← LEADERSHIP TERMINAL

UK PARLIAMENT · SITTING

Liam Byrne

MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North · Labour · United Kingdom

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

The loss of 4,000 jobs at Jaguar Land Rover is a body blow for workers, families and communities across the west midlands, so I commend Richard Parker, the Mayor of the West Midlands, for moving quickly on Monday to put £500,000 on the table to help ensure that everybody gets back to work.

JAGUAR LAND ROVER: REDUNDANCIES · 2026-09-09 · READ IN HANSARD

I wholeheartedly welcome this well-rounded statement from the Foreign Secretary, and put on record my thanks to the new Prime Minister for the hard yards that I know he has put in over recent days and weeks.

ISRAEL AND PALESTINE · 2026-09-08 · READ IN HANSARD

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, and I offer my warmest congratulations to her on her appointment to the role; she will be a brilliant Minister.

REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE BILL · 2026-09-02 · READ IN HANSARD

Let me start with a word of thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), who is not in her place, who said quite rightly that an awful lot has changed since the Bill was first introduced to this House. Indeed, a lot has been revealed over the course of the summer.

REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE BILL · 2026-09-02 · READ IN HANSARD

The effect of new clause 34 would be to ban off-ramping, ban new forms of digital currency transactions and ban memecoins, which are exactly the kind of measures that Ministers now need to bring forward. If we want to take the crypto system out of political finance, this is what we need to do.

REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE BILL · 2026-09-02 · READ IN HANSARD

No doubt we will learn that Mr Cottrell was in fact on the electoral register when that money was passed. No doubt we will discover that his mother, Fiona Cottrell, declared and did not disguise the fact that the money had ultimately come from her son.

REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE BILL · 2026-09-02 · READ IN HANSARD

The complete record

Every one of 5,360 lines we hold for Liam Byrne, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 17 of 108.

  1. Then we heard from a range of police specialists who said, first, that they thought the problem was getting much worse quite quickly, and secondly, that they did not have the resources they needed to enforce the law in this area. All that evidence points in one direction: Companies House needs more money. When we took evidence from representatives of Companies House, we heard, startlingly, that they have not even discussed their budget with the Treasury for the next financial year, which is due to start in only a few months’ time. They mooted the idea of asking for cash for an extra 100 people, which the dogs in the street know is not going to be enough to enforce the measures in the Bill.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (ELEVENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  2. That is truly a mark of shame, and why Bill Browder was absolutely right when said in evidence to this Committee that it is appalling—a matter of shame—that there has been only one prosecution for money-laundering around economic crime in this country. That truly is an appalling record of law enforcement. Worse than that, we also heard from the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation that the situation is not simply bad news for economic crime, but a national security issue. When the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation tells the Committee that it is a matter of national security that we clean up the dark mass of economic crime in this country, we as Members of Parliament ought to listen and do something about it.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (ELEVENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  3. There is a competitive advantage to be had by becoming one of the great capitals of clean trade. Here we are, an Opposition united in wanting to help the Minister achieve that ambition and make sure that he has the resources to do the job. In the public evidence sessions, we heard a clear set of arguments as to why these amendments need to be made. We heard that our country has now become the centre of the Russian laundromat, the Troika laundromat and the Azerbaijan laundromat. Indeed, the Security Minister and I were on the Foreign Affairs Committee together when we heard the most appalling evidence that some of the biggest money-laundering scandals have involved UK corporate structures more than anything else; I think I am right that about 40% of the billions laundered through Danske Bank came through UK corporate structures.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (ELEVENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  4. We know that that is not going to damage the business investment environment in this country. How? Because it could not get any worse than it is today. The business investment level in this country over the last 12 years has now been the worst in the G7, so it is unlikely to get any worse if fees at Companies House are put up a little bit: it is already spectacularly bad. That underlines a simple point: that the level of economic crime in this country is now so infamous around the world that it could be damaging the level of business investment here. If we are known around the world—certainly, in Washington and in European capitals—as a global epicentre of dirty money, how does that help us become a great, global hub of business investment in years to come? Obviously, it does not.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (ELEVENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  5. It is a pleasure to speak with you in the Chair, Mr Robertson. It is fantastic for the Minister to be able to kick off today with this debate—surely there has never been a Minister as lucky as this one is in taking this Bill through Committee. Here we have an entire Opposition side of the Committee united in wanting to give the Minister the tools to do the job—the job for which he has argued for years and years in this House. We want to send the Minister into the spending review, with his colleague the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with his hands bound. We want to ensure that he goes into those conversations with the law of the land changed, so that he is required to put up the fees for Companies House and actually has the money he needs to do the job.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (ELEVENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  6. We are just getting warmed up. The Minister is absolutely right to flag that point. The fee level was always set in relation to the perception of the crime environment at the time, which was very different in 2009-10 from what it is today. As we have heard in the evidence, the crime environment is much worse and is multiplying exponentially each year, which is why the fees have to go up so dramatically. Hopefully, that is the point he is going to make.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (ELEVENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  7. The Minister is right that the capture of Kherson is potentially a turning point for the Ukrainian forces, not least because with longer range missiles supplied to them it might be possible to hit Russian navy targets in the Black sea and therefore begin to eliminate the possibility of Russia using its navy to fire Kalibr cruise missiles into Ukraine against the infrastructure the Minister talked about at the beginning of his speech. Is it now time for us to revisit the supply of longer-range missiles, which we ruled out at the beginning of the conflict?

