Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (High-Risk Countries) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2022

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2022 General Committees

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Mrs Cummins.

I welcome the Minister to his post—I hope he lasts longer than his predecessor. He will have an easy ride in his first meeting with me, because the Labour party is completely committed to supporting the global effort to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Illicit finance is a huge concern. It has immense socioeconomic consequences, including the threat to national security, and erosion of the integrity and reputation of our financial sector. We therefore support the regulations and welcome the inclusion of Gibraltar on the UK’s list of high-risk third countries for money laundering.

The Financial Action Task Force, as the Minister may know, has long warned that the overseas territory’s regulators are not fining offenders in line with prescribed penalties, or focusing hard enough on intermediaries, including lawyers, so will he confirm whether he will be working with his equivalents in Gibraltar to crack down on bad state actors, money launderers and terrorist financiers exploiting the territory’s lax regime? He will know that Gibraltar has strong business ties with the UK, particularly in the insurance sector. Given the high risk that Gibraltar’s inadequate anti-money laundering regime poses to our national security, will the Government review their current policy of allowing UK market access to certain Gibraltarian financial firms without their needing to be separately authorised?

I am not particularly concerned about the removal of Malta from the list. We recognise that Malta is not a major international transit centre for dirty money. However, I would like to hear some reassurance and detail from the Minister today about how the Government will continue to monitor money laundering and terrorist financing risks linked to Malta, despite the country’s removal from the list.

We support the regulations and want to consider them in detail, but we also want to know a bit more about how the Minister will further protect the integrity of the UK’s financial institutions.