Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Clive Efford Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I am glad to rise on this auspicious day to discuss this auspicious Bill. Today is auspicious not just because we have this Bill back in the House today, but because it is my mum’s 70th birthday. I am sure all Members from across the House would like to wish her many happy returns. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Thank you.

The Bill presents a significant opportunity for the Government, and for all of us, in tackling economic crime across these islands. We have tabled many different amendments during the Bill’s various stages, including yet more today, but we very much encourage the Government to look at these amendments in good faith. As Ministers and anybody looking at the amendment paper will see, they are very much cross-party amendments. There is a lot more we agree with in the amendments to this Bill than I have seen in respect of just about any other Bill that has come before this House. The Government would do well to reflect on quite how cross-party the amendments are—there is very little to choose between us.

I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) for the important work she has done in her all-party group, which has been significant in bringing so much cross-party agreement together on the direction of travel here. I hope very much that the Minister will be listening to her, as we all will be, when she speaks later, because the amount of work that has gone into considering what would make the Bill stronger is significant; it is not a light job that has been done there. The Bill would be strengthened all the more if these amendments were accepted.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the Minister for the work he has done on this issue when he was one of us on the Back Benches. When the hon. Lady was speaking about the cross-party nature of the amendments, I could not help but think that if the situation were slightly different, the Minister’s name would be on those amendments.

[Alison Thewliss]

Yes. I have remarked in Committee, as the Minister will well remember, on the number of occasions when he agrees with himself, but not as a Minister. It is a curious situation and I will return to that when we get to the part of the Bill with which he is most associated.

As the Minister said, and as we all acknowledge, there is a lot here that we can agree on. It is unfortunate that more of the amendments have not been taken on board, because gaps remain in the Bill. We are all concerned that there will not be another opportunity to look at these issues again in this detail; unfortunately, parliamentary time does not work like that, so getting it right this time is important. We could get it right today or tomorrow, or if the Lords come forward with some useful amendments—as little as I like to give credit to the unelected peers along the hall, if amendments are tabled there, I would encourage the Government to accept them and make sure that they are acknowledged.

SNP Members have tabled a number of amendments, where we seek to create a unique identifier for directors; to put a limit on the number of directorships an individual can hold; to prevent directors in breach of their duties from taking public funds; and to prevent the practice of phoenixing, which causes so much harm to many of our constituents. It is not often talked about in the same bracket as economic crime generally, but phoenixing causes huge distress. My hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) will certainly return to this point in his remarks later.

Government new clause 8, on persistent breaches of companies legislation and the disqualification of company directors, is very important, because we have seen numerous reports in the press of people who repeatedly breach the law. There are huge issues of enforcement, and I intend to address those too. The Bill should include consequences for people who breach the rules.

I wonder what the House and the Minister think about a compliance case raised earlier today by Tortoise. It mentioned Balshore Investments Ltd Gibraltar, which in 2017 listed itself at Companies House as a person of significant control of a different company, Crowd2Fund. Its name was then removed in 2020, and that removal was backdated to 2016. In 2022 two directors, named on the register as Nadjat Al Zahawi and Hareth Nadhim Al Zahawi, were named as PSCs of Crowd2Fund.

Graham Barrow has told Tortoise that the retrospective changing of directors means that Balshore’s filings

“leave a huge gap of six years when, despite Balshore owning 40 per cent of Crowd2Fund, no declaration of the underlying owners of Balshore has been made, as required by UK law”.

This is a very interesting and topical case. I wonder what the consequences might be for, and what might befall, those who fail to comply with company law in this way under the new legislation.

Government new clause 15 is important in ensuring that this House is accountable on the measures within the Bill. I think that is fine as far as it goes, but Labour’s new clause 16 would go much further. It is important that the Minister looks at these measures and asks, “What does the House need to know?” Yes, there will be reports, but there is a good deal more detail in new clause 16, and I think it is important to look at that and think, “Actually, this is what the House might find useful and interesting to look at as regards the effectiveness of the Bill.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I absolutely share the hon. Gentleman’s concern and will offer him a meeting with the Energy and Climate Minister specifically on this matter.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I wonder what discussions the Secretary of State has had with the energy companies following the report last week from Citizens Advice showing that hundreds of thousands of customers are being forcibly moved on to prepayment meters. Has he had discussions with his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice? Forcible entry to make hundreds of these changes is being approved on an industrial scale in minutes flat in magistrates courts. It is a real scandal. What is he doing about it?

