Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL]

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I agree that the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, was a bit quick off the mark. Just have a glance behind you occasionally—you might find that somebody wants to come in.

I was rather diffident about putting my name to such illustriously signed amendments. My noble friend Lady Northover spoke about the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. I am not sure that I would trust the country solicitors “Judge and Pannick” or “Pannick and Judge”; I am not sure whether it is best to panic after you have judged or judge before you panic. Nevertheless, any sensible Minister who sees those names on an amendment thinks very hard about it. Of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, said, this will be a very necessary Bill if the Government succeed in their Brexit aims, but that does not mean that every Bill that comes before us has to be given a nod through because of the pressures of the Government’s own making. There is a real danger.

I can almost imagine the discussions in the Cabinet Office: “How on earth do we get this shedload of legislation through?”. Then somebody says, “The only way you can do it, Ministers, is by lots of Henry VIII clauses and lots of powers by secondary legislation”. “Okay, we will do it that way.” The irony of that, as I have said before from these Benches, is that an exercise that was intended to return sovereignty to this Parliament is becoming an exercise in returning power on an unprecedented scale to the Executive. I fear that, unless the Government come up with some new and ingenious proposals for dealing with this flood of legislation short of these broad powers, they will run into trouble time and again.

Of course, we want to get the bad guys, and there is always a temptation, especially if you are the Minister, to go for the Eliot Ness solution—how do we kick down the door and get at the bad guys?—but we cannot ignore a report such as that referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. Go through every page of it. There is reference to the Henry VIII powers, but then:

“We do not consider it appropriate for ministers to have powers … We are concerned about the breadth of the power … We are deeply concerned that the power in clause 16”,


et cetera. It goes on right through the report. This is a really serious warning to Ministers and to Parliament from a very well-respected committee.

Of course, Whitehall does not have a pure record on this. Even in the days when we were simply transferring European law into our own law, there was a well-established practice in Whitehall to do a bit of gold-plating on the way and dig in a few regulations that people had wanted to get anyway. We have to resist this gold-plating. As I say, when someone such as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, talks about “unjustifiable breadth”, and someone such as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, talks about “a bonanza of regulations” and “extravagant powers”, it is not only the Committee that would be wise to take note; the Minister should as well.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, I had been waiting for the noble Lord, Lord McNally, to speak, so have come in rather later than perhaps I should have. The arguments advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, are compelling. I would throw one other word into the mix: “expedience”. Under the Bill as drafted, it might be thought appropriate because it is expedient to make a provision, but that is not good enough here. These powers are so draconian that nothing short of necessity alone could justify their exercise. Therefore, I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, said: unless the Minister can give a convincing illustration of a regulation which is justifiably expedient but short of necessity, we cannot possibly allow the Bill to go forward in its present form.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendment 1A. I wish to reinforce what has been said by my noble friend Lady Northover. The regulations that the Minister will have powers to impose through Clause 1 will have far-reaching consequences on “designated persons”, “prescribed persons” and “involved persons”, as affected individuals or entities are variously referred to throughout the Bill. Therefore, it is only right that the power to create a regulation should entail a more onerous thought process than consideration by the “appropriate Minister”. I agree that “compelling reasons” would be a more fitting foundation for making such momentous decisions.