Stephen Kinnock
MP for Aberafan Maesteg · Labour · United Kingdom
“I thank the shadow Secretary of State for her kind words and look forward to our exchanges across the Dispatch Box. I am ready to engage with her on getting the maximum benefits for the people of Wales.”
“I thank the right hon. Lady and look forward to working with her. My understanding is that there were challenges around the helicopter capability. Decisions were taken by Natural Resources Wales some time ago to change the way that the tendering for helicopter capability works. We certainly need to look at that.”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. Like him, I pay tribute to all those involved in the collective and heroic response to the wildfires.”
“I thank the right hon. Lady for her question. Many of the ideas coming forward for devolving power right across our United Kingdom, beyond Cardiff Bay and Holyrood, are very exciting, and I look forward to exploring them with her.”
“Just to be clear, this is not about staying out of the issue; it is about respecting the devolution settlement, but being prepared to work constructively where we can in partnership with the Welsh Government. The hon.”
“I know about and welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s strong connections to Wales. I recognise the connectivity benefits that WSMR’s proposal could deliver, particularly for passengers in Wales and the west midlands.”
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“We have in the past seen this practice used by the lawyers of Russian oligarchs against investigative journalists seeking to uncover corruption, but we now know that these tactics have also been used by not one, but two Conservative party chairmen in recent years. In March 2019, I wrote to the right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) when he was chair of the Conservative party with my concerns regarding the origins of a £1.8 million donation from Ehud Sheleg, who was then the treasurer of the Conservative party, to the Conservative party. I was sent a reply by the right hon. Member threatening to sue me for libel.”
“Moving on to the many important amendments tabled by Front and Back Benchers on both sides of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill again raises the issue of strategic lawsuits against public participation—or, as they are commonly known, SLAPPs. This has, of course, been a deeply troubling issue for a very long time. SLAPPs are defined as “a recognisable and pernicious form of litigation which seeks to silence, intimidate, and harass opponents”, and they “are designed to silence criticism and investigation conducted in the public interest.” Those are not my words, but the Government’s own definition. Others refer to this practice as lawfare.”
“Councils want to play their part in cracking down on illicit wealth as it manifests itself in their areas. For instance, I have heard at first hand from Westminster City Council how it is battling a growing number of shop fronts—so-called American candy stores—on Oxford Street in particular, that are being used to channel illicit finance, but the process for taking meaningful action against these illegal practices is simply too slow, and as a result it is a gift to the criminals. Disappointingly, following opposition from Ministers to amendments we tabled in Committee that sought to expand powers for local authorities to enforce economic crime laws, there are still no specific provisions to enhance the ability of councils to act.”
“As a result, the Committee stage amounted to little more than a litany of missed opportunities, forcing us to return to these arguments once again in this debate, and no doubt we will have to do so during the Bill’s remaining stages. That point is illustrated by the first amendment on today’s selection list, Government new clause 14 on information-sharing powers. The new clause seeks to expand access to information relevant to economic crime enforcement efforts, but focuses only on the Law Society and “any other approved regulators specified by the Lord Chancellor”. Put simply, local authorities need these powers, too. Tackling economic crime is a huge challenge for councils due to the lack of licence they have to act on their own intelligence about crime in their local areas.”
“The Committee benefited greatly from their thoughtful and well-informed contributions, which I have no doubt will be shared more widely in this debate. It is therefore profoundly disappointing that, in Committee, there was little in the way of movement from the Government, even in areas where they struggled to find fault with our amendments and new clauses. While I welcome the constructive tone that both Ministers brought to our debates in Committee, the disappointing fact remains that every single effort by Opposition parties to strengthen the Bill met with resistance from Ministers, and every Opposition amendment pressed to a vote was defeated.”
“Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), who is alongside me on the Front Bench—and others have sought to work constructively with the Government to improve this legislation. Members of the Bill Committee considered the Government’s proposals in great detail during 19 sittings, covering hundreds of pages of legislation and amendments. Both the quality and the tone of the debates were of the highest standard, reflecting not just the widespread interest in these issues across the House, but the depth of knowledge and expertise in a wide range of areas. In that regard, I must pay tribute to my right hon. Friends the Members for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) and for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne).”
“I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. The new clause on golden visas that she mentioned is spot-on, and we are very happy to support it. I am afraid there are a number of examples of the role Russian money is playing in the Conservative party, including the one she mentioned. I do think that that has acted as a constraint on the kind of action the Government could and should have been taking for many years now, and I really hope Ministers will start to wake up to that reality. The public need to know that the Government and parliamentarians are taking this issue very seriously indeed, and I am proud of the way that Labour Front Benchers—including my hon.”
“Specifically, both new clauses fail to mention the enormous and central role that is played not just by the UK, but by individual Crown dependencies and overseas territories in enabling—and all too often actively facilitating—global flows of illicit finance, and the ill-gotten assets of kleptocrats and crooks.”
