Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill
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710 cc24-81 Session
2021-22Legislative stage
Second readingChamber / Committee
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Tuesday, 15 May 2018
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Wednesday, 5 September 2018
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Wednesday, 26 January 2022
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Proceeding contributions
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The United Kingdom is united in opp...
As the Home Secretary is straying to points outwith the Bill, I want to address how the airwaves ...
Show all contributions (176)
I am grateful to the hon. and learned Lady for her question, because it gives me the chance to cl...
Will the Home Secretary clarify whether the Home Office has set up a visa application centre in C...
Again, for clarification, as I set out in the House last week, we are surging capacity across our...
I thank the Secretary of State for what she is doing and the staff put in place to try to help mo...
The hon. Member makes an important point. Having been to Poland myself and seen the processes—I a...
The Home Secretary has a lot of support on the Government Benches for the compassionate and sensi...
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I must emphasise that every single crisis requires a be...
I do not wish to disturb the flow of the Secretary of State’s speech for very long, but I want to...
I was contacted on Saturday by a former constituent who had escaped from Ukraine with his Ukraini...
I thank my right hon. Friend for the example that he shared with the House. That is really import...
I have been told that people arriving at Calais are being told that they have to go to Paris or B...
I have already made it clear, in terms of the visa application centre that has now been set up en...
Will the Secretary of State give way?
I will not; I need to make progress and I have been generous with interventions. In addition, on ...
Order. There are just too many conversations going on. I am struggling to hear.
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.
Putin is a gangster and his regime is underpinned by a mob...
I am delighted that my right hon. Friend is bringing up not only the oligarchs, but the enablers ...
My hon. Friend and I spent some time on the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, which looked at ...
Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely), would the G...
We will look at the issue, as we have said consistently. Part 1 of the Bill, which I will expand ...
Across the House, we all want to see these bandits nailed. Is the Home Secretary content that the...
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise that point and to highlight the legal basis on wh...
A lot of houses are owned by criminal gangs for money laundering purposes, often in rural areas, ...
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I said that unexplained wealth orders were one of several too...
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
I will give way shortly, but first I will make some progress, if I may.
This will be about ...
The right hon. Lady spoke about unexplained wealth orders. Does she have a commitment from the Tr...
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point; I am pretty certain that he has raised sev...
Following on from that point, the Bill is very welcome, but many of us believe it could go furthe...
That is a really important point. This is about how we operationalise the Bill—how we use the too...
I thank my right hon. Friend for and congratulate her on driving this Bill forward so quickly, co...
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and he has also pointed out the vast drafting that has ...
The Russia sanctions regime is across eight different sets of regulations, and even the Commons L...
My right hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head, and I am going to come to some of that in my r...
In respect of the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, many of the problems that we face...
I wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. Friend on that. We could do a rerun of exactly what hap...
I welcome the indications that the Home Secretary has given of what will be in the Bill that will...
I agree with the right hon. Lady, and I am also grateful to other Members who have not just highl...
The Home Secretary is very generous in allowing so many interventions.
During the 2017 Parl...
I thank the hon. Lady for highlighting the role of our anti-corruption tsar, my hon. Friend the M...
I welcome the measures that my right hon. Friend is introducing, but many Members fear that peopl...
I thank my hon. Friend for amendment 64. He was in touch with me about it over the weekend. He is...
As the right hon. Lady knows, the Bill provides exemptions that Secretaries of State would be abl...
At this stage, I am outlining the measures in the Bill. We have a Committee stage coming up, and ...
I am grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way. This is naughty of me, as I have been in the ...
The hon. Gentleman has clearly been occupied elsewhere, and we did cover this point earlier on.
I have been in the Chamber since my right hon. Friend started speaking. She might be aware that o...
My right hon. Friend has made an incredibly important point and used a good example to show how t...
There seems to be bit of a gap between the Home Secretary’s rhetoric and the reality. Last week, ...
I have been speaking for a while and I would have hoped that the hon. Gentleman was listening to ...
I support the measures in this Bill, but it all hinges on enforcement. Can my right hon. Friend e...