    UKRAINE · 2022-11-14 · READ IN HANSARD

  8. I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way and it was a pleasure to be with him in Kyiv earlier this year. He is making an incredibly important point, because sometimes we hear our allies say, “We have to make sure that Putin cannot do this again.” Actually, that is the wrong analysis. We have to make sure that Russia cannot do this again.

    UKRAINE · 2022-11-14 · READ IN HANSARD

  9. We need to ask ourselves in this House today: why are we not proscribing the United party of Russia as a terrorist organisation? Are we seriously saying, here in this House, that that party is somehow better, cleaner than Hamas, Hezbollah or the Basque separatist organisation ETA? Those are all “political organisations”, be that with a capital “P” or a lower case “p”, and we proscribe them for the terrorist organisations that they are. So why are we not taking the United party of Russia through that process and why are we not challenging every member of that party to leave it and leave it now?

    UKRAINE · 2022-11-14 · READ IN HANSARD

  10. I do not understand why the Foreign Secretary, the Secretary of State for Defence and perhaps even the Prime Minister cannot set out that there will be an infinite resupply of weapons until these terms are met. I do not understand why we are not making that crystal clear to President Putin, to the people around him and to the men and women of the Russian army, who are already fairly mutinous. We must make it clear that we are not going away, we are not backtracking, we are not retreating and we are there with the Ukrainian people and their armed forces until every one of those five objectives is met. The final thing we should be doing is increasing the political pressure on Putin and those around him. I agree with 100% of what the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) said this evening, but I would go further.

    UKRAINE · 2022-11-14 · READ IN HANSARD

  11. Thirdly, we must prosecute Russia for the crime of aggression. There are precedents for this in international law. We know how to do it, the case is very clear and we should make it very clear to Putin that the prosecution will now come. Fourthly, we should be prosecuting individuals for the war crimes of which they are guilty, not just in Bucha but across the black and blood-fouled earth of the territory that Russia has invaded. Finally, we must ensure there is a full exchange of prisoners, and a full repatriation of the up to 2 million people who the Russians moved from their homeland to various parts of Russia. We know those are the five basic demands of Ukraine’s leaders, because many of us were in the presidential palace in Kyiv to hear them from President Zelensky.

