Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill

Matt Hancock Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My right hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head, and I am going to come to some of that in my remarks shortly. If he will just bear with me, I would like to make some progress. I am conscious of the protected time we have today, so I ask all colleagues to bear with me.

This legislation is concise and tight for very good reasons, hence the number of amendments that have been made; we want to move at pace. But we cannot stop there, and for the benefit of this House—I know colleagues are aware of this—let me say that there will be a second economic crime Bill, a follow-on Bill in the next parliamentary Session, with further measures. We simply cannot get all the measures in right now. We have focused on the ones that will have the greatest impact and enablement.

[Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

In respect of the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, many of the problems that we face today are due to amendments made in the other place, and it has subsequently come to light that many of those amendments came from those who are acting for oligarchs and then legislating for loopholes. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the other place should listen very carefully to the elected House on this matter and make sure that this Bill, with these amendments, gets sent back here forthwith, without more loopholes being put in place by the other place, as they were years ago?

[Priti Patel]

I wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. Friend on that. We could do a rerun of exactly what happened back in 2018, but, in the interests of time, we want to crack on with where we are going with this Bill. It will enable the greatest changes to the companies register since it was established nearly 200 years ago. Companies House will be reformed and we will verify the identity of every company director and beneficial owner. I know that Members of this House have been calling for that for a considerable time. No criminal or kleptocrat will be able to hide behind a UK shell company ever again—those infamous brass plates will go. This will be a boost to all legitimate businesses in the UK and, importantly, it will make it easier for them to get the information they need.

The next Bill will bring forward reforms to prevent the abuse of limited partnerships; new powers to seize crypto-assets from criminals—that is a new and emerging area where we have so much more to do; and measures to give businesses more confidence to share information on suspected money laundering. It will be a very substantial piece of legislation. I assure the House that we are already drafting that legislation and it will be brought forward as soon as we are able to do so and we can get the time in the House. Today’s Bill and our commitment to a second Bill will show that in this Government, we are all acting collectively and unitedly to root out the dirty money in our economy and, importantly, to hobble Putin and his cronies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

I rise to support the Bill, and I am delighted to hear the full-throated support across the House for it. As the anti-corruption tsar in 2015-16, I had some role in putting together the policies that are finally making it on to the statute book now, in what I regard as the first half of an economic crime Bill. I pay tribute to the current anti-corruption tsar, my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), who has done a magnificent job of making progress since.

While I welcome many parts of the Bill, I focus in particular on sanctions, because the action taken on sanctions against Putin’s cronies by the UK so far is among the strongest in the world. We have designated £258 billion and more than 200 individuals, entities and subsidiaries, and 3 million companies are debarred from raising funds in the City of London. The Government and the Prime Minister deserve credit for their leadership, but I believe that measures can and should go further, whether tonight or in the second half of the legislation. For instance, I am attracted to amendments 26 and 27 and new clause 29, and I would love to hear from the Minister the Government’s attitude to those.

I also put on record the answer to the question of why we have to act legislatively at such pace. It is because the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 was riddled with holes by the other place during its passage. If we look back now at the speeches made in the other place then, some of those that looked unwise at the time look extremely unwise now. For instance, there was an explicit argument for more judicial review. On Report, the question was asked:

“Can the Minister explain why sanctions should be imposed on a person simply because they are connected to a specified country”?—[Official Report, House of Lords, 1 November 2017; Vol. 785, c. 1394.]

I think we have an answer to that question now. There was opposition to delegated powers, when Ministers need discretion to act quickly in relation to sanctions. Even the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), described those who act for oligarchs and then legislate for loopholes as “clever lawyers”. I hope that the other place listens to this debate and hears the strength of feeling. The same thing must not happen this time.

One further point—perhaps it is a point of detail—is that I am surprised to discover that some of those who spoke so powerfully for putting loopholes in place, and who made the case for confusion and delay in law, are also those who stand to benefit from confusion and delay in law, and they do not declare this conflict. Simply declaring earnings from the Bar is not good enough. Parliamentarians should make their interests crystal clear so that there is no confusion around them when they legislate in this area.

Finally, while we legislate rapidly in this case, we must also understand the cause of the challenges faced by Ministers trying to sanction Putin’s cronies. The cause is not the technology and how money is held, but the weakness in the law due to the 2018 Act and the flaws introduced to it during its passage. For instance, the shadow Home Secretary mentioned the challenges around cryptocurrency, but cryptocurrency is not a cause of avoiding sanctions. By contrast, by its nature and the nature of the technology, there is potential for more transparency in some of these new financial assets, so long as the legal framework is correct. Indeed, cryptocurrency exchanges can find out and follow the flow of the money more easily than can be done with traditional forms of finance, because of the nature of the technology, as the FBI has recently demonstrated with some excellent actions to crack down on economic crime in the United States. Let us put the right law in place and give Ministers the discretion they need to act fast. Let us get this legislation through fast, and then let us use it, because with shells raining down on innocent Ukrainians, there is not a moment to lose.

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[Paul Scully]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that because the now shadow Chancellor boasted afterwards how she managed to weaken the Government’s approach during the passage of that Bill. I believe we have gone as far as we can, but we need more measures, which is what today is all about. This is the first half of those measures to make sure we can introduce the remaining economic crime Bill, which includes Companies House reform.

We have tabled an amendment to reduce the transition period from 18 months to six months, but I will outline a little further how we can make this work effectively to ensure that people cannot just move money out of this country.

[Matt Hancock]

Will the Minister welcome the conversion of the Labour party to supporting strengthening the sanctions regime, because a strong Bill was introduced in this House by the then Foreign Secretary, but it was watered down in the House of Lords with the support of the Labour party? I do not like to make party political points out of this because we should be united on it, but that is a matter of fact.