Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill (Sixth sitting)

Margaret Hodge Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 1st November 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Stephen Kinnock]

rose—

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[The Chair]

Order. The hon. Member needs to respond first. Then the right hon. Lady can intervene.

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[Stephen Kinnock]

You are absolutely right to keep us in line, Ms Bardell. We need to ensure we can operationalise the Bill in the clearest and most succinct way that leaves absolutely no room for doubt. The Bill is designed to regulate a sector of the economy that is like water; if it can find cracks to slip through, it will find them. We are trying to close those loopholes.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I am bewildered. The Minister may be too. Proposed new subsection (4A) in clause 14(5)(b) sets out that an application must be made “within the period of three weeks”. Obviously the lawyers do not think it is bad to put “within a period of three weeks” in that particular context. If someone says “at least”, that is a minimum, not a maximum. At least is a minimum. I cannot think that a lawyer would not have common sense about it. Perhaps the Minister wants to go away, reflect on this and move an amendment later. I do not believe lawyers are quite that removed from reality and common sense. It literally says in that clause “made within”. The lawyers do not mind using that term sometimes, so why can they not use it always?

[Stephen Kinnock]

My right hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. I hope the Minister will reflect on that.

Moving on to clauses 15 to 22, we are content with clause 15, which would allow for objections based on the company name being misleading outside the UK and for the shareholders and directors of said company to be joined as respondents or defenders in the claim. In their February 2022 White Paper, the Government explained the rationale for expanding the grounds for objections to be made to a company’s name. It was broadly accepted that the current restrictions, for instance on names that imply a link to the UK Government, were too narrowly drawn.

Responses to the consultation reflected widespread concern about the impact company names that are clearly deliberately misleading might have on legitimate businesses in cases where rogue companies try to suggest they have a connection to a well-known business and thus benefit from wider public recognition of, and perhaps even loyalty to, an established brand. Such appropriation of company names is now understood as a means of scamming would-be investors out of their money. Earlier this year, for example, there were high-profile reports of a scam involving a company calling itself Diageo Partners Ltd. It attempted to solicit an investment by presenting itself as an arm of the well-known drinks company of that name. Another case flagged by the Financial Conduct Authority in January involved similar attempts by scammers to link themselves with the financial institution Wells Fargo.

Clause 15 is a welcome recognition of those issues and should go some way toward addressing them. However, many legitimate companies that raise objections via the Company Names Tribunal are currently facing delays of three months or more before they can get a decision. I wonder whether the Minister could explain what steps the Government will take to help speed up the Company Names Tribunal process and ensure that fraudulent company names are corrected as quickly as possible.

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Bardell.

As Members will have noted, this group is large and includes both amendments and clauses. The hon. Member for Aberavon—I appreciate his kind words and those of the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston—has tabled many amendments, and they would make changes across multiple clauses. It will therefore be helpful for all Members if I lay out the effects of the clause as currently drafted, before turning to the amendments and the many points made during the debate.

Clauses 14 to 22 together form the majority of the chapter on registered company names. At present, the Companies Act 2006 leaves it to the discretion of the Secretary of State to determine the time period within which a company must comply with a direction to change its name. Clause 14 amends that to standardise the various direction-issuing powers already found in part 5 of the Companies Act 2006 and those that are inserted by this Bill. This means that in all instances where companies are directed to change their registered names, they must do so within at least 28 days of the date of the direction. [Interruption.] There are two things I would say to the hon. Member for Aberavon. Clause 14 must be looked at in context, and the point is that proposed new subsection (2A) of section 64 of the Companies Act would give

“a period of at least 28 days beginning with the date of the direction.”