We cannot compare London with certain other countries and economies, and there are well-known bar...
I understand that the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has put for...
With this Bill, we are speaking very clearly about known individuals, known oligarchs. This legis...
I will make progress. I have taken plenty of interventions, and I am conscious of the protected t...
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Not just yet.
As I have said, further measures are coming shortly in other legislation and ...
On the vexed issue of trusts, whether they be domestic or, more likely, foreign, if they are of a...
My hon. Friend makes an important and significant point. That is exactly the work in which the tr...
Will the Secretary of State give way?
I am not going to give way, because there is protected time and the hon. Gentleman will get to sp...
I welcome the Bill before us today, at a time when rocket attacks are continuing, when homes, com...
Does my right hon. Friend agree that, had the Government got a move on with this years ago, we wo...
I agree with my hon. Friend that action should have been taken much earlier to address that, whic...
Is my right hon. Friend as surprised and worried as I am that the Office of Financial Sanctions I...
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Unless we have the ability to use the powers we have and...
The enforcement issue is really important. For instance, following the invasion and annexation of...
I must say that the information my hon. Friend provides is deeply disturbing. There is a huge res...
At the last election but one, a former intern of mine, now a very wealthy Hollywood lawyer, sent ...
My hon. Friend makes an important point. For example, there is discussion as part of this Bill ab...
I will give way to the Home Secretary to clarify.
I think the right hon. Lady did not hear what I said earlier. I said that I can confirm that we a...
That would be very helpful. But we also need to know when this visa application centre will be se...
Are not the Government and the Home Secretary absolutely out of step with the British public on t...
I think the public want to see us doing our bit, and that is not what is happening. What people a...
I appreciate that this is now becoming a much wider debate, but on Friday we launched an extended...
I think I need to come in here, just for a minute. At the end of this debate I expect the Ministe...
I am grateful, Mr Speaker, because there are some very serious questions.
The Home Secretar...
As of an hour ago, there was a poster up in Calais that says simply, “No visas delivered in Calai...
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we in this House are so confused and cannot follow this ch...
On the topic of confusion, is the right hon. Lady as concerned as I am about the fact that the Ho...
Clearly we need updated figures, but my understanding is that 50 visas is the figure issued by th...
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. We have been waiting for the economic crime Bill for many years....
I make the decisions, and I think it is all right. What I would say, in fairness, is that the Hom...
Thank you. Mr Speaker. The concern for the House is that the Home Secretary has provided informat...
The question I was hoping to put to the Home Secretary was very simply whether she could illustra...
My hon. Friend is right that we need clarity about how the legislation will work in practice and ...
I will take one final intervention.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is deeply concerning that the now Lord Lebedev, despite w...
Order. We cannot name a Member of the other place, unless it is on a substantive motion, so that ...
Given the seriousness of this matter and the seriousness of the allegations that security advice ...
I start off by saying that I expect Members to take around five minutes.
4.38 pm
Given the nature of the debate, I will try to make my simple points in three minutes. [Interrupti...
I want my right hon. Friend to extend his speech slightly. Does he agree—I hope my right hon. Fri...
I am pretty sure that they will hear that warning when they look back at this debate.
I do ...
I call SNP spokesperson Alison Thewliss.
4.43 pm
SNP Members are delighted to see this well-overdue Bill. We have called for action on these issue...
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about where the money was stolen from, and many of the kleptoc...
My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct to point that out. This money has been around the worl...
Does the hon. Lady agree that full transparency at Companies House of who owns companies is in ev...
That is a fair point, and I absolutely agree. I will speak in the sanctions part of my speech abo...
Does the hon. Lady share my concern that there are still 11,000 companies at Companies House that...
I absolutely agree. I was going to speak about Scottish limited partnerships later but will jump ...
I can tell the hon. Lady that there are concerns across the House on this issue, as she can see f...
I very much agree with the hon. Member and acknowledge the strength of cross-party support in the...
Order. I am going to introduce a five-minute time limit. However, I am sure that right hon. and h...
Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is an important Bill, and it is an exceptional Bi...
I will try to keep my remarks short. Like others in the House, I welcome the Bill, but it should ...
