Criminal Finances Bill

Debate between Rupa Huq and Robert Neill

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Huq]

First, I would like to finish what I was trying to say. I was coming to the Crown dependencies and overseas territories, which I realise are two different things. I would also like to hear what the Minister has to say, because at earlier stages of the Bill he was conciliatory and we backed down on some things.

We are dealing with not just new clause 6 but new clause 17. We are looking at both overseas territories and Crown dependencies because, internationally, the UK will be able to lecture and persuade others to adopt transparent finance practices only if its overseas territories and Crown dependencies stop engaging in—

[Robert Neill]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dr Huq]

I will carry on for the moment because I want to make some progress—I am not able to get a sentence out at the moment. The hon. Gentleman will be referenced later in my speech. We worked well together under his excellent stewardship of the Justice Committee.

The previous coalition Government’s White Paper on the overseas territories has already been quoted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley. It referred to how, as a matter of constitutional law, the UK Parliament has unlimited power to legislate for the overseas territories. The phrase “unlimited power” is pretty clear. On the Crown dependencies, which the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) mentioned, it appears that not only the Government but the SNP, given the remarks of the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Richard Arkless), who was a member of the Justice Committee with me, have accepted, or been cowed into believing, that the Crown dependencies are somehow untouchable.

I want to quote from a report by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill). The Justice Committee’s 2010 report on the Crown dependencies stated:

“the restrictive formulation of the power of the UK Government to intervene in insular affairs on the ground of good government is accepted by both the UK and the Crown Dependency governments”.

A list of examples was given, but the hon. Gentleman probably knows it better than I did, because he wrote it.

[Robert Neill]

It would not be unreasonable for the hon. Lady to note that I was not Chair of the Justice Committee at that time. Can she give me any example of a time when the United Kingdom has specifically legislated for a Crown dependency, as opposed to acting under the prerogative power through the lieutenant governors, which indeed itself has not been done in many years? The overseas territories are not the same as the Crown dependencies legally. I honestly urge her to reflect on that, because she is genuinely on shaky legal ground.

[Dr Huq]

As I have said, there seems to be a lack of will. The hon. Gentleman talked at length about Gibraltar—[Interruption.] If he will listen to what I say back to him, that might be useful. There is a lack of will to act. People have been lobbying all of us, probably including him. The fact that we have the power to make a change is more significant than examples—if this is needed, it can be done. New clause 16 does not coerce anyone to do anything, but it sets out steps that would facilitate matters.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huq]

I am most grateful for that clarification, Madam Deputy Speaker. Some of those on the list are the DOM-TOMs—the départements d’outre-mer and the territoires d’outre-mer—so there is a long list, including Guadeloupe and Martinique, but I shall move on.

It is a bit of a nonsense for the Conservative party to claim that the overseas territories and Crown dependencies are leading the world in financial transparency because of the creation of central registers if 46 other dependencies are doing that already. Not only have some been incredibly slow to catch up with the aforementioned countries, but some of our Crown dependencies and overseas territories are among the worst offenders and have not adopted centralised registers, let alone made them public. More accurately, they have adopted platforms.

The Government ask us to believe that the British Virgin Islands or the Cayman Islands will be able to police their own financial businesses by relying on those businesses, which facilitate crime. It is asking them to mark their own homework and to be judge and jury. Call me a cynic, but I doubt that that is a workable solution. Do we really believe that anonymous companies in the British Virgin Islands—which, for example, allowed the former wife of a Taiwanese President to illicitly purchase $1.6 million of property in Manhattan—would be capable of policing themselves?

There are several other examples. Would Alcoa, the world’s third largest producer of aluminium, be capable of policing itself when it has used an anonymous company in the British Virgin Islands to transfer millions of dollars in bribes to Bahraini officials? Would the anonymous British Virgin Islands-based company used by Teodorin Obiang, the son of the President of Equatorial Guinea, really be capable of policing itself when it allowed him to squirrel away $38 million of state money to buy a private jet? It was thanks to the US Justice Department that he was caught. The Government’s protestation that we are working with the territories and dependencies, and that we are 90% of the way there, is at best highly questionable.

[Robert Neill]

Is that it?

[Dr Huq]

No, there is more.

The main point I want to make is that our Government should be at the forefront of the push to cast off the cloak of secrecy under which terrorists have previously been able to fund their attacks and gangsters have stored their ill-gotten gains. We should not be dragging our feet on this. Some of these jurisdictions, including the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands, have hidden behind the fig leaf of the consultation.