“Labour’s blueprint is there, and Labour Members would be delighted to see the Government adopt it when addressing this issue. Other new clauses tabled by Back-Bench Members address additional areas that the Government could and should address, but that unfortunately they have not addressed in the Bill. New clause 23, tabled by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) is one example. Its call for a review of the need for further regulations “to prevent the circulation in the UK economy of the proceeds of economic crime controlled by individuals or entities subject to sanctions” is welcome, as is new clause 25, tabled by the right hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland). If I were to raise any slight criticism, it would be that the new clauses fall a little short of what is needed, but Labour supports them nevertheless.”
“As far as the record of this Government goes, the evidence is hardly encouraging, with just 168 prosecutions and five convictions brought against companies by the Serious Fraud Office between 2016 and 2021, and increasing reliance on US-style deferred prosecution agreements that fall well short of providing full accountability for corporate criminal behaviour. I pay tribute to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), who has set out detailed plans to reverse the SFO’s loss of senior staff and expertise, transform the agency’s approach to prosecutions, and allow more of the proceeds of successful cases to be retained by the SFO, as part of a renewed crackdown on corporate malfeasance under the next Labour Government.”
“The hon. Gentleman speaks with great knowledge on this issue, and he is right that we need a streamlined, simple approach that clearly places responsibility and liability where they need to be. That is smart regulation. Over-complicating regulation is precisely where the lawyers, fixers and those who so often facilitate this illicit activity find their niche, and how they exploit it is their leverage. Let us make this a game-changing Bill, along the lines that he suggests, and let us hope that the Government’s scale of ambition matches his and that of other hon. Members across the Chamber.”
“We need Ministers to get a grip of this issue so that we can do justice and deliver for the people of Ukraine, which we must do with great urgency.”
“As always, I agree absolutely with my right hon. Friend’s views on the matter. That cannot be beyond the wit of this place or the Government. I know there are legal complications around property and international law, but those are not insuperable. We cannot allow them to be insuperable because, with every day that passes, the people of Ukraine are suffering, and the barbaric acts of Vladimir Putin and his regime are not being held to account in a way that would contribute to the massive reconstruction effort that will be required for Ukraine. It is absolutely right that the person guilty of the crime should pay for the crime and that has to be the fundamental basis of our approach. We need urgency on this in the G20, the G7, and the United Nations.”
“The Minister tempts me to write Labour’s manifesto right here at the Dispatch Box. It is an issue of principle: how will we ensure that victims of economic crime are compensated? Clearly, we cannot finalise in the Chamber today the quantum of that amount, but we did raise that in Committee and are open to discussing it with the Government. We hope that they will be open to having that discussion in the fullness of time.”
“No. This is based on a fund that is generated through fines and through accountability for those committing the crimes. It is along the lines of what I said about Ukraine: the people who commit the crime, rather than the victims, should be paying for the crime. How will we address that question now? If the Government think that the current system is absolutely fine and that there is justice and equity in the system, the Minister should come to the Dispatch Box and say that. However, if he thinks that there is a clear, principled and moral argument in favour of ensuring that the people who commit a crime should be made to pay for it, and that that should contribute to the compensation, we can have that conversation.”
“That is precisely the point. There is an opportunity to generate revenue that could be deployed to address the causes of the problem. It is a win-win. We have criminals. We need to crack down on those criminals. We need to ensure that the agencies are given the resources to do that. It is the criminals who should be paying for that process. That seems logical to me.”
“Again, my right hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. We need a war chest and that should be built up on the basis of moneys paid by criminals. That war chest should also be looked at and used, where possible, to support the compensation of innocent victims of economic crime. The new clause is a two-pronged attack on the issue. The opportunity is there because the better we get at going after these criminals, the more we will have coming into the war chest.”
“I hope that Conservative Members will support our amendments today, so that we can finally begin to clean up our country’s reputation as the go-to destination for dictators, oligarchs, kleptocrats and gangsters, and for their dirty money.”
“While Ministers stall on this issue, we are increasingly at risk of being left behind by our allies in the US, Canada and elsewhere, who are already taking the actions that we want to see in the UK. New clause 27 would therefore direct the Secretary of State to publish a strategy for using the proceeds of crime to compensate victims, and to do so within 90 days of the Bill receiving Royal Assent. We welcome the Bill, but it is a great shame that the Government are failing to take more substantive action in the crucial areas that I mentioned. The Bill is a step in the right direction, but, as it stands, it lacks ambition and is therefore a missed opportunity.”
