Ms Stella Creasy
MP for Walthamstow · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“I thank the Foreign Secretary for his clear-sighted commitment not only to talk about a two-state solution, but to actually try to act to achieve it, as the only foundation of a safe Israel and a free Palestine.”
“Could he reassure the House that we will not acquiesce and bend to such pressure, and that the only action that could ever be acceptable to us to make us contemplate reversing this ban would be a halt on the E1 development and a permanent end to settler violence?”
“I start by paying tribute to the new Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), for all the work she did on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on these issues. I know that she will do a brilliant job in this role.”
“I do not really understand the technology, but I know that he does, and I understand and share his fear accordingly. We come here today to debate this Bill because we all know that trust is a bygone issue in our politics.”
“We would welcome her having that conversation, which might be more illuminating than whether she is concerned about Zach Goldmsith’s leaflets. I add my support to the amendments tabled by my hon.”
“From today, if we do not take a stand with this Bill to tackle the ways that money has infiltrated our politics, the risk is that they will think we are acting in the interests of our own back pockets.”
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“What conversations has he had with his colleagues in the Department for International Trade and with the Prime Minister about how to cut through that and make sure that we can export all our British delicacies and put food on the plates of our constituents?”
“The Secretary of State will find many of us who will support him in seeing food prices as a massively important issue as we all have constituents who are not choosing between heating and eating because they cannot afford to do either. On the question of how we can cut the cost of food and support British farming, the elephant in the Chamber is that he has not talked at all about the impact of leaving the European Union yet the evidence from the UK in a Changing Europe think-tank is very clear about the impact of that on food prices. The children of this country cannot eat red tape, yet that is exactly what has been imported into this country and is now strangling British farmers.”
“For example, the Government spent £35 million on adverts about Brexit in last year, but they have spent £150,000 in total on telling parents where they can get tax credits to cover the cost of childcare. Does he understand the concern about that disparity, and what is he going to do about it?”
“I thank the Minister for giving way. The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) makes is apposite because we know that the vast majority of families picking up on the tax credits to be able to use early years are from wealthy households, and that a lot of families are being priced out of early years childcare because of the cost. I am sure the Minister would agree that the fact that nearly £2.8 billion-worth of tax credits were unclaimed last year is a problem; if there is a subsidy for childcare, we should encourage parents to take it up. Does the Minister understand how perplexing the situation is? If it was a priority for the Government, we would see them investing in telling parents about it.”
“Many parents listening to the debate might have a simple question for the Minister: what does he expect them to do with a child who is under the age of two, so that we do not see women in particular having to leave the workforce because no employer is going to wait two years for them to have childcare?”
“A party cannot claim to be the party of the family when it is abandoning particularly mums but dads too. The Minister knows that he could have support to do this, but we need it to be a priority, even more so than saving “Derry Girls” and putting up the wind turbines.”
“The Government are not telling people that they are entitled to tax credits, yet the Government got back £2.8 billion alone last year in unclaimed childcare tax credits. If the Minister needs people behind him to go to the Treasury to demand that money back, I am with him, because that money alone would pay for 500 million hours of childcare as a first step towards having a universal system. But I do not hear any evidence that the Department is going to claim our tax money back so that our children can have that childcare. The truth is that we cannot solve the cost of living crisis without solving the cost of childcare. We cannot have a productive economy unless every single talented person can make the right choice for their family about working life.”
“I say to the Minister—he and I have children of a similar age—that, if he wants to take five kids of that age at the same time, I will happily lend him mine so that we can see just how possible that is. Our economic competitors recognise that this is the wrong way round as well. Some people claim that they have higher ratios, but we already have higher staff to child ratios than other similar countries. We have 13 children for every staff member in pre-school compared with six children in Sweden and eight in the Netherlands. As I said, there is money to spend on childcare, but this Government are not spending it. It is our money as taxpayers. Those tax credits could be a valuable part of helping parents to make ends meet when it comes to childcare.”
“I now work freelance and when I was hired by a client in the same profession for private work, they had assumed I had left an office to start a family.” The truth, though, is that those experiences are not the worst thing—the worst thing is that investing in childcare is not a loss leader; it is a benefit to our economy because of the increase in tax take, the lower universal credit that is paid, and the equality, prosperity and productivity it brings to us all. Free universal childcare from the end of parental leave to the start of school would bring £25 billion extra funding into the Exchequer through those factors. That would cover 90% of the additional cost outright. But instead of investing, we have a Government murmuring about trying to cut corners by tweaking childcare ratios.”
