Economic Crime: Planned Government Bill

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I suspect that we have the same choice, frankly, with that mighty hammer. But what we have to do first is make sure that we have those processes in place. The British Business Bank obviously had to scale up very quickly in the pandemic, but we are working with it and the banks, which are our first port of call in this, as it is a delegated scheme. We want to make sure that the worst-performing banks scale up to the best-performing banks in tackling this, and we will continue to work on that endeavour.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The lawfare debate, which the Minister described as “interesting”, identified how money launderers use UK courts to cover up unlawful activity, so the term that he has used is a slight underestimate. The Minister responding to that debate said:

“the Government are poised to act.”—[Official Report, 20 January 2022; Vol. 707, c. 603.]

Given that they have abandoned their economic crime Bill, given that the Attorney General is investigating malpractice at the Serious Fraud Office, which she is supposed to supervise, and given that too much oligarch money flows into the Tory party, how poised are they?

[Paul Scully]

Very.