“It is our hope—in government, it will be our intention—to work with our allies and partners internationally to provide robust mechanisms for the seizure of proceeds of corruption, kleptocracy and other crimes under international law, and to use such assets to provide funds for the reconstruction and other forms of financial redress to victims—in Ukraine, for instance—of the criminal acts of dictators such as Vladimir Putin. For months, we have had nothing but warm words from the Government on such proposals. We know that there have been international discussions, including with our G7 partners and our allies in Ukraine, but we need more than warm words and vague promises of jam tomorrow.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I mentioned earlier, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury has set out a clear and detailed blueprint for how we need to boost the institutional capacity, human resources capacity, financial capacity and firepower of the SFO. The blueprint is right there. I very much hope that the Government will look at it and perhaps even adopt it. Of course, if they do not, we will soon have a Labour Government who will. The Opposition’s new clauses on victims intend to go much further than victims of economic crime in the UK alone.”
“The right hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. I agree that the creation of the scheme was under the new Labour Administration, but the point I made in my speech was that a number of those golden visas were given after the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014. He is right that successive Governments are guilty of naivety and complacency, but there is a point in 2014 when we really needed a different approach.”
“It is worth just casting our minds back to October, when the Prime Minister stood on the steps of Downing Street and stated that he wanted a Government of “integrity, accountability and professionalism”. Well, we are almost 100 days into his tenure, so we are bound to take stock of how that is going, and I think it is fair to say that progress has been somewhat mixed. His Home Secretary has committed multiple breaches of the ministerial code, his chairman has just been exposed for tax avoidance on a massive scale and his claims—”
“Like the Minister, I am keen to thank colleagues who have done so much and made so many valued contributions both to this Bill throughout its progress and in the debate today. I would very much like to thank the Bill team for the excellent work they have done, as always supporting us through our work and on many occasions helping to shed light where there was more or less total confusion, so we really appreciate that. I also thank our own staff. My hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) and I are very fortunate to have wonderful teams supporting us—particularly colleagues such as Joe Bishop, Danny Hathaway and Joe Jervis—who have done so much in our teams to help us to get to this point.”
“That has not changed and it will not change. However, we have not so far seen from Ministers sufficient openness to input from Opposition Members, or even from many of their own Back Benchers, but we welcome the remarks that the Minister made in his winding-up speech. We look forward to the progress that we wish to see being made in the other place as rapidly as possible. It is not too late, there is still time, and I genuinely hope that the remaining stages of the Bill will see the gaps filled, the loopholes closed, and the opportunities seized.”
“So we need to ensure that the agencies and institutions that should be fighting the illicit finance we all want to combat are given the resources they need, and are given the political support and licence to operate they have to have if they are going to be able to deliver on what we want them to deliver. In conclusion, the fact is that we have left the back door open and allowed our country to become a kind of fixer for the world’s dictators, kleptocrats and gangsters. We cannot go around the world preaching about the rule of law and transparency until we get our own house in order. We should not have to wait for the next “Panama Papers” or the illegal invasion of another country to force us into taking action. I said at the outset of the debate that the Opposition have approached this Bill in a spirit of constructive engagement.”
“As we have said on many occasions, it is a step in the right direction and we are supporting it on Third Reading, but of course it still does not go far enough on SLAPPs, golden visas, information sharing, corporate transparency, corporate criminal liability, compensating victims or, indeed, structures for enforcement. That final point is critical. We can have all the laws we want, but if we do not enforce them—whether we are talking about economic crime or anything else—they are pointless. These were points that Bill Browder made forcefully during the evidence that he gave to our Committee and, on cryptocurrency, that the expert Aidan Larkin made in a recent meeting with me.”
“Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was just about to make the point that the Home Secretary has talked of learning the lessons from the golden visas issue, but she still has not published the full report. Of course, we have seen many oligarchs getting those visas since the invasion of Crimea, so I would contend that that is directly relevant to the debate we are having today. That is the key point. It is about striving for integrity, professionalism and accountability. Of course the Bill offers an outstanding opportunity to deliver the change we all want to see.”
“In the light of those findings, what steps have been taken to ensure that officers have access to all sources of information needed to monitor and track movements of individuals who might pose threats of criminal activity?”
“Further safeguarding training is in development for all frontline officers with delivery due to commence in 2022.” The Department added that plans were under way to introduce a new system for electronic recording and monitoring of all incidents where passengers were stopped in relation to safeguarding concerns, and that implementation would take place “over the course of 2022.” What progress has been made with those plans, and what assessment have the Minister and his colleagues made of their success? Further, on security issues, the ICIBI found: “The UK’s departure from the EU has created a potential new cohort of illegal workers who will continue to enjoy visa-free movement to the UK. The UK has also lost access to EU criminality data systems, creating a risk that high-harm individuals could enter the UK via the gates”.”
