.
Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)
Debate between Alan Duncan and Anneliese Dodds(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Sir Alan Duncan
I fully respect the fact that the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland has served in the House for 13 years; in the same spirit, I am sure she will respect my 26 years of service. The motion does nothing more than to reflect the understanding that we reached last night, namely that we would debate a very significant amendment in a full session on Thursday. There is no attempt not to discuss anything, because the whole point of Committee is that everything is discussed. There is nothing that will not be discussed as a result of our adjournment this afternoon.
This matter is important, and we are genuinely trying to work out if there is some accommodation that we can make to deal with the issues raised by the hon. Lady and the wider House. There is no game playing and this is not obstruction; it is in the spirit of what was agreed last night. I say that with a smile, looking especially at her. Come Thursday, we will be able to spend a good amount of time getting into the matter in great detail. On that basis, I support the wish to adjourn.
Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)
I appreciated our discussions last night. As a new Member, I found them very helpful. I took a great deal of notice of what was said during the meeting by both Ministers and by everybody else who was there. I am sorry; we have spent so much time together that I am imagining that the Economic Secretary was there. I remember it being suggested at the meeting that we needed to get into a rhythm of working and establish how the Committee would operate, and that that was the reason for taking clause 1 after clause 18. Having served on two Finance Bill Committees, I absolutely understand the need to get into a rhythm and work out how we will operate as a Committee. I do not, however, recall anybody saying that that meant that we could not consider clause 1 on the first day of Committee. Perhaps other Members can contradict my recollection, but that is certainly what I took from the meeting.
Question put, That further consideration be now adjourned.