Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I have spoken to colleagues across the House. We will certainly look at how to draft the measure correctly to ensure that it serves its purpose. We will certainly look in the other place to debate that further.

[Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Paul Scully]

I will not give way for a second, because I want to ensure that we can cover the ground. I will deal with some of the opposing amendments at the right time: at the end of the Committee.

Clauses 20 to 30 cover the annotation and inspection of the register, and the disclosure, protection, correction and removal of information. Clauses 31 to 39 cover measures including the false statement offence and amendments to land registration as well as provisions about offences and penalties. The schedules define key terms such as “registrable beneficial owner” and cover amendments to land registration laws, for example, regarding land ownership and transactions for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland respectively.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Will the Minister give way?

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

Will the Minister give way?

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[Paul Scully]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that point; it comes back to something that was said in the previous debate about persons of significant control, which I did not address at the time. However, I will take that point away and discuss it with the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) and others to make sure that we can get any drafting on that exactly right.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Will the Minister give way?

[Paul Scully]

I will not just because I want to make sure that we can cover all the areas, and we will be short of time.

Important changes in part 2 include changing the unexplained wealth order regime, increasing the scope of the existing powers to ensure that an enforcement authority can obtain the information that they need even when the assets in question are held in trusts or other complex ownership structures. That is to ensure that the true owners cannot hide their claim over assets to avoid the force of the law. The introduction of an alternative test to the existing income requirement also provides flexibility for agencies to tailor the UWO applications to the facts of a case.

Clauses 44 to 47 will mitigate the significant operational risks to an enforcement authority and provide a more encouraging basis for them to use their powers to seek a UWO: first, by extending the period for which an interim freezing order has effect, enabling agencies to review material provided in response to a UWO without significant time pressures; and secondly, by reforming the cost rules to protect law enforcement against incurring substantial legal costs following an adverse ruling.

Part 3—clauses 48 to 51—strengthens the financial sanctions legislation to change the monetary penalty test and internal review process. Those changes will allow the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation to publicly name sanctions breaches even when no monetary penalty has been imposed and allow for greater information sharing across Government.

We are really grateful for the support of all parties in passing this legislation as quickly as possible, but in the light of the deteriorating situation and the Government’s desire to work together to strengthen and accelerate this package, I want to outline further measures that we have tabled as Government amendments.

New clauses 32 to 40 will amend the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 to streamline the current legislation so that we can respond even more swiftly and effectively to sanction oligarchs, individuals and businesses associated with Putin’s regime and others like them in the future. New clause 32 will simplify the procedural requirements that can delay the implementation of sanctions. New clauses 33 and 34 are designed to streamline the designation of individuals and entities, allowing us better to respond to fast-moving events. New clause 36 will ensure that the proposed changes in new clauses 33 to 35 will apply to sanctions regulations that are already in place. New clause 37 will remove the requirement for Ministers to review each sanctions regime every year and to review each designation every three years. That will free up vital resource to focus on developing new designations.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Will the Minister give way?

[Paul Scully]

I will—the hon. Lady has been trying so hard.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I thank the Minister for giving way finally, but it all counts. He seemed to be saying to colleagues earlier that his attitude to our amendments is that he is willing to discuss them after the Commons stages of the Bill and to do something in the Lords. Is that what he is saying? Is he telling us today that the Government will not accept any more Opposition or Back-Bench amendments and that he will leave it to the House of Lords to change these things? Clearly, if that is going to be his attitude, we need to know.

[Paul Scully]

I will cover the amendments more fully in my closing remarks, once they have been spoken to. None the less, I want to ensure that the amendments with which I have sympathy do exactly what they are intended to do and that the drafting is right. I am happy to work with colleagues who have tabled them to make sure that we can get that right and to see what more we can do in the other place.

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[Alison Thewliss]

I have not received that assurance from the Minister, but I would be glad to do so. The hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) and I served on that Bill Committee together, and a lot of the evidence that was given at the time still stands today. Many of the things we were warned about, such as shifting things into trusts, have happened, and the Government need to act on the warnings that they were given.

