Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill (Second sitting)

James Daly Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th October 2022 Public Bill Committees

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

Q The first two words of the Bill’s title are “Economic Crime”. I think you said, Mr Swain, that you are a passive registry organisation, so how does the Bill help you to turn from a passive registry into somebody who can work with law enforcement to tackle economic crime?

Martin Swain: One of the main measures is ID verification. That is one of the biggest gaps in our register at the moment. We do not verify people who are setting up and running companies. The fact that we will know them and have verified them is key. We are taking considerable powers in the Bill to do things that we cannot do at the moment. We cannot query information that is filed with us. We cannot analyse and proactively share information. At the moment, we are very reactive. I use the word “passive”, and “reactive” is another word that I would use. We react to colleagues such as Adrian coming to us saying that they want information on certain things. In the future, we will be able to do our own intelligence work and will proactively be able to work with law enforcement.

[James Daly]

Q I am assuming, Mr Searle, that as somebody in your position, you want to see the transformation of this organisation from a passive organisation to a partner that will work with law enforcement to do what we require.

Adrian Searle: For sure. It is a really fundamental change. I already have folk from my intelligence and investigative teams in the National Crime Agency working with colleagues in the Companies House teams to help them to set the road map for how they will transform.

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

Q Martin Swain, I think that many of us on both sides of the Committee think not that it has to be more regulation, but that it has to be smarter regulation. If there are businesses operating that are pursuing economic crimes, that does not help business creation or the wealth of the economy. I am a bit concerned that you think the new regulatory measures are more burdensome. Are they not just smarter? [Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

Q There has been a growing trend of people setting up companies using someone else’s address and name. Presumably those will still exist on the register after this legislation comes into force. What would you like to see happen to clear out the fraudulent things that are already on the register?

Commander Adams: If I am right, the Bill allows for retrospective work to take place. However, as you have alluded to, there are simply millions of entities on there. As you heard from colleagues earlier, the resourcing of those retrospective checks, given all the work that has to be done—there are something like 1,500 companies registered every day in the UK; it is phenomenal—is going to be a real challenge. We would want to see resourcing to do those retrospective checks, to remove those companies from the register as quickly as possible.

[James Daly]

Q What is your view of how clauses 1 to 98—part 1 of the Bill—regarding Companies House reform can assist law enforcement to tackle economic crime more effectively?

Commander Adams: Again, you heard from colleagues earlier about this. The big thing for us is making sure that checks are undertaken to ensure that individuals who are setting up companies or have a significant stake in them are verified, to give us, as Adrian said, those investigative lines of inquiry into individuals. For us, that is the biggest game changer in what we are currently seeing, but of course it will require the right level of scrutiny and adequate robustness in those checks, and the capacity to do them at speed.

[James Daly]

Ms Crotty?

Michelle Crotty: The same—anything that allows us to identify the people behind it and then to use that to follow up with lines of inquiry. Capacity is certainly something that we would be concerned about, but the work that the NCA and the NECC are doing with Companies House should help with that, in terms of training Companies House staff.

Simon Welch: It would also be nice to be able to data wash some of the registrations through law enforcement indices before they were actually registered. That is obviously another quantum leap from where we are now. I think we are looking at sharing that data, but that is another thing for Companies House to work out, in liaison probably with the NECC. I think that would be preferable for us. Then we could prevent these companies from opening up in the first place, and stop them being used as vehicles for criminality.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

Q Michelle Crotty, what would you feel about the introduction of an offence of failure to prevent economic crime?

Michelle Crotty: We are very strongly on the record as saying that that is an offence that we would like to see. We have seen good results with it in relation to bribery and corruption since its introduction in 2010. Nine of our 12 deferred prosecution agreements have involved a failure to prevent bribery offence. We think that it not only punishes but helps to reform corporate behaviour. What we have seen with the Bribery Act 2010 is that companies have very much focused on putting adequate procedures in place because that is the defence that it provides them. The prosecution is one part of it, but actually the preventive work in terms of adequate procedures is as important, if not more important.

The other thing that we would say in terms of the impact on business is that for a failure to prevent economic crime offence many of the adequate procedures would already be in place in terms of anti-money laundering and other areas. Clearly that is something that the Committee, and guidance, would need to work through, but the impact on business may not be as heavy as some might fear.