    UKRAINE · 2022-11-14 · READ IN HANSARD

  12. At that point, he knew there was no escape and that the bombardment would continue until he folded his cards. Sure enough, he folded his cards and came to the table, and the Dayton accords followed. Surely that is a lesson we should learn. Surely now is the time when we do not just say that Putin must leave, Russia must fail and Ukraine must prevail. Surely now is the time when we set out in terms the conditions that we are determined to see met and that, until they are met, there will be an infinite supply of weapons from us, as the arsenal of hope in this great conflict. Those terms are very simple. First, wide blue safe skies across 100% of Ukraine. Secondly, 100% decolonisation of Russian forces from the territory of Ukraine, on 1991 borders—Russia must be removed from every inch of Ukrainian land.

    UKRAINE · 2022-11-14 · READ IN HANSARD

  13. Given the threat we know is coming from Russia, and given the threat we know is posed by the Russian navy in the Black sea, surely now is the time to take away that red line and make a much wider supply of weaponry available to Ukraine’s armed forces, so they can begin to double down on the advantage their courage has bought them with so much blood and treasure over the last few months. Secondly, it is about not just projectiles but politics. There is a lesson to be learned from the way in which we brought Milošević to the negotiating table during the last Yugoslav war. It was very simple: we stated in terms that there would be an almost infinite supply of weapons to back the forces of goodness until he signed up to certain terms and came to the negotiating table.

    UKRAINE · 2022-11-14 · READ IN HANSARD

  14. That would allow attacks on Russian navy assets, from which, let us not forget, Russia has been firing Kalibr cruise missiles at Ukraine’s water and electricity infrastructure, which is putting the pressure on morale that we have heard about this evening. Hitherto, America and, I believe, NATO have said those longer-range fires are off the table. We have heard from the Americans that ATACMS missiles, because they have a range of 300 km and could be fired directly into Russia, will not be supplied to Ukrainian armed forces. We are therefore not equipping the Ukrainian armed forces with the full capabilities we have to offer.

    UKRAINE · 2022-11-14 · READ IN HANSARD

  15. Now that Ukraine’s armed forces are on the west bank of the Dnieper river, it is possible for them to begin targeting the supply lines into Crimea, which means Crimea suddenly comes into the crosshairs. It is now possible for us to think realistically about a battle of the Black sea in the months ahead. I offer three thoughts to this debate—one about the military options and two about the political options—and I would be grateful if the Minister took them into account in his winding-up speech. First, as former general Ben Hodges argued at the weekend, it is now possible for Ukrainian forces not simply to hit the lines of control into Ukraine with HIMARS from the west bank of the Dnieper river but, if we gave them longer-range ATACMS missiles, to extend the ambit of those fires into the Black sea.

    UKRAINE · 2022-11-14 · READ IN HANSARD

  16. It is a great privilege to follow such remarkable contributions. It has been especially heart-warming to hear from Members who have talked about the people sponsoring Ukrainian refugees, because not just across this House but across this country, there is a shared sense that the brave men and women of Ukraine’s armed forces are fighting for freedom and to ensure that our values do not perish on the continent of Europe. As we heard in the American elections, there are those who are beginning to argue that, now advances are being made and now Ukraine has recaptured about half the territory taken by the Russian invaders, it is somehow time to let up, to sue for peace and to question whether we are supplying too much to Ukraine’s armed forces. Those voices must be shut down as quickly as possible.

    UKRAINE · 2022-11-14 · READ IN HANSARD

  17. We heard today that Mr Abramovich’s money from the sale of his football club has still not made it to Ukraine to begin with the reconstruction. When are these things going to happen? It is time that we do not simply freeze assets, but start seizing them and rechannelling the money into supplying Ukraine and its reconstruction. Let me finish with a simple message: we in this homeland of Europe learnt something a long time ago in international relations from the approach the Athenians took to the poor Melians. They were the people confronted several thousand years ago with the message that might somehow makes right. That is not something we subscribe to in this country. This is a country that stands up to bullies and when we see others, like-minded souls, standing up to bullies such as Putin, our job is to back them every inch of the way.

