Criminal Finances Bill

Lord Beith Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 25th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I declare a simple interest as a former chairman of the Justice Committee in the House of Commons, where we sought to clarify and underline the constitutional relationship. That probably explains why, while I generally support government Amendment 8, I have some doubts as to whether it is desirable to have included the Crown dependencies and overseas territories in the same amendment when their constitutional relationship has a very different history.

Of course, the amendment as framed does not claim to place any requirements on the jurisdictions to which it refers; it simply requires UK Ministers to report to the UK Parliament on how it is all going, which is obviously a good thing and something that we can very much welcome. Parliament needs to know about the effectiveness of information sharing, not only in respect of the overseas territories and the Crown dependencies but in respect of all the jurisdictions in which business is already carried out or to which it might transfer as a result of the steadily improving regulation in some of the territories that have been referred to in this debate.

A lot of the public concern arises from two things. One of them, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, is the appalling record of corruption in many developing countries. The other is the revelation of much of that in the Panama papers. The noble Baroness, Lady Stern, deserves credit and tribute for her campaigning on this issue. She referred to the number of proceedings being considered or started. Many of them have arisen not from inadequate public registers but from the useful publication of a great deal of information from one law firm. As it happens, it was the biggest law firm in Panama, Mossack Fonseca, both of whose named partners are currently in detention in relation to matters in Brazil.