“If I returned to my normal hours I would take home less than £10 a day, minus the cost of petrol. Totally ridiculous that there is no help until the age of 3.” “Cheapest nursery I found within walking distance of my flat was £1603 a month!” “The worst thing about this is that it is seen as the status quo. A justification for pregnancy and parental discrimination. So we get hit twice. No career and blamed for it too.”
“I’m trying to complete my teaching degree, make a career for myself and support my child, but my god do this government make it so hard!” “£1870 a month for 5 days a week for me to pay childcare to return to work. More than I earn!” “This summer it’s going to be a nightmare trying to work and find affordable childcare for an 11-year-old, 5-year-old and 3-year-old.” “I attempted to re-enter the workforce once my twins were in reception—I had to give up as there was no childcare provision during the summer holidays of 2021. I wasn’t expecting to still be at home when the children were 7.” “No one warns you or helps you pay £2,400 per month in childcare so that you can go back to work. I’ve always been a career woman, so why should we have to choose?” “I have returned to work 4 hours a week to fit around my partners working hours.”
“I pay tribute to the amazing work that Joeli Brearley and Pregnant Then Screwed, and people such as Anna Whitehouse at Mother Pukka, are doing in giving a voice to real parents. These are genuine comments I have had in the past week alone: “Nursery fees for two kids cancel out my whole wage. My employer is consistently in the top 10 global best employers (they are great) so if I can’t make it work, god knows how others do.” “All my wage goes on childcare for two days a week, which works out at the same price as rent for a flat.” “I’m a teaching assistant. My monthly nursery fee for 4 days a week is £300 more than my entire monthly salary—I’m lucky to have a supportive family who help me with some of the cost, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to work.”
“National Day Nurseries Association data shows that the Government is the biggest purchaser of places, but they are frankly short-changing the industry hand over fist. Providers are making a loss of £2 an hour on every Government-funded child they take, forcing them to cut their margins, underinvest in staff and overcharge other families to try to make ends meet. Even when childcare is subsidised, it does not work. The estimated shortfall in funding for a three or four-year-old is more than £2,000 a year, and it is nearly £895 a year for a two-year-old. Little wonder so many nurseries are going out of business and childcare is increasingly becoming an indulgence of the middle classes, rather than part of the infrastructure of an effective economy. In this debate, it is parents who we do not hear from in this place most of all.”
“A separate study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development showed that more than three quarters of men feel there is a stigma to taking just those two weeks to care for their children, let alone asking for flexible working. Where does that stigma come from? I do not know. Maybe somebody could leave a note on my desk to tell me why caring for children and wanting to have a career is a bad thing. Employers want to be able to offer these things, because employers and businesses are ahead of the Government here. They know that offering flexible working, helping families to work and have a career but also be able to care for their children, is one reason why many of their employees stay with them. The current situation does not work for Government or those running nurseries—those heroes we all know who look after our children.”
“The uptake of paternity leave in this country has dropped to a 10-year low, with only one quarter of new dads choosing to take it. Let us be clear what they are taking: two weeks. Anybody who has had a new-born knows that it takes a lot longer than two weeks to work out what on earth to do with it. Just 27% of eligible fathers are taking up that offer of just two weeks’ paid leave, down from 170,000 in 2021, compared with 650,000 women who took maternity leave, although many of them then faced the discrimination of not being able to return to work. That is a loss of 100,000 men compared with those who took paternity leave in the previous year. The number is falling.”
“Little wonder that this childcare system does not work for parents or for employers, who are losing talent from our economy at a rate of knots. Some 40% of mothers have said that they had to work fewer hours than they would have liked because of childcare costs, and that figure rises to more than half of women in households on incomes of less than £50,000. This weekend alone, we saw evidence of a jump of 13% in women aged 24 to 35 not working in the past 12 months. It does not take a rocket scientist to work out who those women are, but it does take a Government who want to prioritise families—I say families, because we know that dads are getting a raw deal too. The mums are disappearing and the dads cannot be there for their kids as they want to be either.”
“They are already 11 months behind their peers when they start primary schools because many of them cannot be in childcare to get that early years learning that we all said is so important. We know that that has got worse during the pandemic, with 76% of schools reporting that that cohort of children—the children from the poorest backgrounds—needed additional support compared with the pre-pandemic cohorts. Even when the Government do invest in childcare, it does not get any better, particularly if parents have a child who might need care during the school holidays. Parents are spending over £800 a year more for after-school care than they did in 2010, with the average family spending more on these activities than they do on their weekly shop.”
