Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill

Alyn Smith Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)]

We support the Bill and its aims, for which we have long since been calling, but we are highly frustrated that it has taken a tragedy in Ukraine to bring this legislation forward and shake the Government into action, when the problem of dirty money washing through the UK’s economy has been there for all to see for a long time now. The self-congratulatory tone of the Home Secretary’s statement did not hit the right mark, because a number of people across the House have been pressing for these measures for a long time, and the only thing the UK has really been leading on is being the destination of choice for the world’s dirty money. This is a problem to be fixed, and we will help in the fixing of it, but to my mind the self-congratulatory element of the Home Secretary’s presentation was not appropriate.

The Bill does not deal with a number of areas in which we would like to see more action. I appreciate that there is more to come, but let us move this forward. It does not deal with Companies House reform; although a White Paper is a welcome step forward, it does not go far enough, given that we know what needs to be done. The Bill does not deal properly with Crown dependencies and overseas territories. We believe there is a real risk of displacement—that as the rules change here, there will be movement into trusts in overseas territories—so this needs to be done as a comprehensive package. The Bill also does not deal with corporate liability reform, which is important, and nor does it do much for the UK’s anti-money-laundering regime, so we would like to see further action. Today’s Bill is a start, and we will engage with it positively to make it better, but we want to see an awful lot more. Scotland does not have the power to regulate this issue in Holyrood; this place has reserved those powers, so it is important that this is done properly.

We have engaged positively with the Bill to make it stronger. Our new clause 4 would give Companies House a greater role in anti-money-laundering efforts, which is overdue and necessary. We know what needs to be done, so let us get it done; let us get it started. New clause 4 would at least commence that work. I take the point that there are a lot of things to be done, but that is why we need to do them now, rather than wait. New clause 23 would ensure that beneficial ownership of Scottish limited partnerships was published. Again, that is long overdue—we have seen how land holdings in Scotland have been used to get dirty money out of various jurisdictions. Our amendment 41 would ensure that companies claiming to have no beneficial owner or person of significant control have to explain themselves better—also long overdue.

More generally, like other Members, I would be grateful for an assurance from the Minister that all these measures will be properly funded; if they are not, this Bill will not matter. We already have significant powers, such as unexplained wealth orders, which have not been properly funded or utilised and have not been the deterrent they should have been. If law enforcement bodies are taking a knife to a gunfight, as the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) said, we need to make sure that they are properly resourced and tooled up to deal with the people they have to deal with. That said, we support the Bill and will engage with it constructively in Committee.

Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Alyn Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will endeavour to be brief too.

I think that across the House we all have a common endeavour: we all support a just peace in the middle east. That just peace will need to be based on dialogue, the rule of law and peaceful respect. Israel has a right to exist and a right to peace and security within its borders, but we also recognise that a deep injustice has been done to the Palestinian people, and that injustice is continuing. Everything in the middle east is connected to everything else, and it is important for all of us, as outsiders, to view it in totality rather than through a particular prism.

We believe that international law should be applied to all sides, and there are more than two sides to this dispute. Peace is made not among friends but among enemies, and difficult conversations with difficult people need to be taken forward to create the conditions for peace to happen. Dialogue is not supported by declaring stakeholders, however unpalatable, to be persona non grata or illegal. That said, we recognise, of course, the odious nature of Hamas. As a gay man, I need no reminder of the reality of that obnoxious organisation.

Proscribing all of Hamas will bring the UK in line with the US, all EU states, Japan and Canada, and Australia is in the process of adopting similar measures. We recognise the wider construct. However, we have unease at this proposal, and that unease boils down under three heads: the timing, the process, and the implications of this proposal in the real world.

On the timing, why is this being done now? I listened with great attention to the Minister. I did not find much I disagreed with, but I also did not find much that we could not have heard two or three years ago. Hamas was an odious organisation as the EU proscribed it; the UK took a different path. That that line is being changed now begs more questions than we have had answers today.

As recently as 18 months ago, in response to a written parliamentary question in June 2020, Minister Brokenshire set out the UK Government’s position as follows:

“The political wing of Hamas is not proscribed as it is considered that there is a clear distinction between Hamas’s military and political wings.”

That was the position very recently. I have not heard much today to suggest that much has changed. I would hate to think that this measure has been brought forward for domestic or, indeed, party political purposes, playing fast and loose with peace in the middle east—an issue that we must all take gravely seriously.

