Panama Papers

David Lammy Excerpts

Monday 11th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

It is good that we are having this summit. As I am writing in a document that will be released before the summit, no country, no politician—no one—can claim that they have a perfect and unblemished record in this regard; all countries are battling against these problems, as we did in the House of Commons with the problems of expenses and all the rest of it. However, I want to encourage people, and the Prime Minister of Afghanistan and the President of Nigeria are contributing, and they are admitting that their countries are rife with corruption and it needs to be dealt with. The problem is that, if nobody actually stands up and talks about these issues and sets out the action plans for delivering on these issues, nothing will get done.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

At the last count, 36,364 properties in London were owned by offshore companies—that is one in 10 in one London borough and 7% in another London borough. We should know who owns those properties. Many believe that this is about dirty money from countries such as Russia and from the middle east. This is driving up costs, with a 50% increase since 2007. What is the Prime Minister going to do about dirty money propping up the London property market?

[The Prime Minister]

The first thing, which we have already done and which has had a huge impact, is to say that, if a company owns a property in a so-called envelope structure, so that we cannot get to the name of the person who owns that property, they have to pay an annual stamp duty charge of something like 15%. That has been a massive money raiser, providing money to spend on public services, and a huge disincentive for that sort of behaviour. However, I want to go further; as I said in my speech in Singapore, we need to have more information about who owns what in our country.