Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I will not; I need to make progress and I have been generous with interventions. In addition, on the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) made, I did say that we would cut away process, but he has already heard me say that there are security concerns and considerations—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There are just too many conversations going on. I am struggling to hear.

[Priti Patel]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

Putin is a gangster and his regime is underpinned by a mob of oligarchs and kleptocrats who have abused the financial system and the rule of law for too long. Putin’s cronies have hidden dirty money in the UK and across the west, and we do not want it here. Expediting this legislation, which I know the whole House supports, will mean that we can crack down on the people who abuse the UK’s open society.

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[Priti Patel]

I appreciate that this is now becoming a much wider debate, but on Friday we launched an extended family route that covers the very family members that the right hon. Lady is referring to, and people are applying—over 14,000 have applied. That scheme is up and running. I said in my earlier remarks that later on this evening we will be providing assured data and assured numbers on the people who are coming through that route. It is wrong to say that this Government are not welcoming Ukrainian refugees. We have a very unique scheme. As I said, it is the first of its kind in the world and it cannot be measured against that of any other country.

[Mr Speaker]

I think I need to come in here, just for a minute. At the end of this debate I expect the Minister’s wind-up to pick up on some of the points that have not been answered—that is the idea of having a Minister speak at the end. Hopefully we can make sure that the Government, having been given time to think about the answers, are prepared to respond to some of the questions that have been raised.

[Yvette Cooper]

I am grateful, Mr Speaker, because there are some very serious questions.

The Home Secretary has just said that elderly aunts are included, but that is not what the website says. Elderly parents are, yes, but elderly aunts are not. We really need to know what the facts are, because right now a lot of families are being turned away. Lots of relatives who are families of Ukrainians working here on healthcare visas or on study visas are also not allowed to come. They are not included in her scheme and families are desperate now.

What is happening is shameful. There are too few relatives arriving and no sign of the sponsorship scheme that the Government have promised will allow those who are not family members to come. Will the Home Secretary please stop claiming that this is all world-beating and world-leading and that she is doing everything possible, and accept that it is not working and things are going wrong? Otherwise, how can we possibly have confidence that she is going to put this right and make sure that refugees can get the sanctuary they need?

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. We have been waiting for the economic crime Bill for many years. There is a huge number of amendments on the Order Paper and a huge number of people wanting to speak. This is a very important issue—absolutely critical—but it does not relate to that legislation. Could we have a ruling from you on that point, sir?

[Mr Speaker]

I make the decisions, and I think it is all right. What I would say, in fairness, is that the Home Secretary spoke for well over 30 minutes—in fact, I think it was nearly 40—and I am therefore giving some leeway. It is a very important matter; it is also protected time, so one need not worry.

[Yvette Cooper]

Thank you. Mr Speaker. The concern for the House is that the Home Secretary has provided information today that does not yet seem to be accurate, and we urgently need accurate information. We also need a simple route to sanctuary for people who want to join family or friends and need sanctuary in the UK to be able to do so. That is not yet happening. We desperately need the Home Secretary to get a grip.

We need action to support refugees. We need the UK to do our bit. We also need the measures on sanctions, unexplained wealth orders and the register of overseas entities to be put swiftly in place. We need Putin to feel the full force of sanctions now; we welcome the sanctions that are in place, but more than a week into the war, we have sanctioned only a handful of oligarchs and are still falling behind other countries. I hope the Bill will make it possible to speed things up, but there are concerns that people who may be subject to sanctions will still have time to move their wealth. We will discuss those concerns later in Committee, where amendments have been tabled that may be able to address them.

Turning to beneficial ownership, UK property has been used to launder illicit wealth for too long. We welcome measures to reveal for the first time who the ultimate foreign owners of UK property are. We welcome, too, the Government’s recognition that the initial, draft Bill did not go far enough; they have accepted our amendments on stronger fines and proper identity checks, and that is welcome. Giving people 18 months to dispose of all their assets, as the draft Bill suggested, so they can hide them in some other regime was clearly ludicrous; it was a chance for them to get out of London and stash illicit money somewhere else. But even six months gives people a very long time, and is not justified by the scale of the problem we face. People have already had six years of warning that this Bill was coming. That is why in our amendment, we call for 28 days instead.

We support the measures on unexplained wealth orders. The fact that they have been used in only four cases in four years shows that for too long they have not been working: they are too hard for the police to use and too easy for the clever lawyers of rich criminals and oligarchs to block, and the costs to the National Crime Agency if it loses a court case are too great. We have called for more action to monitor progress to see whether these reforms make sufficient difference, and we welcome the Government’s acceptance of that amendment, but that must be only the start. We badly need the long-promised reform to Companies House, and we are calling on the Government to publish that draft legislation imminently. We need to ensure that it has action on enablers and on cryptocurrencies, too.

We will need more action on golden visas. The Home Secretary has rightly made a decision to halt them, but her own statement said:

“The operation of the route has facilitated the presence of persons relying on funds that have been obtained illicitly or who represent a wider security risk.”—[Official Report, 21 February 2022; Vol. 709, c. 6WS.]

There is still no published review, no information on the number of people suspected of involvement or of posing a wider security risk, or how many of them have now become British citizens. I wrote to the Home Secretary to ask questions on that, and she has not responded. I urge her or other Ministers to explain when they will be able to do so.

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[Rushanara Ali]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is deeply concerning that the now Lord Lebedev, despite warnings—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We cannot name a Member of the other place, unless it is on a substantive motion, so that it is not personal. We must keep to where we are.

[Yvette Cooper]

Given the seriousness of this matter and the seriousness of the allegations that security advice from our intelligence agencies was dismissed, and given the importance of the Prime Minister always demonstrating that the defence of our national security is always his priority, it is immensely important that all the information and advice pertaining to this appointment is made available to the Intelligence and Security Committee, so that it can also scrutinise this process and examine the information it is given. The No. 1 responsibility for us all, and certainly for our Government, must be the protection of our national security.

Today we will speed through this Bill and wish it well. We want to see stronger action against Russia at this time of international crisis. We want to see stronger action against economic crime that puts us to shame and undermines our economy and the rule of law. We need action on transparency, on regulation, on enforcement and on accountability—too many areas where there has not been progress for too long. We also need action so that the UK plays our part and properly gives sanctuary to those fleeing the Russian bombardment in Ukraine. They need our support and help here in the UK, and that is not just family members, but those more widely who need our support. We must vow that never again will we allow our major institutions to be so influenced by corrupt elites and that we will give those involved in corruption and economic crime no place to hide. Be it Russia or anywhere else in the world, we will no longer stand for this here in the UK.

[Mr Speaker]

I start off by saying that I expect Members to take around five minutes.