Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, whether all Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies have central registers of beneficial ownership in operation; and what plans he has to make those registers public.

The creation of new central registers or similarly effective systems has been completed in all the Crown Dependencies (CDs) and in the following Overseas Territories with financial centres: Bermuda, The British Virgin Islands, The Cayman Islands & Gibraltar, with legislation to underpin the registers passed by their respective legislatures. Data population of the registers with data will be taken forward as a priority in coming months.

Guernsey and Alderney's legislation to enable their registers to be operational will be considered by the Privy Council this month.

The Turks and Caicos Islands have passed legislation, and their register is expected to be operational by the end of this month.

Anguilla has not yet established its register. We continue to engage with the Anguillian authorities to take this forward.