    UKRAINE · 2022-11-14 · READ IN HANSARD

  18. We have to accept that there are good people among those tourists.” I hear all of that, but if we are serious about making sure that Russia is not able to do this again, we have to make it clear to the Russian people the way in which we see the sins of their nation and make it crystal clear that they must act within their country to deliver a different kind of leadership in the years to come. The final piece of the puzzle, of course, is sanctions, and I hope that we will be able to have a longer debate about that when the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill comes back for its Report stage. It is ludicrous that the $45 million yacht, Phi, which the Minister and his colleagues have frozen, is down the road in St Katharine docks as yet unseized.

    UKRAINE · 2022-11-14 · READ IN HANSARD

  19. Russia has been providing a safe harbour for that designated terrorist organisation for some years, so why are we not going to commence now the business of designating Russia as a terrorist state sponsor? That has all kinds of implications, not least one of the suggestions that I think the hon. Gentleman was aiming at, which is to begin banning tourist visas for those from Russia immediately. There will always be people in this House who say, “We can’t go to war with the Russian people.

    UKRAINE · 2022-11-14 · READ IN HANSARD

  20. One absolutely would have thought that, because there is no excuse not to think that. When we put the point to the Foreign Secretary when he came before the Foreign Affairs Committee this afternoon, he did not take it off the table, but nor did he give the Committee a timetable for that action. The hon. Gentleman is right, because not only should we be proscribing the United party of Russia for the terrorist organisation it is, but we should be designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. That is an appellation we have plonked on the Government and state of Iran since, I believe, the early 1990s. We knew even before the invasion of Ukraine that there was a good case for this, because Russia is a sanctuary for the Russian Imperial Movement, which is designated by the United States as a terrorist organisation.

    UKRAINE · 2022-11-14 · READ IN HANSARD

  21. I, too, do not believe that there can be a NATO-policed no-fly zone, but what I do believe is that there can be a much a greater supply of air defence weapons that we have and that Ukraine needs.

    UKRAINE · 2022-11-14 · READ IN HANSARD

  22. Given that the Minister recognises the risk of Putin damaging Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, why does he argue that we should not be providing longer-range fires to Ukrainian armed forces to counter that?

    UKRAINE · 2022-11-14 · READ IN HANSARD

  23. Tomorrow, I will be delivering food bank collection crates across my constituency, because our food banks are running out of food once more. Does the Prime Minister understand the despair my constituents feel that he, as one of the richest men in Britain, is doing so little— [ Interruption. ] Conservative Members do not like the truth, Mr Speaker. Does he understand the despair my constituents feel that he is doing so little for the poorest in Britain by refusing to cancel the £3 billion tax break for non-doms who profit from our country but will not make it their home?

