Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Menzies and Dominic Grieve

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. That is precisely the benefit of bringing the legal advisers from different Departments into one organisation. There is now a single board that groups those people together in the Treasury Solicitor’s Department, and I am confident it can deliver savings, lower charging costs for Departments—we have already seen that—and greater efficiency and expertise in-house.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

3. What steps the Government are taking to ensure the repatriation of stolen assets to emerging democracies in the middle east and north Africa.

[The Attorney-General (Mr Dominic Grieve)]

In September 2012, the Prime Minister established a taskforce to speed up our efforts to return stolen assets to the people of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. The Metropolitan Police Service is currently investigating a number of specific cases alongside its Egyptian counterparts. At international level, we used our G8 presidency last year to promote that agenda. That included co-hosting an international conference in Marrakesh on asset recovery last October, which I attended.

[Mark Menzies]

Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that this Government have been at the forefront of helping with the issue, particularly with regard to returning stolen assets to Egypt, and that that was key at the Arab Forum on asset recovery?

[The Attorney-General]

Yes, I can confirm that we have been at the forefront of asset recovery efforts. A number of priority cases have been identified with the Egyptian authorities. UK investigators have opened domestic money laundering investigations into individuals with significant assets in the UK and they are in daily contact with their Egyptian counterparts. I hope that that will improve with some secondments to Egypt shortly.

The Arab Forum on asset recovery allowed us an opportunity to have an overall discussion about the issue. One of the difficulties is a lack of understanding in some countries about the due process of law that has to be gone through in order for recovery to take place. I hope, therefore, that the conference facilitated a greater understanding of that.