Is the right hon. Lady as concerned as I am that some estimates put the cost to this country of e...
No, of course not; I completely concur. The latest figure I have seen for the cost of economic cr...
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Ma...
My hon. Friend makes a good point: this is not just for this crisis. He will have seen the excell...
I agree with my hon. Friend, but that matter is beyond my expertise or interest; my interest is i...
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), and I associate myself...
The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that actions speak louder than words?...
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, and she is right. I do not say this in any other spir...
At bleeding last! It is here. We have been waiting for years. Alleluia! It has finally arrived.
I thank my very good friend for allowing me to intervene. I hope and presume that this Bill will ...
That is a question that I think the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial ...
New clauses 14 and 27 both deal with the establishment of a commission for the protection of whis...
I acknowledge that point. I am not sure whether the Government will be able to accept those propo...
Order. I have no problem with interventions, but it would be helpful to other colleagues, especia...
The Bill is a first step, but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. It should not have ...
I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a practising chartered acc...
I am sure we all agree that the Bill is urgent and that it is good as far as it goes, but it is i...
Many of my colleagues— interestingly, more on the Conservative Benches—are fond of quoting Lenin ...
I too welcome the Bill, but it angers and saddens me that it has taken the invasion of a European...
I welcome the Economic Crime Bill and am pleased that the Government have brought it forward. It ...
We support the Bill and its aims, for which we have long since been calling, but we are highly fr...
It is an inconvenient truth that no matter how good the legislation, no matter how robust the rul...
I have been listening closely to a lot of the contributions made by Members across the House. It ...
I rise to support the Bill, and I am delighted to hear the full-throated support across the House...
I am pleased to be called to speak in this debate. As others have said, and as I recognise, none ...
I am sadly fully aware that my constituency holds potentially the largest matryoshka doll of Russ...
I welcome the Bill and I share the desire to look carefully at the enforcement issues that have d...
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. We must remember that many Russians are living in this co...
We all know that a week can be a long time in politics but, amazingly, it is just 40 days since t...
Does the hon. Member accept that it is one thing to have a register and insist that people fill i...
I understand the right hon. Member’s scepticism, and he is of course right to acknowledge, as we ...
The issue of the register is obviously important, but I do not think it answers all the questions...
The right hon. Member pre-empts my comments about the timescale for implementation and the worrie...
On transparency, and I raised this with the Home Secretary when she was here, there is the issue ...
My right hon. Friend’s point about donations is absolutely well made. His earlier point was about...
Very briefly, we are going to see a second economic crime Bill come through, and I think it would...
I am always happy to be of service to the hon. Gentleman, and we will be looking to do that. He w...
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I feel I must proceed so we can go into Committee, given how important this is.
To conclude...
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) and I tha...
The Minister is absolutely right and this Bill is of course welcome, although many of us believe ...
I will come to those figures because I totally agree with my hon. Friend that the rules and new l...
We on the Treasury Committee have just published a report on economic crime and some of the evide...
I am thinking of the word bailiwick rather than bivouac, but I hope the hon. Lady will agree that...
On Second Reading of the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, the Prime Minister, who wa...
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that because the now shadow Chancellor boasted afterwards ...
Will the Minister welcome the conversion of the Labour party to supporting strengthening the sanc...
I agree that it is, but let us come back to a sense of unity. We have had some ding-dongs through...
The transition period—the debate on the timescale of 18 months, six months or 28 days—is key. Doe...
He will, and I thank my hon. Friend for his work and for raising that. I will come back to his po...
Before giving way further, I want to acknowledge that I am very aware of the strength of feeling ...
I am interested in where the Minister has got his information from, because I have not seen that ...
No, indeed. If the right hon. Lady looks at the Panama papers, I think she will see that they cit...
The Minister will be aware of amendment 4—we will discuss it in Committee—which asks why there is...
I will happily talk about that amendment in Committee. However, I take the hon. Member’s point an...
I will give way one last time.
I am grateful to the Minister. He will know—I raised this with him earlier—that there was confusi...
Yes, the Bill does contain provisions relating to the register of overseas entities and unexplain...