    ENGAGEMENTS · 2022-11-09 · READ IN HANSARD

  24. I am sorry to intervene, but the Minister provokes me. A point to take away is that we are now bedevilled by a real problem in this country: responsibility for policing this area is divided between the Minister, the Treasury, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Bank of England. At the moment, as the Foreign Affairs Committee has said repeatedly, there is not an effective gearbox for joining those things together. If one of the Minister’s legacies could be to fix that problem, he would be cheered from all sides.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (NINTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  25. It is important to the Opposition and, I am sure, the Government, to hear from journalists and investigators on whether the measures that the Minister is introducing jeopardise or constrain their ability to conduct the investigations that they have carried out so admirably over the last few years. I hope that the Minister will take up the suggestion of my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking and set out very clearly for us what information will be available. The whole Committee would be interested to hear, perhaps informally, from journalists on whether that information will constrain their ability to investigate; we can then decide whether to come back to this issue on Report.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (NINTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  26. It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Bardell. I fully appreciate the Government’s need to table amendments—the grind of Committee exposes all kinds of opportunities to improve and strengthen legislation—but this is a good example of the kind of measure that it would have been helpful to see at the beginning of the process, not halfway through, not least because we are all worried about Companies House and its capacity to hunt and root out badness. All of us have in our time, and in our own way, relied on journalists’ investigative capacity to flag bad activity.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (NINTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  27. It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Elliott. When the Minister winds up the debate on the clause, will he say a little more about some of the information that the registrar may be seeking, and in particular whether she is able to solicit information from people seeking to file accounts, and so on, that has been requested by other agencies? All kinds of information is sometimes beyond the purview of, for example, the National Crime Agency, and sometimes the registrar, rather than a police agency, making the first approach may be a more intelligent way to get the information needed for an investigation. It would be helpful if the Minister clarified whether Companies House can act in concert with other law enforcement agencies to gather information that is needed to help to bring prosecutions.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (TENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  28. If we were having this debate in my constituency, my constituents would say to me and, indeed, to the Minister, “We want to hire a police officer to stop crime.” If we look at a definition of what a police officer does, they maintain law and order in local areas, prevent crime, reduce fear of crime and improve the quality of life for all citizens. We want Companies House to stop economic crime and that is what my right hon. Friend’s amendments seek to achieve.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (TENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  29. My right hon. Friend is making a brilliant speech. If anything, the Minister has caused more alarm than he might have intended this afternoon by referring to the language in the Bill that says the registrar must take account of the information that she holds. There is no way that we would ask a police officer to police Hodge Hill simply with reference to the information that that police officer happens to hold. We would ask the police officer to look at the crime environment in the constituency as a whole, taking account of all kinds of perspectives, not simply the information that he or she happened to have in their little black book.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (TENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  30. That is the same name as a director of Quest Resources, incorporated at Companies House on 16 July 2021, in Guisborough. The co-director was someone called Gordon Alexander, a director of Hutton Chemicals. Quest is also, we are told, in the beneficial ownership of a company with close association with Mr Mazepin. Clearly, there is already a risk that UK nationals on the Companies House register can be used as proxies, whether wittingly or unwittingly, by someone who is sanctioned.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (TENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  31. His assets include a $600-million super yacht, the Dilbar, an Airbus H175 helicopter and UK properties including Sutton Place, a 16th-century Tudor house in Surrey, which are held through a range of different trusts. He is widely known as someone whom we should be taking far more aggressive action against than we are today. We then have the case of Dimitry Mazepin. He was —is—the controller of Uralchem and a number of other fertiliser companies on behalf of President Putin and the Russian Government. Among the holding companies in Mazepin’s group is Uralchem Freight, based in Cyprus, which has control of a fertiliser terminal in Latvia. The Latvian press, however, reports that the beneficial owner of that organisation is someone called Aamar Atta Bhidwal.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (TENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  32. That underlines my point that use of proxies is a systemic problem. I want to go further, however, and to illustrate how the use of proxies is a systemic problem of economic crime here in our country. Who better to illustrate that than Alisher Usmanov? He has strong ties to President Putin and his inner circle. On 22 March this year, it was revealed that Usmanov’s sister, a gynaecologist based in Tashkent, had the beneficial ownership of 27 different Swiss bank accounts with hundreds of millions of dollars in them. In fact, analysis of the suspicious activity reports related to those accounts showed that they had been moving around about $1.6 billion. That was revealed in The Guardian newspaper.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (TENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  33. That transfer was made in February and included a £282-million Boeing 787 Dreamliner, super yachts and trophy items bought through a network of shell companies, including some in Jersey and the British Virgin Islands: Wotton Overseas Holdings Ltd, Jersey; Clear Skies Flights Ltd, Jersey; and Wenham Overseas Ltd, British Virgin Islands. All that begins to illustrate how a bad actor has used proxies to circumvent sanctions and sanction controls. The tragedy of course is that it was not Companies House that proactively brought the matter to the House to say, “Here we are, folks. I think we have a bit of a problem”; no, we have to learn about it not from Companies House or a British crime enforcement agency, but from the United States, where the authorities brought an action and forced disclosure of the information in the American courts.