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Gentleman is right on that point. My right hon. Friend the Energy and Climate Minister and I have instructed our officials to draw up measures that could be helpful. We also have a letter to go to Ofgem once we have that advice. I am very concerned about this happening through an enforced process. We are on the public’s side and trying to fix it.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Clive Efford Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call Clive Efford.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I withdrew, Mr Deputy Speaker, because I was not present for the opening speeches.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Christine Jardine will be delighted to hear that.

Royal Mail and the Universal Service Obligation

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Ms Ali, after 26 years of being in the House, it is a great pleasure to speak in a debate with you in the Chair for the first time. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) on securing this important debate.

I will start by doing something I did not expect to do, which is to agree with the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), who gave an excellent speech, including his complimentary comments about the people who work in the postal service. What I find sad about the Government is that whenever they talk about public sector workers, they always talk about them as if they are the enemy, but when I talk to public sector workers, I hear that they are concerned about their conditions making it difficult for them to be able to provide the service they are providing. That is true of the postal workers, when I talk to them about their industrial action and defending the universal service obligation.

The situation we are in right now was predicted at the time of privatisation—incidentally, Royal Mail has been in private hands for 10 years, and here we are with this standard of service. What a disgrace! It was predicted that sooner or later, its management would want to cherry-pick the service. The more profitable bits would be hived off, and the universal service obligation would come under threat.

Post covid, many more people are working from home. I recently led a debate in this Chamber regarding my local train service, because the Government are saying, “We are cutting the local train service because more people are working from home.” Well, if more people are working from home, it follows that more people will be reliant on their post; they will want those important documents that cannot be emailed, which other Members have described, to come through the post. If the Government’s argument for cutting trains applies to the postal service as well, it will be more important to defend the universal service obligation, not less.

I have raised the issue of casualisation in the past. We had casual labour employed to deliver the local post a number of years ago, and we found undelivered bags of mail in the Quaggy river, which runs through my constituency. More importantly, the employers could not identify the workers they had employed to deliver those bags of mail. They had no identification—no way of following up who they were. Those people had rifled through the post, and what they did not have time to open they just dumped in the river—no come back, no follow-up. Is that the sort of casualisation that we want to see—people being hired to deliver the post for Royal Mail because they have a van? It is a service that people rely on and we should not be dumbing it down.

I have one or two questions for the Minister. Royal Mail announced record profits last May of £758 million. It paid out £567 million to shareholders and buy-back schemes. Within six months of International Distributions Services becoming Royal Mail’s parent company, it announced it was losing £1 million a day and was going to cut 10,000 workers. What questions did the Government ask of IDS when it announced it was losing £1 million a day so soon after it had made record profits of £758 million? Given that the losses were within just six months, surely that should have raised some alarm bells within the Government.

What attitude do the Government take to the dumbing down of the workforce, the introduction of the laws of the gig economy—rather than relying on the dedicated workforce that we have—and Royal Mail’s undermining of the workforce? IDS, the parent company, says it is making losses, but apparently boasts to potential investors—this was reported in The Telegraph—that it has a £1.7 million investment war chest to put into the company. How can it be saying one thing to one audience and another to the other?

I know the Minister will sympathise with my final point. Apparently, Mr Daniel Křetínský has links to the gas operator Gazprom. What assurances do we have that we are not supporting Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine by the back door? Is there a national security risk from his involvement with Royal Mail?

[Rushanara Ali (in the Chair)]

Order. Can the hon. Member tell the House whether he has informed the Member he mentioned that he would refer to him in this debate?

[Clive Efford]

I am not talking about a Member of the House. Daniel Křetínský is the owner of Vesa Equity Investment.

[Rushanara Ali (in the Chair)]

Fine; it is a similar name.

