Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, with reference to the contribution of 12 December 2017 by Lord Ahmed of Wimbledon, HL Deb col 1519, on the Sanctions and Anti Money Laundering Bill what constitutes a similarly effective mechanism for beneficial ownership registers.

Electronic search platforms are a technical solution designed to achieve precisely the same result as a closed central register in terms of gaining access to and the sharing of beneficial ownership information for the purposes of combating economic crime.