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (TENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  34. Members on both sides will have been as surprised as I was to hear from the Foreign Office Minister this morning at Foreign Office questions that that money has still not been routed to victims of Russia’s barbarity in Ukraine; it is still frozen by red tape and bureaucracy in this country. That is an outrage, because Roman Abramovich secretly transferred hundreds of millions of pounds in assets, including private jets—including the world’s biggest private jet—to his children just days before he was placed under sanctions. That is not my view; that is the view of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The oligarch has seven children, aged between eight and 30. He is alleged to have made his offspring the beneficiaries of an offshore trust in Cyprus that controls his assets.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (TENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  35. To make that case, I need to demonstrate three things this afternoon: that use of proxies by bad people is a problem; that use of proxies by bad people is a problem here in our country; and that the Bill is deficient and needs toughening up. Let me share a few examples of why proxies are such a problem. Where better to start than with exhibit A, Roman Abramovich, who was finally sanctioned earlier this year after a disgraceful period of licence in which he was allowed to do terrible things like buy football clubs? Now he has of course put Chelsea football club into some sort of trust. The money is frozen. He has declared that all net proceeds from the sale will be donated to the victims of the war.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (TENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  36. That is why I know that, as a canny captain in his Department, he is alive to all the constructive recommendations that we are making to him, because that that strengthens his hand. The Minister has obviously got some theatre to perform because he has to get the Bill through the House and then get it through the House of Lords, and then back through the House of Commons. As an experienced and seasoned political operator, he will know that it is really wise to make a few strategic concessions to the Opposition to keep them on side. Although he has not revealed that yet by making us any concessions, it will not be long, and it could be at the conclusion of my speech to new clause 43, because it is a blindingly obvious improvement to a current hole in the Bill.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (TENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  37. I know that the Minister is not insensible to the scale of economic crime in this country or to the threat that it poses, because I was privileged enough to be there in Westminster Abbey just a few months ago, when he got up to speak with his customary eloquence to the launch of the economic crime manifesto. That has been drawn up with input from so many right hon. and hon. Members, and it is the manifesto that declares loud and clear: “Dirty money is a national security threat…Dirty money causes massive financial damage…Dirty money is damaging the UK’s reputation…Dirty money may be pushing up prices for British citizens…Dirty money undermines the rule of law and democratic institutions.” The Minister knows what he is talking about when it comes to the Bill, which is why he is stewarding it so ably through Committee.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (TENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  38. It is a pleasure to speak to new clause 43, which is in my name but has been drafted with the assistance of my right hon. and hon. Friends. In introducing it, I have to think that the Minister is a lucky man, because there are very few opportunities when any of us in this place have the chance to translate a life’s work into the law of the land. Yet that is precisely the opportunity that we have afforded to the Minister, who is steering the Bill so ably through Committee. That is why we are here to help him. The Minister will know that he is living the dream.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (TENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  39. It asks for nothing more than that any person holding shares in a public company as a nominee for another person must disclose that fact to the register, or face a sanction. That is straightforward, it is not complicated, and it would make a difference.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (TENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  40. I said: “So you would say to Members of Parliament who are worried about bad people transferring control of an economic asset to proxies that, at the moment, we do not have enough safeguards in the Bill.” The answer came: “I think they could be improved, yes.” ––[Official Report, Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Public Bill Committee, 25 October 2022; c. 11, Q10.] Here is a simple opportunity for the Minister to apply a bit of good old-fashioned belt and braces, make the Opposition happy, keep them on side and ensure that some of his former colleagues who put together the economic crime manifesto are singing his praises wherever they can—accept either the principle or the wording of new clause 43.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (TENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  41. In an interview last year, he called Dmitry Mazepin a friend, associate, colleague and manager. I saw from the Companies House register this morning that he created Hitech Global Holdings on 11 March 2022, just three days after Mr Mazepin and his son were sanctioned. There is a clear risk that oligarchs are using proxies, and that this misbehaviour is washing up on our shores and in Companies House. That leaves us with the third question: whether there is a hole in the Bill here. We need look no further than the evidence that UK Finance provided to the Committee.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (TENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  42. Yes, of course, but the Minister must also be aware that the provisions he has sketched into the law have comprehensively failed, as my next example will now prove. Mazepin was the majority owner of Hitech Grand Prix, and his son was a racing driver. His company, Uralkali, was the sponsor of this company until March 2022. In March of this year, 75% was transferred to a company called Bergton Management Ltd. The shares were not sold; they were relinquished. There does not seem to have been any cash paid out for this major economic interest in a globally significant grand prix company. From Bergton Management Ltd, the ownership of the assets moved to somebody called Oliver Oakes, who now controls 75% of the shares. He created Uralkali racing in January of this year.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (TENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  43. My concern was to ensure that the registrar has a crime-fighting obligation, and that when she conducts her risk assessments, she is not constrained merely to the information that is before her—that which is on the register.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (TENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  44. I welcome the right hon. Gentleman, my constituency neighbour, to his place. Our ability to act as human rights defenders around the world would be much stronger if we collectively hit the G20 target of lending $100 billion of the special drawing rights issued last year. To date, the UK has committed to sharing only 20% of its special drawing rights. That fraction is much lower than France and China. What is he doing to get a grip of the Government achieving the aim of sharing a much higher proportion?