I shall dispense with the rest of what I was going to say, but we wish to press new clause 17 to a Division—[Interruption.] If anyone had listened to me, they would know that I was largely talking about the Crown dependencies.

In conclusion, we could have gone all the way and become the gold standard for other Governments to follow. We could also have dealt with the public disquiet over perceived levels of tax evasion, which the former Prime Minister, to his credit, wanted to tackle. This massive oversight undermines not only the claims made by the former Member for Witney, but citizens in some of the poorest developing countries of the world, which are at the end of these complex supply chains of criminality. Those citizens are the main losers in all of this.

The Home Office’s press release that accompanied the publication of the Bill said that the new offences were aimed at

“sending out a clear message that anyone doing business in and with the UK must have the highest possible compliance standards.”

Although we agree with large parts of the Bill, it does, none the less, fall short. New clause 17, which Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition wish to press to a Division, would go some way towards addressing a number of these issues.

Prison Safety

Debate between Rupa Huq and Robert Neill

Thursday 15th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered in the Sixth Report from the Justice Committee of Session 2015-16, on Prison Safety, HC 625, and the Government response, HC 647.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and to welcome the Minister to his place. I think this is the first time he has had the chance to reply to a Westminster Hall debate on this topic.

I am grateful to the House for this opportunity to debate the Justice Committee’s report; I thank all my Committee colleagues for their work, and other hon. Members from across the House who have a long-standing and informed interest in justice. I am particularly pleased to see the former prisons Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), to whom I pay tribute for his work in an always difficult and intractable area of public policy.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

There are two former Ministers here!

[Robert Neill]

Indeed. I was referring to the immediate former prisons Minister with whom the Committee worked. The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) graces us on the Select Committee and we have had the benefit of his input.

Let us be blunt. Prison safety is terrible. Those are not my words, but those of the former Secretary of State, my Friend the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), in a prompt and frank response to our inquiry. He is entitled to credit for that.

The difficulty, which the current Minister will recognise and accept, is that prison safety was terrible when our report came out and it has got worse. I have hesitated until now to talk about a crisis in prison safety, but I think we are now at that stage. I say that because on every measure, safety has deteriorated and has continued to do so over a long time. That cannot be regarded as a one-off blip and we see no sign yet, despite considerable Government endeavour and intervention—which I do not dispute—of the situation or the underlying reasons being turned around. The situation has become grave and our report is particularly timely. That is important for two reasons.

First, whatever one’s view about the purpose of prison and how much emphasis we place on rehabilitation on the one hand and retribution or prevention of danger to the public on the other—all legitimate considerations to put in the mix—when the state legitimately takes it upon itself through proper process to incarcerate someone for their wrongs against society, there is an element of punishment in doing that properly, but we also take on board responsibility for ensuring that they are treated not only humanely, but safely. If the state fails in that, it fails in one of its primary obligations.

Secondly, in respect of broader policy, the current Secretary of State, like her predecessor, and the Minister, like his predecessor, are committed to a policy of prison reform. I hope that all of us in Westminster Hall today are committed to a policy of prison reform. The reality is that the less safe the prisons are, the harder it is to achieve reform. If we want real rehabilitation, real change and to reduce reoffending, a raft of interventions in prison is required, which can be properly delivered only if prisons are safe to start with.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huq]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Robert Neill]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd’s Bush first.

[Dr Huq]

That is not yet the redrawn boundary—my constituency is Ealing Central and Acton at present, although it may be changed.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and pay tribute to him for his sterling work chairing our Select Committee. He mentioned how things are interlinked with education. That point has been vividly brought home to us on the many visits we have made, in particular to Aylesbury and Wandsworth, where we heard that prisoners sometimes want to go on educational courses but there are not the staff available to relieve others so that they can do it. It seems to be a Catch-22 situation, and people are locked into a cycle. They want to get education, but there are not enough staff to supervise the groups travelling across the courses. That means that courses are often cancelled, which is an unacceptable situation.

[Robert Neill]

The hon. Lady is right. I am probably so old in politics that I can remember a constituency configured that way in the past. She is quite right—it comes back to this same circle.

People who say that the only answer is more and more imprisonment and more and more lockdown perhaps ought to go into prisons more. There are an awful lot of people—even people who, frankly, deserve to be in there for some time—who are none the less interested in engaging in purposeful activity. That makes them less inclined to behave in a way that threatens safety and gets them involved in gangs or other forms of violence. It is a win-win at every level. Whatever the level of the sentence, providing such activity is a good and, basically, a morally right thing to do. However, we cannot put prison officers or instructors into environments where it is not safe for people to be out of their cells to get that education and personal activity. That is why getting the regime safe is critical to everything.