Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what estimate his Department has made of the number of its senior civil servants who will potentially fall under the provisions of the Fourth EU Money Laundering Directive, 2015/849; and what assessment he has made of which of his Department's agencies or other public bodies will potentially be classed as holding a prominent public function for the purposes of that directive.

The Government's view is that the Directive permits a risk-based approach to the identification of whether an individual is a politically exposed person and, when identified, the Directive enables the application of different degrees of enhanced measures to reflect the risks posed. The Government will be setting out this view in a consultation which will be published shortly.

The changes proposed under the Directive should not prevent any individual in this category from gaining or maintaining access to financial services. We regularly raise these issues with financial institutions and the regulator, and we encourage financial institutions to take a proportionate, risk-based approach when applying these measures.