Corporate Transparency and Economic Crime

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Alicia Kearns

Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I fully accept the hon. Gentleman’s point and I wish to put on record the fact that I corrected myself immediately—having said “the Ukraine”, I changed it to “Ukraine”. He makes a perfectly legitimate point about that little bit of grammar and the definite article, which is very important. On the speed with which we have brought forward this legislation, I wish to pay tribute to him and to Conservative colleagues, some of whom are no longer in their place, as they have led huge amounts of work and cross-party engagement. I am delighted that now we can expedite bringing this Bill forward.

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)]

I very much welcome these efforts to rid ill-gotten roubles from our system, but in future packages will my right hon. Friend extend transparency efforts into the private education sector and education corporations? Our sanctions regime should stop sanctioned oligarchs from being able to pay future school fees, because they are sanctioned, but many of them pay school fees through shell companies, cash and cut-outs. So will he make sure that our amazing educational establishments do not continue to receive money from ill-gotten gains?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

This issue has been raised already, particularly by my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary, who is absolutely focused on making sure that our education system is not abused in the way that our legislation on property and companies is.