[Clive Efford]

Finally, will the Minister undertake to defend the universal service obligation and not dumb it down in any way?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kevin Hollinrake)]

It is a pleasure to speak with you in the Chair, Ms Ali. I congratulate the hon. Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) on securing this really important debate about Royal Mail and the future of the universal postal service, and I very much appreciate her experience and expertise, and what she is able to add to this very important debate. She talked about the changes at the top of Royal Mail, as well as the changes in personnel in my role. I pay tribute to my predecessors, not least for their unwavering commitment to Royal Mail workers, who do such a fine job, and to a universal postal service, which I will come to in a second. Today’s debate is the second I have had on this matter in this Chamber this week, which shows how important the subject is to our constituents and to fellow Members of Parliament. I agree with the way the hon. Lady described the service; it is a lifeline for many throughout our communities.

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their important contributions. As they know, postal services are an integral part of the modern economy, allowing the smallest of businesses to connect with customers across the world and providing consumers with access to a vast range of products. Most people rely on at least some important information to be delivered by post. Cards and letters remain a special way to keep in touch with loved ones, and, as the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) said, it was hugely important that covid tests were distributed properly during the pandemic.

In the last financial year, all postal operators delivered around 3.8 billion parcels across the UK and Royal Mail delivered around 8 billion addressed letters. My hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston) is right that the volume of letters delivered has dropped to 8 billion; it was around double that in 2013, at the time of privatisation. Nevertheless, the importance of the postal service in keeping people connected was never more apparent than during the covid pandemic. We are hugely grateful to the delivery workers, who worked exceptionally hard to deliver letters and parcels in those difficult circumstances.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) and the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) talked about the pride that postal workers feel in their jobs. I absolutely concur with that. My father was a milkman in our local community. The hon. Member for Glasgow South West talked about how vulnerable members of the community are looked after by postal workers, and that was the experience of my father in our little local community as well, so I fully recognise the importance of the service.

Post offices also play a unique and vital role in the UK’s postal system. We are committed to ensuring that we keep a minimum of 11,500 branches throughout the UK, with 99% of the population being within three miles of a post office. That is why we have invested £2.5 billion in the post office network over the last 10 years.

The hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) seemed to think that Government Members view public service workers as enemies. I gently say to him that I take exception to that. We all have friends and relatives who proudly work in the public service. My mum was a social worker who worked in the public sector all her life, and she did a fantastic job, so I do not recognise the hon. Gentleman’s characterisation, and I do not recognise in my colleagues, either.

[Clive Efford]

My simple question is: how will the Minister vote on the Bill on Monday?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

We will have a good opportunity to debate the Bill on Monday, so I do not want to get dragged into that right now.

Post Office: GLO Compensation Scheme

Clive Efford Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. As the right hon. Member for North Durham has also said, we do not want to see a complex and expensive legal process that costs a fortune for those who should have been compensated long ago. That is why this is going through an alternative dispute resolution process. We will also provide assistance in pulling the papers together so that people can make their applications as easily as possible.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I also pay tribute to Lord Arbuthnot, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and the former Minister, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), for their tireless work on this issue.

May I press the Secretary of State a little further on getting justice for those who used the state to defend an indefensible position, which ended up putting people in prison and wrecking people’s lives, with some committing suicide? His Department was clearly involved in this. Will he guarantee full disclosure of any documents required for any future legal proceedings?

The problem is that the postmasters lack the means, and those who have been defending their position have untold means, because they are using taxpayers’ money. The Secretary of State says justice has to be done, but how does he see that being pursued? Will these people have to fund legal action again, or will the state fund criminal proceedings?

Energy Security

Clive Efford Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend will be pleased to hear that when I was at Sizewell yesterday, I was with leaders from EDF and the French Government—indeed, the French ambassador was there. Later in the day I spoke to my opposite number about ensuring that we can speed up co-operation on nuclear, as well as on things such as wind, and even on our interconnectors. I was going to say that the point of Great British Nuclear is to really put the acid under this, but I am sure that there is a much better nuclear comparison. It is really about ensuring that we get on with producing our new nuclear fleet a lot faster than has happened in the last few decades.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State confirm that, even with the additional money made available for home insulation, his officials have told him that the money falls short by tens of billions?

