Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill

Matt Western Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend makes an important and significant point. That is exactly the work in which the transparency tsar has been heavily involved, giving the Government advice on that work across Government Departments. All this has to be looked at. I come back to the point that, in recognition that this is expedited legislation, we have not only to consider carefully but to work through the practicalities and how we operationalise the legislation.

The Government are also amending the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, which has been referred to many times. We are streamlining the existing legislation so that we can move more swiftly and effectively to sanctions oligarchs and businessmen associated with the Russian Government. The amendments we have tabled will remove the statutory test of appropriateness in the designation of individuals and entities, thereby speeding up designations. It is important that we do that in real time and in fast time, because of some of the related complications.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Priti Patel]

I am not going to give way, because there is protected time and the hon. Gentleman will get to speak later.

We will remove some of the constraints on designations by description, so that the Government can designate groups of individuals more quickly. That means there will be more agility and flexibility so that we can act. It will help to quickly list members of defined political bodies—such as the Russian Duma, which has been highlighted, and the Russian Federation Council—by body rather than by individual names, all of which can run into the hundreds. We will have the power to apply the legislation to groups. That will ensure that the Foreign Secretary can mirror the listings that have already been adopted by our allies, but via urgent designation procedures. The United States, Canada, Australia and the EU are listed on the face of the Bill for that purpose. Others may be added, by a power, as needed. That will facilitate the closest possible international co-ordination on sanctions. I emphasise the co-ordinated approach we are seeking to take at a time of crisis and conflict. It will help us to strip back unnecessary requirements regarding the making and amending of regulations under the 2018 Act, to streamline the process of establishing or augmenting the sanctions regime.

Of course, we want to protect the public purse by only permitting the payment of damages in connection with designations in the case of bad faith, removing the possibility of damages for negligence. The Bill also provides a power to impose a cap on damages for actions under the 2018 Act. The provisions will apply to any proceedings issued after 4 March, when the amendments were tabled, even if the proceedings relate to designations made previously. That will limit the ability of many of the deep-pocketed oligarchs—we have had this with UWOs—to claim massive pay-outs from sanction challenges. This is a fundamental change to our laws and how we operationalise them. A streamlined review of the reporting requirements under the 2018 Act will follow.

Through this specific legislation, we can focus on Putin and his cronies. We do not choose between a transparent economy and a strong economy: it is transparency that makes our economy, our country and our approach to these issues stronger. The Government are providing our law enforcement agencies with the crucial powers and resources that they need. We want to go after the dirty money and crack down harder on those who violate our financial sanctions and our country. Putin and his band of thugs must not be able to hide their wealth in the UK. This is as much for the sake of ordinary Russians robbed of their wealth as it is for the sake of our country and the west more broadly. We are calling on all countries, all our friends and allies, to take a similarly robust approach. It is by working in co-ordination that we can make a difference. There is overwhelming global condemnation of that regime and the grotesque war that is raging in Ukraine. This Bill is part of our effort, and I commend it to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

Thank you. Mr Speaker. The concern for the House is that the Home Secretary has provided information today that does not yet seem to be accurate, and we urgently need accurate information. We also need a simple route to sanctuary for people who want to join family or friends and need sanctuary in the UK to be able to do so. That is not yet happening. We desperately need the Home Secretary to get a grip.

We need action to support refugees. We need the UK to do our bit. We also need the measures on sanctions, unexplained wealth orders and the register of overseas entities to be put swiftly in place. We need Putin to feel the full force of sanctions now; we welcome the sanctions that are in place, but more than a week into the war, we have sanctioned only a handful of oligarchs and are still falling behind other countries. I hope the Bill will make it possible to speed things up, but there are concerns that people who may be subject to sanctions will still have time to move their wealth. We will discuss those concerns later in Committee, where amendments have been tabled that may be able to address them.

Turning to beneficial ownership, UK property has been used to launder illicit wealth for too long. We welcome measures to reveal for the first time who the ultimate foreign owners of UK property are. We welcome, too, the Government’s recognition that the initial, draft Bill did not go far enough; they have accepted our amendments on stronger fines and proper identity checks, and that is welcome. Giving people 18 months to dispose of all their assets, as the draft Bill suggested, so they can hide them in some other regime was clearly ludicrous; it was a chance for them to get out of London and stash illicit money somewhere else. But even six months gives people a very long time, and is not justified by the scale of the problem we face. People have already had six years of warning that this Bill was coming. That is why in our amendment, we call for 28 days instead.

We support the measures on unexplained wealth orders. The fact that they have been used in only four cases in four years shows that for too long they have not been working: they are too hard for the police to use and too easy for the clever lawyers of rich criminals and oligarchs to block, and the costs to the National Crime Agency if it loses a court case are too great. We have called for more action to monitor progress to see whether these reforms make sufficient difference, and we welcome the Government’s acceptance of that amendment, but that must be only the start. We badly need the long-promised reform to Companies House, and we are calling on the Government to publish that draft legislation imminently. We need to ensure that it has action on enablers and on cryptocurrencies, too.

We will need more action on golden visas. The Home Secretary has rightly made a decision to halt them, but her own statement said:

“The operation of the route has facilitated the presence of persons relying on funds that have been obtained illicitly or who represent a wider security risk.”—[Official Report, 21 February 2022; Vol. 709, c. 6WS.]

There is still no published review, no information on the number of people suspected of involvement or of posing a wider security risk, or how many of them have now become British citizens. I wrote to the Home Secretary to ask questions on that, and she has not responded. I urge her or other Ministers to explain when they will be able to do so.

[Matt Western]

The question I was hoping to put to the Home Secretary was very simply whether she could illustrate how this extremely important legislation, would, say in the case of Roman Abramovich, bring into effect the changes needed. It was reported to the Home Secretary back in 2019 that he was a person of interest to Her Majesty’s Government.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right that we need clarity about how the legislation will work in practice and be used to make a difference. It raises questions about individuals, and we are all aware, as other Members have raised, that serious allegations have been made this weekend about the appointment of a Member of the House of Lords with close family links to the Putin regime.