Corporate Structures and Financial Crime

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Steve Barclay

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry]

I am getting to that. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend.

Is it any wonder that KPMG has just reported that in the UK, fraud cases totalling more than £500 million were recorded in the first half of 2013, which is up by more than a quarter on the previous year?

We need a change of culture in our law enforcement agencies. We must equip them with the tools and resources that they need to get on the front foot. Under English law, companies are criminally liable only if it can be proved that a director was personally involved in the wrongdoing. That is an extremely high threshold—a problem to which the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) referred.

There is a good case for holding companies vicariously liable for their employees’ economic crimes, unless they can demonstrate that they had adequate compliance procedures. The last Labour Government did that in relation to bribery with the Bribery Act 2010. We want to build on that, but this Government want to water it down. They say, for some reason, that rules against bribery are red tape. That stopping people bribing one another can be seen as red tape is beyond belief.

If we change the law on corporate responsibility, we may see an increase in the number of companies that are prosecuted, so we must have a penalty structure that is worthy of receiving them. The highest fraud fine to result from an SFO prosecution is £2.2 million. The highest fine clinched by the US Department of Justice is larger than $3 billion. Why do we not introduce a system in which sentences are based on a percentage of the company’s turnover over the past three years?

Although the SFO’s problems are not entirely down to under-resourcing, resources are important because these crimes are expensive to investigate. Last year, the SFO’s budget was £34 million, compared with £40 million in 2009-10. In 2014-15, it will fall to only £30 million. It is so short of money that it has to go cap in hand to the Treasury whenever it wants to take over a major prosecution. That at least gives the impression that the Chancellor has a secret veto on whether fraud investigations take place.

The US approach of topping up the funds of fraud prosecutors is much more appealing. Where possible, confiscated assets are returned to the victims. The proceeds from the many cases in which the victims cannot be traced are poured into a central fund. Each year, teams of prosecutors bid for a portion of that fund for asset tracing and law enforcement investigations. We have the beginnings of such a system in the UK. We could extend that and put large fines or at least part of them into the pool as well. In these austere times, we need to explore such alternative means of funding.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is eloquently describing the failure of the tripartite regulatory regime that her Government put in place. She is correct that the fines in the UK are a fraction of those in the US. A further failure is that the fines have rewarded other banks. This Government have ensured that the fines that are paid do not reduce the levy so that banks no longer profit from the wrongdoing of other banks. That was the regime that her Government put in place.

[Emily Thornberry]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but in the time I have available, I would like to look to the future and consider the best method that we have for solving the current problems. I am happy to talk to him at some length outside the debate, because I am committed to the issue and will be interested to hear his point of view.

It seems to me that one good way in which the assets in question can be used, instead of lowering the levy, is to put them into a pool that prosecutors can use in future. That would help to pump up what we are doing. That seems to be a way forward, and I am putting it before the House today to get some sensible responses.