Draft Register of Overseas Entities (Delivery, Protection and Trust Services) Regulations 2022

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2022 General Committees

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

It is good to see you in the Chair, Ms Rees. I welcome the Minister to her place and commend her on a thorough analysis and description of what the instrument does. She has pretty much answered my questions. I congratulate her on that, because that is not normally what happens, as any Government Member who has attended a statutory instrument debate to which I have responded can attest.

The Minister pointed out that the instrument is essential for the implementation of the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022. It also implements aspects of the new register of overseas entities, which will finally require owners of UK property to reveal their true identity and crack down on foreign criminals using UK property to launder money.

The Minister described the process whereby documents will be delivered electronically to the Registrar of Companies, and I will come on to discuss some of the slight exemptions. It will also set up the protection regime under which exemptions may be allowed. The regime will allow owners and managing officers of overseas entities to apply to have their information made unavailable for public inspection when there is evidence that they or someone in their household is at serious risk of violence or intimidation. We believe that that balance is the right approach.

Questions were raised in the House of Lords about ensuring that those protections are not abused. To be fair to the Minister, she attempted, as I have indicated, to address those questions, but I want to tease some things out a little further.

There should be nothing controversial about knowing who really owns property in in a healthy, transparent economy and making that information publicly available. This is a matter not simply of targeting individuals or entities through sanctions, but of fixing a broken system that has helped to sustain Vladimir Putin in his invasion of Ukraine. However, it is not just because of oligarchs and their position in Putin’s regime that this is finally being expedited. I congratulate the Minister’s officials on their thorough work in setting this up, as she described.

However, it is a matter of regret and of concern that the Government dragged their feet when we called for these measures time and again. They were first promised in 2016. Since then, £1.5 billion-worth of property has been bought by Russians linked to the Kremlin. Looking at the House of Lords Hansard, the debate focused on the protection of individuals and ensuring that those protections were not open to abuse. The Minister, Lord Callanan, stressed that 163 out of 436 applications for protection under the existing register have been granted since 2016. He said that the low proportion of exemptions granted under the existing regime was evidence that a rigorous regime would be in place for overseas entities. I think the Minister addressed that in her remarks when she described the process of supplying evidence to the registrar. However, it is important that she assures us that the process will be robust, that true identities will not continue to be hidden and that there is no potential for ongoing criminality. The Minister may want to reiterate some of her points about those assurances being in place. With that, I am happy to go along with what she has said so far.