Overseas Territories Joint Ministerial Council

John Bercow Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution, but before the Minister answers, let me just say to the House—I hope, for the last time—that from now on I am minded to insist on the time limits for these exchanges. The first point is that the hon. Lady was supposed to take two minutes, but she took over three. She is by no means the only offender, and I recognise her sincerity and commitment, but she was over her limit. It is as simple as that.

The second point is that, where there is an urgent question or a ministerial statement, the shadow Minister is not supposed to come in to deliver a speech, but to give the briefest reception to the statement by the Minister and then ask a series of pithy questions. It is not a speech in a debate, but a series of questions.

As I say, I recognise that the hon. Lady is new to the House, though a very capable individual indeed, but in future we will have to observe the time limits and the appropriate format. I give notice that if those are breached, I will simply cut the question off. I do not intend any discourtesy, but if we have rules, we must stick to them.

[James Duddridge]

In relation to Montserrat, I do not know what discussions the hon. Lady has had with Premier Don Romeo, but one of the reasons why it was easy for Montserrat to comply with some of our earlier requests was the lack, sadly, of a financial services industry, which is still developing there. There are many enormous challenges in Montserrat, but quite frankly, financial services is not one of them. It is easy to be fleet of foot when an extensive industry is not already in place.

There is much more of a challenge for the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, where we are focusing our attention. It is wholly untrue to say that the position at the end of the Joint Ministerial Council was one of obstruction by the Cayman Islands or, indeed, any other territory. I will have further discussions with the Cayman Islands today, but they and everyone else signed up to the following language:

“We discussed the details of how these systems”—

the central systems—

“should be implemented, including through technical dialogue between the Overseas Territories and UK law enforcement authorities on further developing a timely, safe and secure information exchange process to increase our collective effectiveness for the purposes of law enforcement.”

Some of the technical detail is quite tricky—there are different systems in different jurisdictions—but there is an ongoing and close dialogue with the National Crime Agency about how we can achieve such things.

A number of comments have been made that I would say are not misleading but perhaps slightly out of date. Once hon. Members have had time to digest the communiqué, they may wish to find an opportunity to discuss the subject again in more detail so that we can have a robust exchange, consider how we can make further improvements and get a shared understanding, because we all want the same thing.

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[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman is most certainly a notable globetrotter. That is well recognised throughout the House.

[James Duddridge]

To clarify, Mr Speaker was talking about my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans), rather than me.

I certainly support the moves that my hon. Friend describes. This is not just an issue of equality. A number of the territories are incredibly beautiful places and a lot of money comes into them through tourism. Even more money could come in through tourism. There needs to be greater diversity of income and a move away from financial services. Attracting everybody, regardless of their sexuality, is good for business, as well as being the right thing to do.