Turning to schedule 4, the register proposed in the Bill is not as transparent as the Scottish register, which will come into force on 1 April. Transparency International and the Chartered Institute of Taxation have said that the UK Government could learn from Scotland on this. As I say, Scotland’s register of persons holding a controlled interest in land in Scotland goes live on 1 April, and I would like to thank Jennifer Henderson, the Keeper of the Registers of Scotland, and her team of experts for taking the time to meet me last week to discuss this.

Transparency International has warned that this Government’s proposed register could not be as transparent as Scotland’s because the legislation as drafted does not require the disclosure of the ultimate beneficial owner of the property, but rather the disclosure of the beneficial owner of the overseas entity that in turn owns the property. Scotland’s register notes, per piece of land, who the beneficial owner of the land is. For example, it notes which companies have land registered to them, and who has significant control of those companies. I am sure that I could draw a diagram that would explain this better than my description, but my understanding is that if a holding company has five or six different pieces of land for three oligarchs, the Scottish register would show which oligarch each piece of land belonged to, but that the register as laid out in this Bill would not. I ask the UK Government to consider taking a lesson from Scotland, to speak to Registers of Scotland and to review changes such as this, so that we can properly understand who owns what.

The Chartered Institute of Taxation said that

“if the government’s aim is a public register of ownership of land it does not achieve this”.

It also said:

“The UK Government may also want to look at the Scottish approach which is to reveal the person who has ‘significant influence or control’ over the owner or long-lease tenant of land and property in Scotland.”

According to the Scottish Government, this means that

“it will be possible to look behind every category of entity in Scotland, including overseas entities and trusts, to see who controls land.”

Further to this, I would be grateful if the Minister could provide the clarification that the Law Society of Scotland has asked for on the way in which the two registers will interact, on how any disputes will be resolved—including on what is registered and what takes precedence—and on whether any additional resource will be provided directly from the UK Government to Registers of Scotland so that it can continue this work.

It is vital that Companies House reform does not slip off the agenda. We would have pressed new clause 4 to a vote, had it not been so similar in intention to the official Opposition’s new clause 7. It is unfortunate that all we are getting on Companies House will be a White Paper. We have already had extensive consultation on this, and we know the problems. They are obvious, and the Government have no excuse for not acting on them today.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Does the hon. Lady share my frustration, which was widely voiced in the Treasury Committee when we were doing our report on economic crime, that although the Government have known what is wrong with Companies House for a very long time, we have had virtually no movement to reform it except for an announcement that there might be enough money to do so in 2024?

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Lady is right. This is entirely inadequate. With every day that passes, more and more guff gets put on to the Companies House register and the less valuable it becomes as a register.

We need finally to introduce verification. It is beyond belief that there is no Government verification scheme. Filing a tax return or applying for a passport or driving licence all require the use of a Government verification scheme. Graham Barrow, a Companies House expert, has pointed out that people need more ID to take out a library book than to set up a company in this country. That is absolutely ridiculous. Verification, when it is brought in, must also apply retrospectively. Companies House must go back through the register and look at all issues that existed in the past, because there is already so much nonsense in the register that needs to be weeded out, not just for reasons of accuracy but because it is being used to defraud people and by companies that are phoenixing. It is being used for all kinds of things that are resulting in people losing out.

Graham Barrow has also suggested that Companies House verification could reduce incorporations by close to 50% while making practically zero difference to corporate commercial activity in the UK. That shows the level of guff in the Companies House register. The examples of failures of accuracy at Companies House are legion. A Global Witness report in 2019 found an address in London where at least two company service providers appeared to host a number of companies apparently controlled by children under the age of two, who not only had access to the profits of the company but also the right to appoint directors and voting rights. That is quite extraordinary. There are some quite prodigious two-year-olds on that register.

It is long past time to act. The SNP’s new clause 4 would make Companies House an anti-money laundering supervisor, as it is strange that Companies House is not. That would go some way towards closing the door on those who seek to abuse the system. I wrote to the Government consultation three years ago to say that Companies House must have better and more robust mechanisms to ensure the information it holds relating to beneficial ownership is adequate, accurate and current. That still stands today.