“Our childcare system is more dysfunctional than the Home Office. We have to ask ourselves what we can do to fix it. Having the debate is the first step. Again, I want to declare that I am a big fan of the “Derry Girls” and “Countdown”, but we have spent more time, particularly in the Queen’s Speech, thinking about privatising Channel 4 than we have about sorting out childcare. Childcare in this country does not work for the children, especially if they are aged under two, because they do need more than a packet of crisps and a pint of coke during the school holidays. Parents face bills running to hundreds of pounds a week for at least the first two years, often pricing all but the wealthiest out of the workplace. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds feel the pinch most of all.”
“I am delighted that we are having this debate today, because, frankly, it is long overdue. Indeed, in the past couple of years, this place has debated wind turbines more than it has debated the future of childcare in this country. We can all make the jokes about hot air, but the reality is that our children deserve better. I want to focus my remarks particularly on this question about childcare costs. According to the TUC, one in three parents with pre-school children are spending a third of their pay on childcare. The cost of a full-time nursery place for a child under two—those children whom we do not seem to know what to do with—has risen £1,500 over the past five years. The honest truth is that these challenges are not about the pandemic. They pre-empted the pandemic; they have been exacerbated by the pandemic.”
“Obviously, “Frozen II” has many lessons that we all need to follow, but one is not just to “Let It Go” but to be truthful to yourself, so can the Minister clarify this? He said he did not agree with the figures I cited from the National Day Nurseries Association, which has been looking at the impact of the subsidy, but he has just said how much money it costs. Obviously, many parents would say to him that 15 hours’ or indeed 30 hours’ free childcare is not the childcare they need in order to maintain their jobs. Is he saying that the Government believe that the money they are currently providing fully covers the cost of childcare? If he does not think there is a £2,000 differential between the cost of childcare for a three-year-old and what the Government are paying, what does he think the gap is?”
“The Chancellor says he cannot solve every problem, but there is one problem he could solve that would not cost him a penny, but would save millions of people billions of pounds. One in 10 households say it is loan repayments that are causing them destitution, with an average monthly repayment to find of around £370. In the cost of living crisis, it is the legal loan sharks and consumer credit companies that have profited from the delay in help that we have seen and the lack of regulation of their charges. This is not just “buy now, pay later”—it is all of them. When will the Chancellor follow the lead of other countries, recognise how our constituents are being ripped off by those companies, and introduce a cap on the costs of all credit?”
“One group of companies doing well out of the cost of living crisis is the buy now, pay later lenders, with Klarna now valued higher than Barclays or Lloyds. One in 12 of their customers are using buy now, pay later credit to pay for toiletries and basic food products. Will the Chancellor, who was boasting about our consumer credit profile earlier, name the date when our constituents can finally make good on the promise that was made in this House over 18 months ago to give people protection from these legal loan sharks and access to the Financial Ombudsman Service?”
“Businesses and communities dealing with the consequences of Brexit need honesty and certainty, not the chaos and confusion of a potential trade war, so will the Foreign Secretary reassure them? She has repeatedly said today that what she intends to do is in line with international law and has talked about the trade and co-operation agreement. I know that she will not as yet publish the legal advice, but will she tell us which international laws she intends to abide by, what the adjudication mechanism might be, and whether the EU has agreed to it?”
“The Minister will have heard Members across the House calling for not just an impartial investigation, but an independent investigation. I will tell her why it matters: because in this modern world, independent fact checkers have been able to put together compelling, open-source evidence that points clearly to the responsibility of the Israeli forces for the murder of Shireen Abu Aqla. Given that, will the Minister confirm that the UK’s official position is that there should be an independent inquiry, not just an impartial one, so that the Israelis and the Palestinians can both have confidence in the outcomes? Will she clarify that: yes or no?”
“I am mesmerised by the hon. Gentleman’s psychic powers if he does not understand that all offences are retrospective—unless he knows someone who is going to commit an offence. To err is human and to forgive divine, but to transgress repeatedly, as the report already shows us, is something else. Is it not important that we have this inquiry now to understand whether that has happened and there has been a repeated offence against the House? In the past year, half of the public have lost what little trust they had in politicians. The longer this goes on and the more repetition there is, the more all of us are besmirched. Is it not right, in the spirit of forgiveness and redemption, that we are all given the opportunity for salvation?”
