I wish the Foreign Secretary was as energetic in his pursuit of the corrupt in this Bill as he is concerned to defend his own record on travelling around the London underground.
In the outer-London boroughs, new buildings are bought off plan and some never even have the cellophane unwrapped. Global Witness has found that 86,000 properties in this country are owned by companies in secrecy jurisdictions. The Cayman Islands representatives told me, when they came to see me in preparation for the Bill, that they were responsible for 11% of the property investment in Britain, pushing up prices so that they are unaffordable, and young people’s home ownership in this country is now at an all-time low.
The new register promised by the Government in 2015 has been put back by six years. There must be a suspicion that this secrecy continues because some senior Tories use it. Just one example will suffice. Lord Sassoon was revealed by the Paradise papers to have been a beneficiary of a Bahamas trust fund that has sheltered a family fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars, yet he was a Treasury Minister and the man charged with presiding over the Financial Action Task Force—the very body tasked with setting the standards to combat money laundering.
We are going to pursue all these issues over the coming weeks. I cannot do better than quote the global summit communiqué, which said:
“Corruption is at the heart of so many of the world’s problems. It erodes public trust in government, undermines the rule of law, and may give rise to political and economic grievances that…fuel violent extremism. Tackling corruption is vital for sustaining economic stability and growth, maintaining security of societies, protecting human rights, reducing poverty, protecting the environment for future generations and addressing serious and organised crime…We need to face this challenge openly and frankly”.
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