[Grant Shapps]

It is worth the House knowing that we have already put in £6.6 billion. We have announced another £6 billion, which will be spent in the period from 2025 to 2028. The £1 billion that I announced yesterday will cover hundreds of thousands of homes. Of course, it is typical of the Labour party to think that the only way in which this can ever be funded is by the taxpayer and that there are no other routes to market. Lots of homes will be improved by, for example, regulations on build, ensuring that the overall increase in improvements in EPCs comes not just through spending taxpayers’ cash.

Shale Gas Extraction

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Community consent is important, and the hon. Lady is right to point that out.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Only a few weeks ago, the Prime Minister quoted the Conservative manifesto when she said that she was going to reverse the rise in national insurance because the party had pledged not to increase it—apparently that was a solemn pledge. The manifesto also said that there would be no fracking where there was no local consent, but apparently that was not a pledge. Can the Secretary of State tell us whether local communities will be consulted before testing takes place, and who will pay the bribes? Will it be the taxpayer or, as he says, the market forces?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The socialists do not like people being paid for things. It seems perfectly reasonable to pay people and, if we inconvenience them, to compensate them, and that will be part of the overall package if shale gas can be extracted.

Energy Prices: Support for Business

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

We have acted extremely swiftly to provide support, and it is proper that it should be reviewed to ensure that it goes to the right people. The timeline is completely reasonable. It seems to me that people are looking for things to harp on about in a package that they broadly welcome.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Many businesses are negotiating contracts with their energy suppliers now, so what does the Secretary of State have to say to those businesses? Should they negotiate just for six months? What will he do, in all urgency, to prevent the next six months from being a period in which businesses are run down and closed?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

As I have set out, there will be a review and an announcement, giving people plenty of time for 1 April.

Energy Update

Clive Efford Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

I thank the right hon. Member for that list of important questions. He will know that the new taskforce has already started meeting to extend the energy bill support scheme, or provisions thereof, to Northern Ireland; that is welcome news.

I think the right hon. Member said that fracking would lead to quick supplies. I am not as convinced that he is that it would be quick, but as I said, we will be responding to the British Geological Survey in due course.

On dependence on renewables, the right hon. Member is right that a number of elements used in creating renewable energy resources are dependent on critical minerals, but that is exactly one of the reasons why the Government have recently launched the critical minerals strategy. We will be talking to all our international partners, as I do, about critical minerals and making sure that we have a diversity of sources of supply for them going forward.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I do not get any sense of urgency from the Minister about the plight of businesses negotiating energy contracts. I have been contacted by a family-run independent craft bakery that is about to celebrate its centenary and has been run by six generations of the same family. It employs 20 people in my constituency, but is facing at least a 300% increase in the energy costs in its contracts. We cannot leave businesses in that situation hanging. We have no date yet for the Government to come forward with a set of proposals. When will those businesses have some idea what support they will get from this Government? Businesses in that situation are just not going to survive for very long.

Post Office: Compensation for Horizon Scandal

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I thank my right hon. Friend for all his work and the conversations that we have had. I should not have to be here making these statements and the taxpayer should not be covering compensation for the Post Office. This is being done because people have been wronged by those in authority and they have been let down time and again over 20 years. That is why we need compensation, justice and answers and to be able to draw a line under this, so that people who have been wronged can move on with their lives.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The Minister knows that I have two such cases. One person is in front of the independent panel giving advice on the historical shortfall scheme. The other person has a conviction that was overturned by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. However, the Post Office does not accept that that was a Horizon-related conviction and is therefore refusing to provide any form of compensation. Given the comprehensive nature of the failure of Horizon, how can the Post Office say that with any confidence? Will the Minister confirm that we will consider compensation for former postmasters who are in my constituent’s position?

[Paul Scully]

The hon. Gentleman and I have discussed this matter and I think the interim payments are his constituent’s concern. If Horizon is deemed not to have been the main driver of what happened—the Post Office contested that—his constituent would not be entitled to the interim payments, but that does not stop them applying for compensation.