Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill

Bim Afolami Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

Many of my colleagues— interestingly, more on the Conservative Benches—are fond of quoting Lenin these days. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) did so earlier. One Lenin quote goes something along the lines of, “History needs a push.” It does feel that the march of history, regrettably, by the actions of Vladmir Putin, has given us a push. It has given this economic crime Bill a push. But it is important that we bear in mind the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) in his excellent speech that this legislation is here for the long term. This is not dependent on what is going on in Ukraine, regrettable though that is. Some of the actions that the Government have rightly taken are temporary and designed to deal with the Ukrainian issue. But this is for the long term. Many Members on both sides of the House have worked for that and we need to bear that in mind as we legislate.

On the register of overseas entities, in my view, the proposed requirements will not disincentivise honest investors into the British market. We are a place that is open for business. We are pro-business, but we want clean money and this Bill completely bears that in mind and does the right thing.

I also want to push back on some colleagues who have picked up on Opposition amendment 12, which talks of setting up the register of overseas entities within 28 days. All of us want this to happen as soon as possible, but I fear that many in the House underestimate the challenge of turning Companies House—we have heard lots of war stories about various things at Companies House that are not as we would like them to be, and I would agree with those—from effectively an administrative office into something like a quasi-regulator. That is hard. It will take time.

There are those who say, “Well, you should legislate anyway and force Companies House to do it quickly.” Yes, we could; we could force it to do that tomorrow, but the next day, when our constituents, the media and various other people said, “Why is Parliament not enforcing the law it has passed?” the reason would be that we were not capable of doing it through Companies House. To some degree, these things are arbitrary, but I think six months is a fair period in which to do those things. Of course, I will listen carefully in Committee to what the Minister says from the Treasury Bench.

I have a couple of technical points for the Minister. The first is whether, in focusing on the holding and transferring of qualifying interest in land as a trigger point for this Bill, the Bill captures sales of property-owning companies—share sales, not asset sales. That is one point that should be cleared up. Secondly, does the Bill cater for nominee arrangements that could allow the purpose of the overseas register to be easily evaded? That would be an interesting point for the Minister to clarify.

The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation has come up in the debate. The really good and important thing the Bill does is to move us from a position where the office could only impose penalties if an individual

“knew or had reasonable cause to suspect”

that sanctions would be breached, to a strict liability position where, if the sanctions are breached, people can be fined. That is the right approach, it is overdue and I commend the Government for taking it.

Speaking as somebody who was formerly in the City of London as a lawyer, as an adviser and in a bank, it is important that the City of London helps this House and the Government to take a lead here. The world is looking at the City to see whether it can put these things in place in a co-operative way, and by that I mean everybody from the institutions to the advisers and all the rest. Morals and markets need not and should not be mutually exclusive. That is of critical importance.

We are all politicians—indeed, we are all human beings; those two things are not always mutually exclusive either—and there are heightened tensions in this House and across the country. While we legislate, we must bear in mind the rule of law. When we talk about seizures of assets, that is a serious business that should never be done on a whim. This Government, with this Bill and the other measures, have struck the right balance between doing what we need to do and ensuring that we are seen to be sensible, proportionate and within the rule of law. Without that, we lose everything.