“Members throughout this House are desperately concerned about the children who are often on these boats, so can we have a straight answer from the Home Secretary? Does she intend one of the criteria that prevents somebody from being sent to Rwanda to be their being under 18? Crucially, where will the processing and the decision making as to whether or not somebody is under 18 take place? Please, Home Secretary, be straight and honest with us about what you intend to do with these children. We all deserve better.”
“Conservative Members have talked about repentance, the Prime Minister has offered us his apology, and we are being asked to move on, but the critical question for all of us is whether the Metropolitan police has moved on from this matter. The Prime Minister says that he cannot deal with hypotheticals, but now that it has occurred to him what a party actually is, can he tell us whether he expects more fines to come? Yes or no?”
“We have to stop blaming women for not coming forward to report crimes or saying that somehow we understand why they are cautious, and we have to start looking at what works. We also have to stop hiding behind the Law Commission, because yet another review is not the commitment to deeds that women in this country want. Finding that only certain crimes can be motivated by misogyny does not recognise disabled women being targeted for fraud or Muslim women being targeted for both Islamophobic and misogynistic attacks. The Minister knows that the other place will not wear this any longer, and neither will women in this country. I urge him to do the right thing and accept the amendment in lieu. Let us get on with making sure that every woman is protected from misogyny in this country.”
“It is why we need to say to the 673,000 women who, according to House of Commons Library figures, reported being a victim of a personal crime in the past year, but did not come forward to the police, that we will learn what we can do to make them feel safe. It is why we should learn from the other place and Baroness Newlove, Baroness Bertin and Lord Russell, and Baroness Kennedy and the Scottish report, that deeds, not words matter. The Minister says he recognises that the other place is frustrated by the slow pace of change. He says he is looking for the evidence. I encourage him to look at the independent evaluation that shows very clearly that including misogyny in hate crime helps policing and helps women come forward.”
“In the Minister’s letter to me, he said: “You noted my commitment that the Home Office will ask the police to collect crimes of violence against the person” in this way, and he confirmed that the police data requirements group would be taking that forward and that the details would be rolled out in May to meet the timetable of autumn last year, yet it has not happened. That is clearly an argument for making sure that where this good policing practice is already happening, it is extended across the country so that women are not facing a policing lottery as to whether their police forces are doing it. The argument the Minister is making is precisely why we need to put this matter on the statute book and back those chief constables and 17 police forces that are already doing it.”
“There is no argument here about making misogyny a hate crime, like it is some lump of plastic. This is about recognising, as the Minister did last week, where crimes are driven and what we can do about it, just as we have recognised where hatred of someone’s religion or racial background is driving crimes, and we have sent that message. His argument is about why that does not need to be statutory, but he is making an argument that it does need to be statutory, because a year ago this place was promised that that would happen. Pledges were made at the Dispatch Box. Indeed, Ministers in the other place wrote to me to confirm those pledges. On 17 March 2021, the first commitment was made. On 8 July, we were told that the Home Office had met stakeholders to make it happen, and on 15 November, we were told there was a consultation.”
“Does the Minister think that the 17 police forces that are already doing this practice and that recognise—including the chief constables who have this said publicly—that it helps improve victim confidence and the data they have to tackle crimes, are doing the right thing? If he does not, surely he wants to stop them doing it, because it is wasting police time. Which is it? There are inconsistencies in his arguments. The Minister talks about the Law Commission, and I am sure it is delighted to hear what he said, because this Government’s track record on the Law Commission is not very good. Since 2010, 17 Law Commission reviews have been accepted, but not implemented, and a further 16 have had no response at all. Of the 62 that have been done, only half of them have been implemented.”
“As he admitted last week, misogyny drives crimes against women, but he is also saying that he does not know what he can do to help it. He just cannot make up his mind. It is almost like he is gaslighting himself. He needs to clarify whether he thinks things can change, as the sentencing guidelines already say. In this country, we can already recognise where hostility towards someone’s sex drives crimes. Does he think that is a good or a bad thing, as the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon said? The amendments before him from the Lords, and the amendment in lieu that I have tabled to try to help him find that compromise across both Houses, would tackle it.”