On the process, the Australian Parliament has just concluded a thoroughgoing review of this very question. Where was the UK Parliament’s similar review? Where was the engagement of Parliament in these processes? I do not doubt that there has been a process, but this House has not heard much of it. The House needs far greater opportunity to scrutinise how we got to this proposal, rather than just the opportunity to nod it through. The Australian Parliament has reached broadly the same conclusion, so I am not necessarily disagreeing with the proposal; I am, however, querying how we got here.

As Members on both sides of the House have already asked, what consultation has there been with allies—especially countries, such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, that do not proscribe Hamas but have back-channel dealings with it, on both finance and other matters? Crucially, what consultation has there been with the humanitarian non-governmental organisation community?

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend will know that my husband and I spent 18 months as volunteers in Gaza in the early ’90s and have been running a breast cancer project between Scotland and Gaza for the last five years. My concern—I apologise for being late due to the change of time and my slow speed of running—is this. Do we not need clarity on the position of small education and healthcare NGOs in Gaza supporting the 2 million people there? The work that I and my volunteers do inevitably involves the Ministry of Health because that is who runs the hospitals. It is simply unavoidable. I am afraid this will send a chill when I am trying to recruit breast cancer specialists in Scotland to keep supporting this wonderful project.

[Alyn Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention and I pay tribute to the work she has done over a long period and her humanitarian efforts in Gaza in particular.

I refer to the explanatory notes to this statutory instrument. The final sentence states:

“A full impact assessment has not been produced for this Order as no, or no significant, impact on the private, voluntary or public sector is foreseen.”

I am glad to hear that, but I have to say that I find it quite unbelievable. I think it fits into a pattern of behaviour we have seen on the ground. The Minister will be aware of the Israeli Government banning six Palestinian humanitarian NGOs on deeply spurious grounds. I am concerned about anything that shuts down the space for dialogue and civil society in this conflict.

That is our final unease on this matter: the implications. What will be the effect—I would be grateful to the Minister if he could reassure me and I am open to that reassurance today—of this listing on NGOs, big and small, and on civil society? The reality in Gaza especially is that Hamas is a fact of life. You cannot get anything done—you cannot get aid delivered, you cannot have a medical project, you cannot have a civil society dialogue—without Hamas’s active involvement one way or another. I do not say that as a matter of anything to be glad about, but it is the reality. How will this listing impact on the NGOs trying to promote dialogue and civil society, and trying to deliver humanitarian aid? Anything that would limit their activities or curtail their active involvement is surely a retrograde step. I would be grateful to the Minister if he could reassure us on the specific point that nothing in this measure or in the future will limit pragmatic humanitarian engagement within Gaza, and within Israel and Palestine. There is already a chill under way. Palestinian reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah has never been more important. I would hate to see anything done by this House that would limit the scope for that dialogue and engagement.

We all have a common aim in this process. I think everyone on all sides of the House today has indicated our clear support for justice and peace in the middle east, but surely the way to that peace is dialogue, and anything that limits that dialogue must be properly ventilated and properly scrutinised. From the SNP’s perspective, we will not stand in the way of the proposal, but we believe it needs far better scrutiny than we have been able to do today and will need far more scrutiny in future.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

We will start with an eight-minute time limit. I may have to take that down, but we will start with that.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Alyn Smith Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in your place, Madam Deputy Speaker; thanks for the slight jolt, as I was called a wee bit earlier than I was expecting. I have also forgotten that I can take my mask off while I am speaking. Eid Mubarak to my constituents across Stirling and those elsewhere who are celebrating.

Today’s debate really cuts to matters of deep principle. How we treat the world’s most vulnerable seeking sanctuary here touches deeply held sincere principles on all sides. I detect throughout this debate a real difference in world view between the SNP Benches and the Government Benches. Scotland’s tragedy is that for centuries we exported our people. We are a third of the UK landmass, but we are not full. We need more people, not fewer. Scotland’s challenge for decades has been a declining population. European freedom of movement was helping us with that and then it was ended.

[Chris Philp]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for being a little more accommodating than the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry). He says that Scotland would like more people. Could I therefore urge the Scottish Government and Scottish local authorities to accept dispersed asylum seekers? The only one of Scotland’s 32 local authorities to accept dispersed asylum seekers is Glasgow. Scotland accepts only a small handful of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, each one of whom carries with them £53,000 a year of funding. If the Scottish Government are so keen on having more people, how about they play their part in the way that I have just described?

