Loan Charge

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and David Davis

Thursday 18th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir David Davis]

Yes, my hon. Friend is right. I am afraid that one of the characteristics of miscarriages of justice—I have forgotten who raised this point earlier, so please forgive me for not referencing them—is that the victim at the beginning is probably the most unpopular person in society. They are thought to be guilty and may even doubt themselves over whether they have made a mistake. These people, by and large, have been compelled to do what we are talking about. They have been offered a job on these terms only, so they have had no choice, but then they think, “Well, maybe I should have known.” Then, like the sub-postmasters, they are persuaded by the people dealing with them that they are the only one.

Until our campaign started, all these people felt that they were the only one, or one of a few nasty tax evaders—not tax avoiders—so they gave in. Of course, it is like the Gestapo: confession never saves you; it is a step to execution. That is how it works, I am afraid. That is true of all big organisations full of people who are well-intentioned, but who defend the institution. That is why, answering my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset, it goes on through Government after Government after Government. It is not the Ministers who do this, but the members of the institution.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I get all of that and my right hon. Friend is right, but there is a peculiarity about HMRC, with its powers and lack of accountability. It does not publish accounts, and Ministers come and go; they do not really run that Department. That really is the issue. Bad as it might be elsewhere, it is astonishingly bad now because of HMRC’s behaviour.

[Sir David Davis]

My right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset listed a few of the other cases, from Hillsborough onwards, so it does come back to that. Even the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) used to run, has its own police force, in effect, and its own prosecutors. That is one of the clues. This will come back time and again with HMRC and others. He is right that we need to hold this organisation to account. It serves the people, not the Government of the day. This Parliament is the institution that serves the people and, starting with the Public Accounts Committee, we should be holding HMRC to account, but there are many others who should get involved.

I have given a completely different speech from the one I intended to give, because everybody else said everything before I rose, but I will finish with a point I certainly wanted to make. The BBC once referred to me as an old war horse, so I will give the Minister some old war horse advice, having been there once or twice myself. One of the lessons of the last few weeks is that Ministers—junior Ministers in particular—are very easily led to give dead bat answers in the Chamber. They are the answers handed to them by their officials, and they have no other answers to give, unless they want to end their career on the spot—I have done that twice, but never mind. This is not about his answers today, but the simple truth is that unless he wants to be seen in the same light as Ministers in the past—maybe he wants to be a future leader of the Liberal Democrats—he needs to go back to his Department and say, “I want to see the truth. Here are the things you’ve done. Why did you not tell the House of Lords why you are not pursuing the promoters of these schemes? Why did you tell people you only go for half their disposable income when you’re not doing that?” Get the answers, Minister. Then, when you next come back to the Chamber—and you will have to come back to the Chamber again—you can give us the truth.

Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and David Davis

Committee stage
Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

Yes, I do, but my hon. Friend must bear in mind that the burden in the new clause—the responsibility and requirements—falls on the person who is sanctioned.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I was not going to intervene on my right hon. Friend but I have been looking back over the list in his new clause. Does he think there is a slight problem, in that the new clause talks of

“selling any assets they own or…moving any assets they own or have an interest in out of the United Kingdom, or…moving any of their funds out of the United Kingdom”

but it does not cover anything about gifting assets out to an individual who may then transfer them immediately? Does he think that ought to be included in the measure?

[Mr Davis]

Yes, my right hon. Friend makes a good point. The reason why gifting and transferring to relatives, which is another category, is not in there is because I took—I almost ripped it out of the legislation—the legislation that we put in place for Skripal, which also omitted those things. My right hon. Friend is quite right, though, and had my new clause been accepted today, I would have looked to make two changes when the Bill went to the Lords, the first of which would be to do that—to tighten it. The other would be to include a right of appeal if it went on too long the other way round, to balance the human rights issue.

We should bear in mind the fact that the National Crime Agency, for example, has people on police bail. I know of a case in which people have been on police bail for five years and we know nothing about it, so the restriction in my new clause on somebody who faces possible sanction is much less than the restriction the NCA imposes on some people. It is vital that we prevent ultra-wealthy individuals, with their teams of highly paid lawyers, advisers and accountants, from exiting the UK with their ill-gotten gains or hiding them where we cannot find them or get them.

By the way, I am a great believer in the presumption of innocence, but if somebody came out of the old Soviet Union—Russia—in the years between 1990 and 2010 with £1 billion, £2 billion, £3 billion or £4 billion to their name, and they were previously an officer of the Russian state, I do not quite start with the presumption of innocence that I would normally start with. I would start with a requirement on them to explain where that came from. That seems to me to be a reasonable, common-sense modification of my normal “mad-libertarian” interests.

Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and David Davis

2nd reading
Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

Given the nature of the debate, I will try to make my simple points in three minutes. [Interruption.] There were cheers from the Government Benches, anyway.

