Criminal Finances Bill (Second sitting)

Nicholas Dakin Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 15th November 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Roger Mullin]

Q Are you satisfied it is working satisfactorily?

Anthony Browne: I know that, as the banking sector, we think that it is a lot stronger. It is very important to have a strong whistleblowing regime. It is an important part of improving the culture of banks and preventing wrongdoing. We have been working with the regulator on this, so you should ask the regulator.

Nausicaa Delfas: I agree that the regime has been strengthened. We regard it as very important. It feeds into work on culture in banks as well. I would be interested if you thought it should be further improved.

Amy Bell: I cannot comment, unfortunately, in relation to the financial sector. In relation to the solicitors’ profession, we do have in our regulations the obligation for people to report serious misconduct. We do not have any specific whistleblowing provisions but that is not something we have encountered an issue with.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Q From the evidence we had this morning I formed the opinion that there is a view that banks are pretty good at spotting irregularities and bringing them forward to the authorities but other parts of the regulated sector are less proactive in that way. That seemed to be what was coming through the evidence this morning. Does that ring true to you? Are the measures in this legislation likely to improve the performance of other parts of the regulated sector?

Anthony Browne: We think it is important that the Government and law enforcement authorities use all the tools that they can to combat financial crime and not just rely on banks. I would agree with the assessment that banks do an awful lot; we certainly do an awful lot. It is important that you do not underplay or pay too little attention to other sectors—not just lawyers but accountants and estate agents. There are lots of different groups that get involved with this. They can all play their part against financial crime. We should all play our full part in that way.

Nausicaa Delfas: I agree with that. I obviously cannot speak for the other professions but we are aware that there are about 400,000 suspicious activity reports filed with the NCA each year. The vast majority of those, I understand, come from the financial sector. Obviously, perhaps more could be done. I go back to the point that that is a huge number. It is a quantity issue and we would urge any changes that could be made to improve the quality of those so that there are better leads for law enforcement.

Amy Bell: We have to be careful in judging the numbers of suspicious activity reports. The Financial Action Task Force and the NCA’s predecessor, SOCA, were both clear that there is no right number of reports. It is fair to say that the vast majority of reports do come from the financial sector. They see patterns of financial activity that we do not see. I do understand that there is criticism levelled at the professions in relation to reports about clients that banks report but maybe the professions are not reporting, but that is because we see different parts of the transaction. That should not be underestimated.

Although I think we should continue to be vigilant, we need to be very careful about drawing any conclusions from the disparity in the numbers. I think the information sharing will help because that means that the bank can communicate with the regulated sector where they see things that will give data to the professions to be able identify suspicious activity.

[Peter Dowd]

Q This morning we had evidence from the National Crime Agency, the National Police Chiefs Council, the Met police SO15 counter-terrorism policing, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the Serious Fraud Office and the Crown Prosecution Service. To a man—they were all men, by the way—I would say that they looked at the Minister, gulped and said that they had enough resource to do their job. Will you give me a view from outside, so to speak, as to whether you get the sense that those agencies have sufficient resource to do their job, given that you presumably have pretty close relationships at points in the investigatory process?

Nausicaa Delfas: Every organisation has constraints around resources. The question is how best to deploy them. The more precise the information, powers and so on that can be given, the better, but there are constraints in all cases.

Anthony Browne: Clearly it is important that they are properly resourced. We submit about 80% or 90% of the SARs that are submitted—360,000 last year. One of our concerns as an industry is that they are not all followed through, and we get very little feedback about what follow-through there is. A huge amount of SARs are put in, but we have concerns about whether there is sufficient resource to follow up that suspicious activity.

As you know, there is a whole Home Office programme to reform the SARs regime to make it more intelligence-led and less of a tick-box exercise, and to improve the quality of the SARs rather than just the numbers. We totally support that but it will only work if there are enough resources to follow through. That is why one thing that we have proposed in a submission to the Government is a forfeiture for the proceeds of crime in bank accounts such that the money raised is used to add resource to the SARs regime.

Amy Bell: The well known difficulty with the SARs regime—the reporting system—is one of resource. I echo what my colleagues say in relation to the numbers of SARs that go in and the feedback we get, and I believe that is a resourcing issue.