[Alyn Smith]

The Minister, I presume inadvertently, actually makes my point for me. Scotland, under my party’s philosophy, wants to play a part on the world stage as an independent state of the European Union, playing our part in upholding international law—all of it, not breaching it on a regular basis—however limited or specific that way may be. We want to take our fair share of asylum seekers. We want to be that haven. But the financial mechanisms in the UK, as the Minister well knows, mitigate our ability to do that. That is my answer to him.

I thank the hundreds of my constituents who have been in touch about this Bill—all against it. I thank in particular Forth Valley Welcome, Stirling University Student Action for Refugees, the church groups across the Forth Valley and Start Up Stirling, all of which have done great work to welcome refugees.

I will try for consensus, because this issue is too important for Punch and Judy politics. Let us accept that this is a difficult, sensitive issue for any Parliament, anywhere, to deal with. It is a problem that needs to be addressed; we agree with that. We all want to see the dreadful people traffickers properly penalised for their dreadful actions. Scotland, independent, will have immigration, nationality and asylum laws, and we will control our borders—the UK is not the only country dealing with these issues—but we will not do it like this. The Bill is not all bad, but from our perspective it is assuredly more bad than good. We would contend that the problems of the UK’s complicated, expensive, bureaucratic and slow nationality and refugee policies are entirely made in London and have been made worse by this Government.

The Bill is about issues of deep principle, so let us hear what some of the faith groups think about it. The Very Reverend Dr Susan Brown, the convener of the Faith Impact Forum of the Church of Scotland, says:

“we are urging the Government to think again and listen to asylum seekers and refugees, organisations that support them and people in receiving communities working to provide welcome and friendship.”

How about the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Scotland? It says:

“Creating arbitrary divisions based on people’s method of entry will have profound implications for those who need our support most… many families and individuals have no choice in the route that they take, and to penalise them on this basis dangerously undermines the principle of asylum.”

In the time allowed, I will focus only on clauses 10, 29 and 38, because between them they provide ample grounds for voting against the whole package, although there are parts to which we might be more amenable.

I am particularly grateful to the Law Society of Scotland for its forensic examination of the Bill, on which I will draw heavily.

Clause 10 introduces a two-tier treatment of refugees based on means of entry. The Law Society of Scotland endorses the UNHCR in saying that

“to create a discriminatory two-tier asylum system”

undermines

“the 1951 Refugee Convention and longstanding global cooperation on refugee issues.”

A number of Conservative Members have said that France should somehow solve the UK’s problems for it. If the UK is playing a part in undermining global co-operation, it can hardly expect co-operation back.

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

Is it not the case that the UK worked with the UNHCR in the refugee camps in places such as Jordan? It selects the people who have a good reason and a right to come here, rather than just being able to afford to pay a people smuggler.

[Alyn Smith]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that point. I hope I have made it clear that there are parts of the Bill to which we are more amenable. I do not deny the work that has been done internationally, and I do not deny that this is a problem that needs to be fixed, but I see nothing in the Bill that will make it better, and I see plenty of things that will make it worse.

Clause 29 alters the criteria for well-founded fear of persecution. Again, the Law Society of Scotland is pretty trenchant:

“In summary, we take the view that the change in clause 29 appears to go against the intention of the New Plan for Immigration, and flies in the face of 25 years judicial scrutiny.”

Clause 38 expands the criminality of assisting refugees, removing the existing limitation that it is only an offence if the assistance is given for gain, thus effectively extending the penalty to any good Samaritan. The Law Society of Scotland says:

“We are…concerned about…Ships’ Masters who save asylum seekers from drowning as they are obliged to do by…Article 98 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea”.

This is a problem to be fixed, and it is a problem that can be fixed, but it is a system that has been entirely home-grown. In our view, the idea that the UK needs to implement what we believe to be flawed legislation is based on a flawed premise. There is a need for legislation to reform the UK’s awful immigration, nationality and asylum laws—we can agree on that—but this is not it. If the Bill is passed tonight—and I hope it will not be—it will not be passed in Scotland’s name, for Scotland can do better on this and many other issues.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. I am changing the speaking time limit to seven minutes, with immediate effect.