I suspect that we will all vote for this Bill. The House is of one in wishing to stop the murderous behaviour of Putin in Ukraine and to punish him and his elite for carrying out such evil crimes against humanity. That is not to say this is a perfectly crafted Bill. To some extent, that is inevitable; it has had to be constructed in a hurry from an original economic crime Bill that was designed for a different purpose under different circumstances. Worse than that, in some ways, it is being operated by three or four Departments, some of which are operating in areas that they are not used to, which is often not a pretty sight, and I speak as an ex-Minister in that respect.

The Government, I think, will do two sensible things. First, they will accept most, or many, of the amendments that have been tabled, which is sensible because most are thoughtful and all are well intentioned. Secondly, the Home Secretary said that there will be a second economic crime Bill and of course we are making plans and projections for that. One of its functions will be to correct the mistakes that we make today, of which there will be many, because we are dealing with a difficult and sophisticated adversary and we are making decisions quickly.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I want my right hon. Friend to extend his speech slightly. Does he agree—I hope my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is listening too—that whatever happens with the Bill, we are clear that those in the other place who deliberately amended previous legislation to water down the provisions that would have seen us go after many of these people, have some warning not to do that ever again?

[Mr Davis]

I am pretty sure that they will hear that warning when they look back at this debate.

I do not often quote Lenin, but it is probably appropriate. As he famously said,

“A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at both ends,”

which is also true of the Bill. It will do great harm to the Russian economy and to our adversaries in Russia, but it will also do some harm to us—or at least, the retaliation will—and it will particularly hit the least well-off. We will see greater price inflation, less growth, less trade and therefore fewer jobs. We must recognise that when we undertake what we are doing here. We can make Russia a pariah state but Putin will retaliate, and we must be ready. We need to be ready for fuel crises, cyber-attacks and ludicrous threats from the Kremlin.

Beyond the Bill, there are many further things that we can do in the west and we should be ready to do them. To pick one example, the allies should be ready to reduce every Russian embassy to a bare minimum—to skeleton status—by the expulsion of diplomats at the first sign of retaliatory action from Russia. It must be clear to Russia that it will pay if it retaliates again.

We have said, and we must keep saying, that the Bill is not aimed at punishing the Russian people—that is incredibly important. It should target the Russian Government, Putin and his henchmen, which is why the actions in the Bill against oligarchs are as important as the actions against Russian banks and commercial institutions. There was some briefing from Whitehall over the weekend that implied that they are not, but that is wrong.

We have all heard the rumours that Putin has something like $200 billion of personal wealth. He does not hold any of it himself; it is held by the 140-plus oligarchs around the world. Targeting them, therefore, is at least as important as targeting the Russian state banks. To do that properly, we must act fast, which is the thrust of my new clause 29, which I will speak to later in Committee.

We should not kid ourselves. This is not an economic crime Bill, but an economic warfare Bill, and it is a war that liberal democracies cannot afford to lose.

Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and David Davis

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

With respect to the hon. Gentleman, I have no idea what he was intervening over. There is a free market, and when a free market operates we have competition because companies are set up to solve problems and sell their goods. When a company has unlimited funds and can undercut the others, there is no money for them, they cannot operate and they will go out of business. It is fairly logical for anybody who understands the free market.

[Mr David Davis]

It is not just subsidy that supports Huawei and undermines its competition. At least some members of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service believe that Huawei started by stealing Nortel’s technology, which ended up destroying Nortel and putting Huawei in a dominant position.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was going to come to that, but now that he has mentioned it, let us kill this one completely. The reality is that there has been a whole series of attempts—successful ones—to steal technology from other companies in the field, thus driving them out, by finding the edge they have on technology and selling it at a cheaper price. The bidding that took place under the previous Labour Government was raised earlier. I am not blaming the Labour Government for that; that just happens to be the way it was. But the amount paid by those companies was astonishing—about £24 billion to £25 billion—and it left them bereft of cash and desperate for cheap product.

Huawei and 5G

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and David Davis

Wednesday 4th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I do not think John Lewis is in the market, but we can check that. I have not been there for any telecommunications.

I say to my colleagues and to you, Mr Paisley, that the situation is an utter mess at the moment.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I have been listening carefully to my right hon. Friend’s brilliant speech. As far as I can see, so far he has knocked down the Government’s arguments on technical grounds, diplomatic grounds, security grounds, practical grounds, commercial grounds and public safety grounds. After listening to his speech, there are no grounds on which to accept Huawei involvement in our national infrastructure. Can it be, therefore, that the Government’s only argument for accepting Huawei’s involvement is fear of China’s economic and geostrategic power? Giving in to that may be expedient, but does my right hon. Friend agree that it would be geostrategically wrong to kowtow to the Chinese Government?