Combined with new subsection (2) of section 76 of that Act, as inserted by clause 14(5) of this Bill, that means the direction will be a fixed period. There will be a fixed period, just as he wants, and in all likelihood it will be 28 days. It may sound like odd drafting, but the “at least” part is to ensure that the direction cannot be less than 28 days to give companies a reasonable chance to make the change. Once the decision has been made on how long the company will get, that will be a fixed period, unless the company provides justification for changing it.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

Further on in the Bill, there are a lot of Henry VIII powers. I cannot see the justification in this context, and perhaps the Minister can advise us why we cannot put 28 days in the Bill. It has to be “at least”, but it also has to be “at most”. Let us just put that in the Bill. I do not know why we give any Minister discretion on this. It ought to be in the Bill.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

It is in the Bill. The point is that the company, in some circumstances, can effectively apply to have that time period extended. That is the point of this; that is where the “at least” bit comes in.

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[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. I support the amendment, and that tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking, because in many ways they go to the heart of whether the Minister is serious about stripping economic criminals of their balaclavas and cloaks of anonymity, which currently allow them to perpetrate some of the worst economic crime on the planet.

I said this morning that when we offer privileges to people in this country, whether benefits or a visa, we put them through the most substantial identification checks. We put those applying for visas for this country through a whole set of biometric checks, which I introduced. When we introduced them the first time around, and began washing those biometric checks against police computers, we discovered that visas had been issued in the past to some of the most obnoxious criminals on earth.

Verification checks are a good thing. I would say that they are required if we are to grant individuals the economic privileges that come through limited liability. That is the privilege that we are giving people when they register a company at Companies House. It is not just a free-for-all; it is a privilege that we created for the common good, and we should therefore ensure that we give it to not just anybody who happens to turn up but people we know. That is why we need a very clear story from the Minister about the regime that he will bring forward to ensure that the cloak of anonymity—these balaclavas on economic criminals—are gone once and for all. Unless we have that reassurance, the Bill will not be worth the paper that it is written on.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I rise to support amendment 86 and to speak to amendment 94 in my name. I have to say to the Minister that this is the first debate where there is a flaw in how the legislation is drafted, such that when the Bill becomes active, it will not serve the purpose that we all desire of it. I can see how we got there, but I ask him to consider looking at it in another way.

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

Permission should certainly be sought; it is just that some people do not seek permission. That is the point behind the clause. We are putting provisions in place to clamp down on that behaviour and completely eradicate the possibility of someone doing that.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

Okay, but I have not read anywhere in the Bill of a legal duty placed on an individual establishing a company to seek the permission of the person whose address it is, whether a householder or a business. I cannot see that in the Bill, so it would be helpful if the Minister could direct me to it.

That is point No. 1. My second point is that there is massive abuse of addresses, to which other Members have already pointed. In the FinCEN files, which I happened to have looked at again recently, one case involved a private address in Leicester that was used as the company address of 36 shell companies.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I draw the Committee’s attention to the wording of clause 28, on an “appropriate address”:

“A company must ensure that its registered office is at all times at an appropriate address…An address is an ‘appropriate address’ if, in the ordinary course of events…a document addressed to the company, and delivered there by hand or by post, would be expected to come to the attention of a person acting on behalf of the company”.

It is therefore impossible to see how people could just pick any address, as some do now; that clearly would not be an appropriate address, because there would be nobody there to hand the correspondence on.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

Interestingly enough, the example that I was halfway through describing proves that one could still choose an address and have documents delivered to it, but, if one had not sought permission of the person whose address it is, it could still be a phoney address.

To follow through on the example in the FinCEN files, a private address in Leicester had 36 shell companies, all with accounts in the Danske Bank in Estonia. The address was in fact that of the home of a Latvian cleaner called Dace Streipa—I hope I pronounced that correctly. When she was confronted by the journalist investigating the FinCEN files, she claimed to know nothing about it. Letters had kept appearing at her house, but she did not know what to do with them.

The other FinCEN files example was that of 175 Darkes Lane, Potters Bar, which I am sure the Minister will remember. It was home to more than 1,000 companies. It may be, then, that there is an obligation, but someone could choose any address, including my home address if they so wanted, and I am not sure that there is an obligation for the person who chooses that address to seek my permission to do so. If I am wrong, I am happy to take that back, but I do not think the clause that the Minister directed me to covers that. We want to stop the cuckooing activity.