“I welcome the journey that the Minister is on, because a week ago he told us that he was not convinced and needed to see more evidence. A week later, he has obviously been doing some reading, because now he wants to have more conversations and go further, faster. This evening, we want to help him keep up with the rest of us who have been looking at how we can tackle violence against women and to see what can be done. I welcome the words of the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) on that. When toxic masculinity is on show at the Oscars, in our streets and in our homes, all of us want to tackle it and none of us wants to condone it. The challenge with the Minister’s argument is that it is still inconsistent.”
“So will he, ahead of the IOPC report, publish the data about the numbers of strip-searches that have taken place, by borough command unit and by ethnicity, and confirm that if it ever comes to this exceptional circumstance—I think we would all agree that it should be exceptional that a child should be strip-searched, not a matter of course—a parent or carer will always be present? He could do that today. He could start recovering the trust that has been so lost. He could start by being honest about the fact that communities of colour in London are looking at and questioning the police. The data is the first point in getting this right. Will he publish—yes or no?”
“I think we all recognise that the Minister is waiting for the IOPC report. However, he says that this could have happened to any child and that he thinks of his own relatives. The brutal, difficult truth that many of my constituents have raised with me over the weekend is that it is not likely to have happened to any of his relatives or our relatives—it is young black girls who have read this story and are horrified by it, and who need us to recognise explicitly the disproportionality in how the police work with them. I hope the Minister can help to answer the question that my constituents have been asking, because they have looked at the data, especially on families of colour in my community, and they can see that strip-searching of children is not a one-off.”
“The Secretary of State said earlier that he was going to ensure that P&O Ferries would no longer advise on transport issues in his Department. Right now, DP World has press promoting its role advising the Government on trade matters. Has he picked up the phone to his colleagues in the Department for International Trade to make sure that DP World is summarily sacked from that role? I am sure he could make a video to let the rest of the world know if that was the case.”
“As of an hour ago, there was a poster up in Calais that says simply, “No visas delivered in Calais.” It tells people to go to an online form and then to Paris or Brussels. Does my right hon. Friend understand why the Ukrainian community in this country are horrified, frustrated and furious to see their relatives who are in Calais being given such information and such a lack of clarity, and does she agree that we need to tell people where this processing centre is? People seeing that sign will give up hope, when hope is what they need from this country.”
“I thank my neighbour for giving way. Does he agree that many of our constituents will be looking at this and will be bemused, because when it comes to their own tax affairs they do not get the same leeway? They can be penalised for acting both recklessly and carelessly. So if we want to make sure that this legislation is watertight, we should take a lesson from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and make sure that we are not giving people a loophole in that way, especially if they are oligarchs.”
“As part of that effort, I put on record my support for new clauses 29 and 2, which deal with resources and asset freezing. This is not just about bolting the stable door; it is about the people who are now running for their lives. We in this place have ruled out military intervention, as has NATO, because we have rested our hopes on economic sanctions as the way to bring Putin to a halt and stop what he is doing. We have to get this right, because there are people sat in Calais tonight, looking to this Government who have failed to give them a visa. There are people sat in Kyiv tonight, waiting for the air raid sirens to go off, who are asking what we are doing. This legislation is what we are doing, so if we do not make sure it is watertight, we are giving a green light to Putin to carry on. Nobody in this House wants to do that.”
“The American Treasury announced that Nikolay Petrovich Tokarev, the president of Transneft, has been sanctioned, but so too has his daughter Maiya and his wife Galina. Maiya’s real estate empire covers more than £50 million-worth of property in Moscow alone and includes at least three companies, including Katina, which owns prime oceanfront real estate in Croatia. The EU and Canada have also sanctioned this family, and Canada has also designated Galina and Maiya, but as far as I can see, we have not yet sanctioned a single family member. Amendment 39 would make sure we have information about those connected parties. It is not perfect, but I hope that in his response, the Minister will explain how the Government intend to ensure we can avoid oligarchs hiding money not just in shell companies, but with shell relatives.”
“At the opposite end of the spectrum, its researchers found that five individuals each controlled more than 6,000 companies. There are more than 4 million companies registered at Companies House. That is a very large haystack in which to hide needles. If those needles happen to be connected to an individual, we should be able to track that fact and acknowledge it through this legislation. According to The New York Post, the former owner of Chelsea football club transferred £92 million of New York City property to his ex-wife, Dasha Zhukova, just before the 2018 round of sanctions was announced. Those sanctions were designed to affect people close to Putin and “to counter and deter malign Russian activities” that were harming democracy around the globe. Our counterparts in America have already sanctioned family members alongside oligarchs.”