There has also been a lack of action on Scottish limited partnerships. When I made my submission to the consultation, no fines had been handed out for non-compliance. Three years and four months later, I am pleased to report that is no longer true. Of the thousands of Scottish limited partnerships that have registered no person of significant control, there has now been a single fine of £210. We can all agree it is not the best deterrent if there is no consequence for not following the rules.

The Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) spoke earlier of action, but action is not impressive if those who have continually not complied with the rules do not even face a fine. That goes for all the mechanisms in the Bill that levy a fine. If the Government will not actually levy a fine and collect the money, there is little point putting it in the Bill.

SNP new clause 23 would ensure that beneficial owners of Scottish limited partnerships must, at last, be published, which would ensure transparency. Scottish limited partnerships are being used, again and again, in nefarious ways to move money and goods around the world. They have been involved in war crimes, child pornography and arms deals. The loopholes in Scottish limited partnerships and at Companies House have to be closed, as they harm not only individuals who suffer the effects of these crimes but Scotland’s reputation. Although they are called Scottish limited partnerships, Scotland plays no part in them. They are an historical arrangement legislated for in this place.

The Scottish Government’s crime campus at Gartcosh is doing great co-ordination work on tackling economic crime in Scotland, but much of the legislation and company registration responsibility that holds us back is still held here at Westminster. Our good name must not be tarnished any longer by continued inaction on these reserved matters.

SNP amendment 41 would ensure that reasons are given for any company claiming to have no beneficial owner or person with significant control. At the moment, companies do not have to account for that. They can just say, “We don’t have an owner, and we do not know who has significant control.” That is not acceptable, particularly when we consider that Scottish limited partnerships possess a separate legal personality allowing them to own assets, to enter into contracts, to sue or be sued, to own property, to borrow money and to issue certain kinds of security. Typically, limited partnerships are not treated as separate legal personalities and are not able to do those things, but Scottish limited partnerships are uniquely different in that way.

Scottish limited partnerships are taxed as though they do not have a separate legal personality, and no tax is payable by the partnership itself. Instead, the tax authorities look through the partnership structure and tax the partners on their share of partnership income and gains, in line with their profit-sharing ratios. Provided that the partnership is not trading in the UK, however, no UK tax will be payable by non-UK-resident partners.

We have known for years that Scottish limited partnerships are a dodge, and that money has gone in and out without taxation. We know they have been used to launder millions of pounds in dirty money created by illicit business activities. We need to see action finally to put a stop to this.

Unexplained wealth orders have been lauded by the Government in recent weeks as a powerful tool to tackle dirty money, but only nine have been used in four cases since their introduction in 2018. We support improvements to unexplained wealth orders, and we support bringing property held in trust into scope. We hope this will finally allow the National Crime Agency to do more with unexplained wealth orders and make them work.

Tom Keatinge of RUSI explained to the Treasury Committee today that unexplained wealth orders have not survived contact with reality. We can only hope that the reforms will make them more effective and more anchored in reality.

Susan Hawley, the executive director of Spotlight on Corruption, cautioned:

“The focus needs to be on confiscating and seizing assets not just investigating them… Without addressing the serious issues that law enforcement faces from shrinking budgets, decrepit IT systems, to…losing staff to the private sector, the new legislation will not make any difference at all.”

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[Mr David Davis]

I will speak solely to cross-party new clause 29. It is a very simple clause with a simple purpose: to make sure that the sanctions we intend against the oligarchs in Putin’s regime are actually effective.

I remind the House of a previous occasion when we had great fanfare for action against economic crime. Since we introduced unexplained wealth orders some years ago, we have tried to operate the orders only nine times against four individuals, and they have worked only twice. They failed seven out of nine times. The Government are doing something in this Bill to try to improve the equality of arms between Government lawyers and the multimillion-pounds-a-year lawyers on the other side. The Government have done good work that will help, but it does not address, because it cannot address, the most fundamental problem with unexplained wealth orders because, since 1990, it has been almost impossible to get any trustworthy evidential information out of Russia. The very least that does is slow the process leading to sanctions. The process leading to sanctions will be incredibly difficult and incredibly slow even with this better balance.

