Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I hope to make the shortest speech in the debate so far and to complement the contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Vaux and Lord Browne, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, who along with me spent an enjoyable and productive year under the benign chairmanship of my noble friend Lady Morgan on the fraud Select Committee.

I begin with a general point. Your Lordships’ House has two unique selling points: first, its ability to subject legislation to detailed expert, impartial and lengthy scrutiny, uninhibited by timetable Motions or a government majority; secondly, and less publicly recognised, the work of its Select Committees, whose reports do not command the credit or attention they deserve and are often debated months after publication. Where we can do better is by linking those two strengths and focusing, yet more relentlessly and insistently, the recommendations of the Select Committees on legislation as it comes before your Lordships’ House.

I know that is not as easy as it sounds. Select Committee reports are generated by Parliament while Bills are generated by the Executive. The agendas may be slightly different and all sorts of reasons are produced for not accepting amendments. I recently tried to get a manifesto commitment added to a government Bill but was told I could not because the Bill was time-critical. There was then several months’ delay before it had its remaining stages. Ministers get approval for Bills on the basis that they repel boarders; the usual channels do not like Christmas-tree Bills to which embellishments can be attached. Ministers have to give all sorts of commitments in order to get into the programme. They may promise to deal with an issue in their own time, and on reflection, I confess I have used some of those arguments myself.

With this Bill, however, there seems to be a common agenda: tackling economic crime. We have plenty of time and several Select Committee Reports, not just the one on fraud, which give us a real opportunity to press those recommendations home. I believe we have Ministers who have already indicated some flexibility, which I welcome, and may be persuaded to go yet further. I want to mention five points very briefly.

First, on SLAPPs, the Government have made a commitment to bring in stand-alone legislation but have not said when. My concern is that it will not happen in this Parliament unless we do it in this Bill, so journalists will not get the protection they need when they work in the public interest on economic crime. My noble friend Lady Stowell, who chairs the Communications and Digital Committee, has just made a powerful contribution. She is on the record as saying:

“The current level of activity to tackle SLAPPs is wholly inadequate”,


so we have a real opportunity to make progress there.

Secondly, on Companies House, the improvements were available to the committee when we considered this, but, while welcoming them, we went on to say:

“We remain concerned about how these reforms will be funded … It will be essential that alongside any such funding, adequate resources are given to upskilling the workforce at Companies House to support the growth in investigative capacity.”


My noble friend Lord Johnson, whom I welcome to the Front Bench, mentioned the powers that are going to go to Companies House in his opening speech but did not say anything about resources. Perhaps that could be rectified in the wind-ups.

Thirdly, the committee said:

“The Government should launch a review into the use of civil remedies to tackle fraud, including an examination of obstacles, for example, fees to commence civil proceedings, to the use of civil remedies such as asset recovery and injunctions.”


To this end, capping adverse costs in civil recovery could be a useful amendment.

Fourthly, there is the duty to prevent, which several speakers have mentioned. We said that we need a new corporate criminal offence of failure to prevent fraud, applicable across all sectors. But way back in 2019, the Lords Select Committee on the Bribery Act recommended that the Government should

“delay no more in analysing the evidence”.

Related to that, as the final of my five points, is the identification principle. I do not think that has been mentioned so far but it underpins how we hold our companies liable for economic crimes. At the moment, it is a rather antiquated Victorian concept which does not fit with modern and complex governance structures. The Law Commission found it

“an obstacle to holding large companies criminally responsible for offences committed in their interests by their employees.”

The commission clearly said that we need both failure to prevent offences and identification principle reform.

I end by making a suggestion related to my first point about raising the profile of Select Committee reports. When I was leader in another place, I introduced a reform whereby the chairman of a Select Committee could launch their report on the Floor of the House of Commons on the day it was published and then have a short question and answer session. It raised the profile of the report generally and focused the House’s attention on it. I leave that proposal hanging in the air, as it may be too radical for your Lordships’ House.