Cryptocurrency has become the new way in which money is laundered. Corrupt and stolen money ends up in the pockets of one individual, and then gets back into the system for them to spend it elsewhere. I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman: it is important that we get our heads around cryptocurrency and that we legislate appropriately to tackle it.
The other way of looking at this issue, and the reason why we have tabled the new clause, is that our law enforcement bodies, while they are not as good as the Americans’, bring resources back to the UK through fines. Between 2016 and 2021, the law enforcement bodies brought £3.9 billion back into the UK coffers. If that money had been reinvested, which is one of the ideas for funding the enforcement agencies, it could have brought an extra three quarters of a billion pounds to be spent on enforcement by all those agencies. That is a lot of money, and it would have been effective; it would have had a snowball effect of increasing our budget.
New clause 2 is there to ensure that we get the enforcement right—that we have not only the powers but the resources we need to make sense of and put into effect the important legislation we are passing today. I hope it will have support right across the Committee; it certainly has support among Back Benchers, and I would love it if the Government accepted it and it became part of the Bill.