Clauses 61 and 62 put duties on Companies House to ensure that identities are verified, but there is no duty to ensure the verification of addresses. That duty is needed: it is part of the proactive role that we talked about at the beginning of this morning’s debate. It should be proportionate and could be done with a risk-based assessment, but if we do not place a duty on Companies House to perform some sort of check on the addresses that are submitted in relation to the formation of each company, as well as a check on the identity of the individuals, we are digging a hole for ourselves and will find that the legislation we pass is not effective in the way that is wanted. I ask the Minister to give the idea really serious consideration, because I do not think the Bill goes far enough to give us the certainty that we seek on the legitimacy of companies that are formed.

[The Chair]

Order. Before I call the Minister, I remind the Committee that it is helpful if Members indicate in their substantive contribution whether they are going to press or withdraw an amendment.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I hear clearly the comments made on both sides of the argument, but I think the provisions in the Bill do tackle the issues that Members are trying to tackle—

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

They don’t.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The right hon. Lady should let me develop my argument, if she does not mind.

We are all aware of the frequent problems that arise when criminals incorporate companies using an address that belongs to a person who has nothing to do with that company, or when criminals hijack the details of a legitimate company and change the address to one that is invalid or ineffective. The Bill contains provisions that will not only reduce the risk of that happening, but mean that when it does happen the registrar can take swifter action to remedy the situation, which I think is what Members are asking for.

The Bill will operate like this. Clause 28 imposes new duties on companies to ensure at all times that their registered office address is an appropriate address. The companies and individuals involved would be guilty of an offence if they did not make sure that the address was appropriate—

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

Will the Minister give way?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Let me develop my point a little bit. The meaning is clearly defined in the Bill: an appropriate address is an address where it can be reasonably expected that documents sent to the company will come to the attention of a person acting on the behalf of the company. It is inconceivable that a Latvian lady in Leicester who does not know why she is getting correspondence could be defined as somebody who is able to pass on the documentation to a person acting on behalf of the company.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

Will the Minister give way at this point?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Let me just finish the other critical part of the definition. An appropriate address is an address where an acknowledgement of the delivery of documents is capable of being recorded.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

The Minister has not answered the point about whether, in the Latvian cleaner example, her permission would legally have had to be sought for that address to be used, but let us put that to one side. He says that if it does happen, swift action will be taken; how on earth would that ever come to the knowledge of Companies House? How would it ever know if there is no system of spot checking to ensure that the addresses that are used are true? There is no system in the Bill. The main point of this whole argument is that we need a checking system—I accept that not every address would be checked, but it could be a spot-checking system—to ensure that the addresses are valid. That is not in the Bill.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

There are 4.5 million companies in the UK—

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I know; there should be spot checks.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

And I do not think the right hon. Lady imagines that the registrar could go around them all. I am glad we agree on that.

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

That is something that we will need to see—the plan for Companies House and the resources needed for that. A figure of £50 or £100 was quoted; if the company formation fee was £50, that would raise £20 million a year. That is quite a significant amount of money. As I said, cart and horse, first we need to see what powers and resources Companies House needs, and then we can apply the right levy in terms of the company formation fee to ensure that the resources are available. A review will also be conducted to ensure that those resources will still be available as time goes on. On that note, I conclude my remarks.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I want to say a number of things. First, may I say to Conservative Back Benchers that I do not think anyone in the room wants to do anything other than encourage maximum commercial activity to maximise growth? Right? I have looked at the issue for a long time, and my view, which I believe is shared by the Minister, is that if we do not sort out the dirty money, Britain will become a less attractive place in which to invest and grow. Let us be clear that we are not in any way trying to over-regulate or impede economic and commercial activity; we want to encourage it. Let us have that as a shared objective.

