Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when she expects Guernsey’s register of beneficial ownership to be published; for what reasons publication has not yet taken place; and what support the Government is providing to assist Guernsey in publishing that register.

The Crown Dependencies are separate jurisdictions with their own democratically elected governments. The UK Government works closely with the Crown Dependencies, on transparency issues. Our priority is the implementation of the new bilateral arrangements concluded with them in 2016. Under these arrangements, the Crown Dependencies have committed to establish, where they have not already done so, central registers of beneficial ownership information or similarly effective systems and to give UK law enforcement and tax authorities near real-time access to beneficial ownership information on corporate and legal entities incorporated in their jurisdictions. Nevertheless, it remains the Government’s ambition for public registers to become the global standard. If this happens, we would expect the Crown Dependencies to follow suit.