Corporate Transparency and Economic Crime

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her points. Clearly, on the time that this has taken, she will remember that in the 2017 to 2019 Parliament, a huge amount of our time was taken up by members of the Labour party and the Opposition parties frustrating Brexit. They absorbed a huge amount of parliamentary time and I am afraid that that was one of the reasons we could not expedite this sort of legislation.

There will be criminal liability for failure to update the register annually and for giving misleading or inaccurate information. We are working with the Crown dependencies to update their transparency; by next year, they will have to have much greater transparency requirements. The hon. Lady will be pleased to know that my Government colleagues and I speak to our counterparts in the devolved Administrations on a very regular basis.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I welcome the statement, as far as it goes. As a matter of principle, does my right hon. Friend agree that cleansing British public life of dirty Russian money is not quintessentially difficult?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

As my right hon. Friend appreciates, this legislation is timely. We are grateful that it seems to have elicited huge support across the House, and we are pleased to be able to expedite it.