Oral Answers to Questions

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Tuesday 12th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Hugo Swire)]

Indeed I can. My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the current visit by Their Royal Highnesses, which is going extremely well. We have incredibly good bilateral relations with India, and the visit here by Mr Modi was a great success. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point to the soft power we have in our diplomatic armoury, from the BBC, to the British Council, the GREAT campaign, the Newton Fund and the Chevening and Marshall scholarship programmes. All those are part of the jigsaw that helps us to do business and to project British values right around the world.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister said yesterday that all of Britain’s overseas territories and Crown dependencies, apart from Anguilla and Guernsey, have now agreed to provide our law enforcement and tax authorities with full access to information on beneficial ownership. Why will there not be public access to the registers, given that the Prime Minister wrote to the overseas territories on 25 April 2014 to say that making such information open would help “to tackle crime”, and given that, from June this year, the British register of beneficial ownership will be open to the public? If openness is good enough for the UK, why should we accept a different position in our overseas territories?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (James Duddridge)]

It is disappointing that the shadow Secretary of State does not congratulate the overseas territories on the enormous progress they have made on tax transparency and on opening up for law enforcement agencies. This is really superb progress, but as the Prime Minister outlined yesterday, it is not an international standard, and we need to move towards eliminating all corrupt, terrorist and money laundering practices across the globe. While there are states in the US where people can open companies and not have full public registers, it is only fair to say to the overseas territories, “Congratulations on progress so far.” Longer term, the Prime Minister and the Government are clear that we want greater transparency, and that will be about a move towards public access.

[Hilary Benn]

I do welcome progress; I was just asking why the overseas territories will not meet the standard Britain is going to set.

Our membership of the European Union helps us in the fight against money laundering, terrorist financing and tax evasion—an example being the fourth anti-money laundering directive, on which the UK has taken the lead. The directive will, for the first time, oblige all member states to keep registers of beneficial owners and to make those open to tax and law enforcement authorities and to others who have a legitimate interest, including investigative journalists. Does that not show that leaving the EU could hinder the fight against financial criminality in Europe, because the best way to tackle such criminality is to work in partnership with our neighbours?

[Mr Lidington]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that there are many ways in which we benefit, in taking action against crime, through this kind of European co-operation. What I hear from the police service is that almost all serious crime these days has an international dimension of some kind, and countries need to work together to tackle that. The current system, where we can choose whether to opt in to individual justice and home affairs measures, really does give us the best of both worlds.