Corporate Transparency and Economic Crime
Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Julian Lewis(2 years, 3 months ago)
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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.
UK Gas Market
Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Julian Lewis(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Kwasi Kwarteng
I am working very closely with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. We have spoken to the Treasury, and we are keen to push forward plans very soon to make sure there is a consistent and regular supply of CO2.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
As Russia completes its sinister Nord Stream 2 pipeline and tightens its stranglehold on gas supplies to Europe, why are we not fully exploiting Rolls-Royce modular nuclear reactors to decrease our indirect dependence on Russian gas and our direct dependence on French and Chinese nuclear technology?