Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Lord Stevens of Birmingham Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, so many authoritative and forensic speeches have been made this evening that I will not follow the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, that repetition is desirable so as to convey to the Government the sense of the House. Instead, I will follow the dictum that if you cannot be original, be short.

I will therefore make just one point of amplification, but with a small asterisk to respond to what the noble Lord, Lord Gold, has just said. My limited understanding of the question he poses in respect of the £25,000 fine is that, relative to the hundreds of millions—in fact, billions—of pounds of dirty money flowing through London and washing through some of the so-called London laundromat, £25,000 is a laughably small maximum fine. My understanding—I stand to be corrected —is that the maximum fine the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has imposed for money laundering is £30,000. Given what we have heard about some of the misdemeanours in the dark fringes of the legal profession, I think we can all agree that a £30,000 fine set against billions of pounds of dirty money is totally inadequate.

The point I really want to use this opportunity to amplify relates to the Crown dependencies and the overseas territories. It will not have escaped the notice of those of us who heard President Zelensky today that as he was driving to Parliament, he will have driven past Whitehall Court, where, according to the Guardian, luxury flats looking out over the Ministry of Defence are owned by a former Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. Transparency International has estimated that £6.7 billion of property in this country, much of it Russian, is backed by dirty money.

Important steps have been taken with the establishment of the new register, but we understand from Transparency International that more than half the UK properties bought with dirty money are held by companies registered in British Overseas Territories and the Crown dependencies. What is more, a third of overseas entities registered with Companies House by the deadline of last Tuesday were based in the British Virgin Islands. As the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, rightly and so forcefully pointed out, BVI companies are not currently required to publicly disclose their beneficial owners. Can the Minister in responding explain why the Government believe that should continue to be the case? If they are not prepared to defend that situation, why miss this opportunity, which is our second bite of the cherry on economic crime and probably our last bite of the cherry in this Parliament, to do something about it?

It should not have taken the Russian invasion of Ukraine to serve as the wake-up call for the amount of dirty money being laundered through London. We now have an opportunity to do something about it. Why not include the overseas territories within the scope of the action required?