Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Debate between Dean Russell and Seema Malhotra

2nd reading
Thursday 13th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dean Russell]

In that case, shall I start my new speech, Madam Deputy Speaker? I will not, because I am conscious that hon. Members have been incredibly gracious in their speeches and even more gracious in listening to mine. I will do my best to finish these last few points, so that the Adjournment debate can begin. [Interruption.] I can assure hon. Members that they will get weekends—I do not need to legislate for that.

Several Members, including the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), raised concerns about how the supervisory regime for professional enablers works and whether it is sufficiently robust. The UK’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing supervisory schemes are comprehensive in their regulation and supervision of firms most at risk from money laundering and terrorist financing. In December 2018 the global standard setter for those organisations, the Financial Action Task Force—there are lots of acronyms, so for anyone watching who is not as understanding of the details, I will use the words involved, rather than FATF, AML and all the rest—recognised that the UK’s regime is one of the strongest of more than 100 countries assessed by the Financial Action Task Force and its regional bodies to date.

In 2018 the Government established the Office for Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervision to provide a greater degree of oversight and promote co-operation between the 22 professional body supervisors. That office has driven significant improvements in the supervision by professional body supervisors, and in 2019 only 9% of PBSs fully applied a risk-based approach. That rose to 86% by 2020. It has also developed platforms, such as the intelligence sharing expert working groups, to facilitate greater information and intelligence sharing. There is still work to be done to ensure consistency of approach and to improve information and intelligence sharing, as identified in the recent post-implementation review of the OPBAS regulations and the recent OPBAS report.

[Seema Malhotra]

I recognise that the Minister has made a huge set of comments on the issues that were raised, but I want to pick him up on one point relating to the Financial Action Task Force. He is right that we may be ahead in some areas, but the FATF and the IMF have highlighted that more needs to be done, including by the Financial Conduct Authority, to expand supervision. I hope that he can pick up some of that and make sure that we do not think that we have gone far enough—there is a lot further to go for confidence in the regime.