The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have confirmed that the Government have—this is a tabloid quote, I am afraid—a “hitlist” of more than 100 oligarchs. So far, 11 days into this conflict, we have sanctioned just 17 individuals, with some very obvious and notable exceptions who we can see and hear redisposing their assets even as we sit here. Press reports have quoted Government sources suggesting that it will take six months to work through the rest of the hitlist. And the rest, as I suspect it will take longer.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I am a big supporter of the right hon. Gentleman’s new clause. President Zelensky is to address us tomorrow; would it not be good for us to be able to tell him that that new clause was accepted tonight? We would then be able to say that we can crack down much faster.

[Mr Davis]

It would be good. It would allow us to crack down more effectively; not so much more quickly but more effectively.

What will we see during the months it takes to get people to the legal point at which they are sanctioned? We will see Russians scrambling to sell off their houses, dispose of their businesses and offload their football clubs. In respect of many of the measures, we will know a lot more about it and be much better informed, if none the wiser, with respect to what they are doing. Multimillion-pound car collections will be loaded into jets; anchors will be weighed on superyachts; priceless artworks will be squirrelled away—all to wend their way back to Russia or some other safe haven for these people. By the time our sanctions have taken effect on not all but many of the oligarchs, the horse will have well and truly bolted. Indeed, the background noise is currently the sound of a stampede of horses bolting as the door on the stables creaks shut. That is what we have to put right.

My new clause will help to prevent all that. It will not do everything, because it is only one piece of the repertoire of things we need to do, but it will allow the Government to publish a hitlist—forgive the tabloid term—or a list of individuals who are being considered for sanctions. In the same way as someone may wait on bail before they face trial, the freedoms of those on the list will be restricted for the period so that they do not flee. Once a person’s name appears on the list, their ability to sell, liquidate or transfer out of our jurisdiction their assets—cars, homes, businesses, jets, investments, cash and so on—will be frozen. They will then be unable to sell those assets or move them out of the UK. They will still be able to use them—there will be beneficial advantage to them—but their ability to thwart what we are trying to do today will be restricted.

Given my history in this House, some may be rather surprised that I am willing to see a restriction of a specific human property right—that is what my new clause amounts to and that is quite unusual for me—but we need to take action now; otherwise, any sanctions that the Government seek to impose will be entirely meaningless for a large number of these people. We see Chelsea being sold today and all sorts of actions going on that cannot be helpful to what we are trying to achieve. My new clause would give the Government breathing space—time to go through the legalities of formally sanctioning the oligarchs and pals of Putin who rightly deserve to be the target of sanctions.

Although the Government have identified 100 oligarchs to sanction, other countries have identified more. This is going to be a long war. The sanctions are going to be in place for years, not months. They will have effect only if we move more quickly than the targets.

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[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

It is both telling and deeply disappointing that it has taken a vicious and horrific conflict to bring us to this point of closing down the London laundromat.

I am speaking on behalf of my party rather than proposing any specific amendments, so I shall be very brief. I welcome amendments 42 to 44, tabled by the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), to toughen penalties for non-compliance with the register. We see this as a necessary precondition to increase the immediate costs of non-compliance with UK law. We will also be supporting the right hon. Member’s new clauses 2 and 3.

Past actions, including the much-trumpeted unexplained wealth orders, have done little to dent Russian influence in London, partly owing to the Government’s poor resourcing of enforcement agencies. New clause 2 would bring long overdue scrutiny of that significant weakness, and renewed support for our enforcement agencies. As the Russia report made clear, illicit money does not simply flow into London and the UK by its own volition; it is eased in by a wide network of enablers, from bankers to lawyers to estate agents—Russia’s little helpers in stashing ill-gotten gains and off-the-shelf influence. That is why we will also be supporting new clause 3, as well as amendment 41, tabled by my SNP colleagues, in order to curb the ability of shell companies and other indirect ownership instruments, as well as their paid London enablers, to obfuscate ownership structures for their clients. Those measures, along with new clauses 4 and 9, will tighten the massive loophole that prevents us from having a properly resourced, properly empowered and properly directed Companies House.