“Many of us have spoken about our fear that assets will be taken abroad, taken away or hidden, and particularly the idea that people will hide them among their family members. If we were in a proper Committee, I would say that amendment 39 was a probing amendment to see where the Government are going on this. It talks about connected parties. It is about recognising that there is a history among these people of registering and hiding assets not just in shell companies but in the names of their family members. Two years ago, the anti-corruption campaign group Global Witness looked at this and found that 4,000 of the people registered as a person of significant control were under the age of two, while one had not even been born yet.”
“This type of penalty is known as an ‘inaccuracy penalty’ and applies to…taxes and duties”. I hope the Minister can understand that point and why, with regard to deleting “carelessly or recklessly” we might also want to be clear about where people act with intent and where they act as though they do not care because frankly they have so much money that this is just an occupational surcharge that they may take on. Other amendments that I have tabled reflect that differential. I have also tabled amendment 34 to recognise where an adviser is part of that, because many of us are concerned about those who enable oligarchs to get away with this but would perhaps live in the land of the accidental omission rather than deliberate, reckless omission. The other amendments I want to flag up to the Minister are about some of the other loopholes.”
“The amendments bring in the balance of probabilities to give the law enforcement agencies—I completely support those who are calling for additional resources for them—the ability to go after people on the balance of probabilities: not to have to hope that they have the evidence but to recognise the same test and threshold that we set in civil law with regard to our tax returns. For minor errors such as submitting a late return, there is usually a fixed penalty of a few hundred pounds, but if a tax return is intentionally wrong, or there has been a lack of reasonable care, HMRC levies penalties as a percentage of the tax due—up to 30% for carelessness and up to 70% for deliberate inaccuracy. The Government warn: “Penalties can apply if your client does not tell HMRC if an assessment is too low.”
“It is welcome that the Government have increased the penalties, but I still fear that we are talking about people for whom billions of pounds are the standard currency that they are dealing with. Amendment 31 refers to the market value of the properties at stake and the market value of the properties that are not registered. Subsequent amendments recognise the difference between carelessness and recklessness so that if somebody has accidently not registered a company, the penalty they might face would be lower than if they had deliberately not done it. All this only works if we also bring in the other part of civil law, which is the balance of probabilities, because, again, our constituents do not get the benefit of the doubt but right now, under the Bill, oligarchs would.”
“We should make sure that we show that we are not just focused on those excuses but that we care about those excuses. Since 2016, the Government have made it compulsory for anyone setting up a company to name the individual who actually controls it—the PSC, or person with significant control—but nobody checks the accuracy of the information. As we have said, we could pretty much register companies in everybody else’s names in the Chamber and nobody could claim that that was impossible to do. Someone might claim that it was a mistake, but if they are an oligarch, how do we make sure that that person does not do that? The amendments I have tabled also address the nature of the penalty. We have not really talked about that.”
“It does not recognise where somebody may have acted carelessly—although many of us might think that carelessness does not come into it when you are paying that amount of money to the enablers that we are talking about—and might be able to say it was a mistake that they had not declared who the person of significant control would be and who the beneficiaries are. It is clearly a breach of the rules when that happens, but as the Bill currently stands, many, when they are challenged, would no doubt say that it was just an unfortunate accident, what a pity it was and they would put it right. If our constituents cannot get away with that excuse with regard to their tax returns, then certainly an oligarch should not be able to get away with it.”
“However, I support the new clause tabled to remove those three words. The amendments recognise what all of us recognise in our day jobs: the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion; between people acting deliberately and people acting carelessly. Our constituents understand all too well—I am sure we see many cases of this in our casework—that if they have acted carelessly they still face penalties under the law just as if they have acted recklessly. But right now this Bill does not apply the same test to the oligarchs that we are trying to challenge.”
“I want to follow up on the conversation about “carelessly or recklessly” by talking about the amendments I have tabled that try to learn from tax legislation. I hope the Minister will take that spirit forward, as he has made the commitment that he is going to bring forward further amendments on this in the other place to look at what we can learn from tax legislation. The difficult truth for all of us, as all these speeches are highlighting, is that if these amendments do not go into the Bill, many of us feel that the legislation will be toothless, and that brings the shame that means that we cannot look President Zelensky in the eye. I particularly want to draw the Minister’s attention to amendments 29, 30, 34 and 31, which are about what we might do instead of having the omission of “carelessly or recklessly”.”