    HUMAN RIGHTS · 2022-11-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  45. It seems that if somebody is subject to a travel ban, they will fail pretty much every “know your customer” rule for every financial institution in the country. Indeed, we have set out regulations precisely to ensure that there are those tripwires. How will a company director be able to fulfil their duties? If the Minister cannot answer now, perhaps he can set that out in the correspondence to follow.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (SEVENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  46. The last Bill Committee I had the pleasure of serving on was for the Data Protection Act 2018, which implements the general data protection regulation and prescribes all manner of protections for data privacy. This is our worry. When the new duty set out by the Minister for Companies House clashes with GDPR legislation, how do we resolve those clashes of principles to allow Companies House to share the data they need to share with the people they need to share it with in order to pinpoint the bad guys?

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (SEVENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  47. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Elliott. I am sorry that I have not checked the sartorial guidance for the Committee, but I assume it is okay for me to speak without a jacket on. I defer to the Chair if she wants me to clothe myself more adequately.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (SEVENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  48. I put this case before him so that he can reflect on it and perhaps come back to the Committee with further thoughts.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (SEVENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  49. Among the measures that we in the House have previously invented are some of the provisions that I took through in the UK Borders Act 2007. We basically wrote into law the automatic consideration of sanctions such as the suspension of directorships. Many Opposition Members would be an awful lot more confident that bad people would be disqualified from directorships if they were sanctioned if we had some kind of legislative provision that created a duty, and therefore a burden, on Ministers and their officials to automatically consider people for the suspension of their directorships if a sanction of any description was imposed upon them. This Committee is a chance for us to air different points of view about how we ensure that, as the Minister wants, London is a world capital of clean trade.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (SEVENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  50. That is why the House was treated to the spectacle of a piece of enabling legislation that allowed us simply to copy and paste the sanctions regime from other countries into UK law. There is a serious worry that the FCDO is not equipped to drive through the requisite disqualification of directors at the speed at which it should if it takes decisions on sanctions. I hear what the Minister says about creating some—I guess he would say—safeguards against the automatic suspension of directors, but in the absence of such a regime there is a real concern about an enforcement gap, because the FCDO sanctions and compliance team simply does not have the capacity to work things through with Companies House to ensure that the consequentials are followed through and that directors are disqualified when it is appropriate.

    ECONOMIC CRIME AND CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY BILL (SEVENTH SITTING) · 2022-11-03 · READ IN HANSARD