New clause 21 would help to address the issue of enforcement in Crown dependencies and British overseas territories. My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) has already raised with the Foreign Secretary the issue of the enforcement of sanctions in overseas territories such as Bermuda, where more than 700 Russian civilian aircraft are registered. We hope that new clause 21 will bring clarity to this long-standing grey area of enforcement.

However, none of this matters if the targets of the Bill are able to make off with their loot in the next few weeks. I therefore urge the Government to work with the Opposition, and to support new clauses 28 and 30 to ensure that the sanctions and the powers work to the maximum possible effect.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I support all the amendments that are intended to close loopholes in this long-overdue legislation, narrowing the gap between the Government’s rhetoric and the reality of what it is possible for them to do, strengthening the legislation, and ensuring that we have transparency so that we know who owns what, so that people can indeed be sanctioned, and so that their progress across our financial system can be followed in a meaningful way to make sanctions a reality. I also support new clauses 7 and 2, which seek to beef up enforcement.

Today, we in the Treasury Committee heard that the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation has 37.8 full-time equivalent staff. I put it to the Government that that is not nearly enough for us to make sanctions against Russia workable and effective. We also learned recently that the National Crime Agency had no Russian speakers. I am not sure how it is meant to pursue sanctions against Russia if it does not have anyone with the appropriate language skills to do so. I hope that it will be beefing up its enforcement activities as well.

We understand and support what the Government are trying to do with this legislation. It is long overdue, and we think it needs to be strengthened. The bewildering and fragmented nature of enforcement, and its underfunding, must be put right if we are to get to the stage where we can finally deal with the corruption of our financial system and its infiltration by those authoritarian regimes and kleptocrats who are putting our democracy at risk, and who, even as we are having this debate, are murdering and bombing innocent people in Ukraine and threatening the peace and prosperity of Europe and the world. I hope that the Government will listen and accept a lot of these amendments by the time the Bill comes back to this House in due course.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in support of new clauses 7 and 8, but I want to start by expressing my solidarity with the people of Ukraine, who face unimaginable heartbreak and horror, and particularly to black residents who have been subject to unacceptable levels of racism and brutality. I call on this Government to open our doors and welcome without discrimination all refugees who are fleeing oppression, violence, occupation and war. I applaud the courageous protesters in Russia, at home and across the world who are demonstrating for peace.

The National Crime Agency estimates that £100 billion of dirty money flows through the UK every single year. This is not a new phenomenon. Since as early as 2016, the Government have been making empty promises for tighter regulations to prevent these illicit activities, but since then, £1.5 billion-worth of property here has been bought by Russian oligarchs accused of corruption with links to the Kremlin. As long ago as 2018, draft legislation was published by this Government for a register of beneficial ownership to consolidate and clarify our legal structures in order to prevent profiteering by way of laundering money through the UK property market, but despite a wealth of evidence pointing to the illicit activities of oligarchs in London and elsewhere in the UK, the Government have done nothing but kick the can into the long grass. Given the almost £2 million received in Russia-linked donations by the Tory party since the current Prime Minister entered No. 10, it seems pretty clear why.

Labour has consistently been on the front foot when it comes to clamping down on oligarchs. Our plan included an oligarch levy to tax secret offshore purchases of UK residential property, the application of the Magnitsky clause to apply sanctions against human rights abuses, and to extend the beneficial ownership register for Crown dependencies and overseas territories. Labour has not just jumped on the bandwagon now that this has become the issue of the day; we have been putting forward detailed plans to tackle this injustice for many years, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has pointed out. Our amendments today will give this toothless Bill some bite, speeding up action against some of the worst offenders and bringing forward reforms to Companies House that will root out the activities of criminal elites who are legitimising their loot in the UK without scrutiny or repercussions. I hope the Minister will commit today to backing our amendments.