My Lords, financial sanctions are an important foreign policy and national security tool. Their effective implementation and enforcement are vital to their success. In order to ensure that financial sanctions enforcement is appropriately targeted and proportionate, it is important that a range of alternative enforcement options are available, such as the monetary penalties provided for in Part 8 of the Bill.
The permitted maximum penalty is set at the level of £1 million or 50% of the value of the breach. This level is considered to be adequate to disgorge profits made from financial sanctions evasion and provide a sufficient incentive to improve future compliance in cases where prosecution is not warranted.
In its current form, the Bill states that a decision to impose a civil monetary penalty will be made by the Treasury, and the person upon whom a monetary penalty is imposed has the right to request a review of the decision by a Minister in person. The Minister may uphold the decision and the amount of the penalty, uphold the decision but change the amount of the penalty, or cancel the decision. The Bill does not currently provide the individual with any right of appeal, although both the decision of the Treasury and that of the reviewing Minister are within the scope of a judicial review application. Following further consideration, however, we have concluded that it would be appropriate to provide for a right of appeal to the Upper Tribunal, and Amendment 177 amends the Bill accordingly. Such an appeal route will ensure that there can be a full-merits hearing on points of law and fact, whereas a judicial review hearing in the High Court can examine only points of law.
Amendments 178 and 179 address a separate point. Clause 141 permits the Treasury to extend temporary sanctions regimes and temporary designations to the Crown dependencies and the British Overseas Territories, to ensure that financial sanctions take effect in these territories “without delay”, as required by the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council. However, we have always been clear that the power will not be used in respect of any territory that takes its own measures to apply financial sanctions without delay. In recent weeks the Government of Jersey have taken their own legislative steps to implement sanctions without delay. That being the case, the Government of Jersey have requested that reference to them be omitted from Clause 141. Amendments 178 and 179 give effect to that request. Of course if any other Crown dependency or overseas territory takes similar steps to Jersey, the power in the clause will not be used in relation to that territory. However, as the other territories have not yet done so, it is prudent to retain them in scope for the time being. I beg to move.