Secondly, I accept and applaud the work the Government have done on trying to hone down the definition of appropriate address. The proposed clauses and amendments on that are really important, but then comes the “but”, which is that all the evidence we have, from all the leaks we have had over the past decade or so, demonstrates that shell companies abuse addresses for nefarious purposes. That is how they work.

In his concluding remarks, the Minister said that Companies House would intervene “where intelligence and reasonable information was made available to her”. We are not asking for the addresses of 4.5 million companies, or whatever the figure is. The idea of knocking on the door of all such companies is obviously completely and utterly totally absurd, and that is why we are calling for a risk-based approach. The shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon, made a very good point; if we could just use the technology intelligently, we could then see whether the same address was being used by 10, 20 or 30 companies. There are ways of doing that, but at present, there is no duty or obligation on Companies Houses to check. I have not found it, but perhaps the Minister will be able to show it to me. We also know that if we do not make that duty clear, it will fall out of the in-tray and go to the back of the to-do list. We then leave the opportunity available for dirty money to enter the country and not be checked by Companies House.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

If the right hon. Lady looks at the literal interpretation of her amendment, she will see that it puts an obligation on Companies House to check every single address in the UK. It says:

“Duty of the registrar to verify appropriateness of address of registered office”.

It does not say “on a spot-check basis”. It seems to be a blanket provision. I agree with much of what the right hon. Lady has said, but I think we need to be careful. The drafting of this has to be right, because, as she rightly says, we do not want to impede the normal commercial activity of 4.5 million businesses in the UK. That would be detrimental to our constituents and the citizens of this country.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

What I would say in answer is that we have had incredibly good advice on drafting, from both the House itself and our own advisers. I would urge the Minister to look at subsection (2) of my amendment, which looks at risk. If the amendment is not drafted absolutely perfectly, then I apologise, but we have done the best we can with the resources available to us. I am not in any way suggesting a 100% check. I am suggesting a risk-based check. If this provision is not included, we will be back in three years’ time and the Minister will be saying, “Oh my god, there’s a massive loophole, and we have to fix it.” Fix it now. That is all we are saying.

If I have the drafting wrong, I am happy to talk to the Minister and get it right. I want a risk-based check by Companies House for when red flags come out. By looking at and interrogating computer data, the registrar actually does it herself, instead of waiting for and depending on intelligence and reasonable information that is available—as the Minister said, in his words, which I assume were provided for him.

[Liam Byrne]

When my right hon. Friend has those conversations with the Minister, will she ensure she also talks to the Minister for Security? He was Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee when it took evidence from a number of witnesses who explicitly called for a duty to verify addresses. That point was underlined in the Foreign Affairs Committee’s last report on illicit finance.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I am very happy to do that. I think we all want the same thing. All we are trying to do is find the best way of doing it. I will be pressing this amendment to a vote, I am afraid. My warning to the Minister is that if he does not do the work in this area, he will find that he has left a very wide loophole, which will be exploited by those who want to use us as a destination for illicit finance.

[Stephen Kinnock]

It is difficult for me to match what my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking has so eloquently said and what other colleagues have said. I think we need to reinforce the point that we need somewhere in the Bill a very clear indication that it is the duty of the registrar to conduct risk-based assessments. If not, the Bill will leave a loophole, and we should not allow that to happen. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment proposed: 94, in clause 28, page 17, line 32, at end insert—

‘(4A) After section 87, insert—

“87A  Duty of the registrar to verify appropriateness of address of registered office

(1) This section applies where the registrar has received—

(a) a statement of the intended address of a company’s registered office (under section 9(5)(a)), or

(b) notice of change of address of a registered office of a company (under section 87(1)).

(2) The registrar must assess the risk that the company is involved in economic crime.

(3) If following the assessment required by subsection (2) the registrar considers that there is a real risk that the company is involved in economic crime, the registrar must—

(a) take steps to determine whether the address which has been supplied is an appropriate address within the meaning of section 86(2), and

(b) refer the matter to the relevant law enforcement agency.”’—(Dame Margaret Hodge.)