“However, the ICIBI found that, in practice, “this guidance is rarely adhered to”. Ports with more than five gates should also have a roving officer, an RO, deployed at the gates. Their primary role is “to prevent trafficking and provide safeguarding assurances by heightening security around the gates.” According to ICIBI inspectors, these officers “now have a broader border security role, leaving stakeholders to question whether they are sufficiently resourced to identify child safeguarding concerns and other vulnerable passengers.” Furthermore, inspectors found that Border Force “only records the identification of potential victims of modern slavery” and: “There is no centrally held record of the identification of other categories of vulnerability.” The Home Office’s response to the ICIBI said: “Border Force has a training plan in place, once Coronavirus restrictions impacting some face-to-face training are lifted, to provide further specialist training to both operational managers and our cohort of Safeguarding and Modern Slavery (SAMS) specialists during the remainder of FY 2021/22.”
“Following a review of the original trial, the Home Office found that identifying children “at risk of trafficking, modern slavery, female genital mutilation, forced marriage and domestic servitude” was a “challenging” issue for Border Force staff. The January 2022 ICIBI report stated: “Concerns have been raised by stakeholders about the Home Office’s ability to identify vulnerable passengers at the gates. Stakeholders told inspectors that the gates make it harder to identify vulnerable passengers.” The Home Office guidance states that e-gates “must not be opened or allowed to accept passengers” without the presence of a monitoring officer, or MO for short, and that the MO should not operate the gates “for more than 30 minutes of continuous, uninterrupted passenger processing”.”
“As of January 2023, the ICIBI’s list of live inspections includes “a re-inspection of ePassport gates”, but this inspection is currently marked as “paused”, for reasons that are unclear. Perhaps the Minister might want to explain why the reinspection has been paused and give us a sense of how long the pause may last for. One of the key areas highlighted in the previous ICIBI report was safeguarding. To give some background, in 2017 the Home Office extended the use of e-gates to all children from Britain, the European economic area and Switzerland aged between 12 and 17 if they are accompanied by an adult.”
“This also makes them attractive to airport operators since queueing times are shorter for arriving passengers.” The purpose of the order is to enable the Home Office to carry out a limited “proof of concept trial” on the potential reduction of the minimum age for using e-gates from 12 to 10, as the Minister has set out. The explanatory memorandum says that such a change would be “in keeping with the Government’s wider ambition of increasing the use of automation (that is, entry to the UK facilitated by technology without manual intervention by a Border Force officer).” The ICIBI carried out an inspection of the use of e-gates between June 2020 and January 2021. The report was sent to the Home Secretary in June 2021, but it was not published until January 2022.”
“It is a pleasure, Ms Elliott, to serve under your chairship. The Home Office has been using e-passport gates to process passengers at UK airports and juxtaposed controls in France and Belgium since 2008. There are 263 e-gates in use at airports in the UK and at juxtaposed controls, according to the explanatory memorandum published with this order. From 2019, the use of e-gates was extended to nationals of the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. As explained in a January 2022 report by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, e-gates “enable Border Force to process large volumes of ‘low risk’ passengers more quickly and with fewer staff than would be possible via manned immigration control desks.”
“Will he commit to working with independent, third-party inspectors such as the ICIBI and the new Anti-Slavery Commissioner—if the Government ever actually get round to appointing one—to ensure that the highest possible safeguarding standards are built into the systems for operating e-gates?”
“Sorry, Ms Elliott. I thought safeguarding issues were connected too, and I also take your point on modern slavery, potentially. I am sorry about that. According to the ICIBI at the time of its inspection, the roll-out of Border Crossing, the Department’s new system for providing the passenger watch list, was well behind the original timetable for roll-out. Will the Minister confirm whether the new system is fully up and running? As the purpose of the order is to enable the Home Office to carry out a trial of the potential extension of e-gates to 10 and 11-year-olds, does the Department plan to publish full details of that trial once it has reached its conclusion? Can the Minister provide any timescales for the trial and, if appropriate, for the roll-out of the extension once the results of the trial are known?”
“The Secretary of State is well known for his airbrushing skills, but he cannot airbrush the fact that, of the top 10 economies in the world, the UK is the only one with a declining steel industry. When is he going to sit down with Tata Steel and the other businesses to do a deal on green steel for the future of our workforce?”
“(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on the progress in implementing the recommendations of the Windrush lessons learned review.”
“Given that Wendy Williams says that only eight of her recommendations have been implemented, will the Minister tell me today how many of the Williams recommendations have been implemented and how many the Government are ditching, as is widely reported by the media? Why have thousands of the Windrush generation still not received any compensation at all? On the 75th anniversary of the Windrush landing, are the Windrush generation being betrayed by this Government once again?”
“In September 2021, the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), restated her aim to put right the wrongs of this sorry affair, yet today we find the Government are rowing back on some of their commitments, including by refusing to hand additional powers to the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration and by scrapping reconciliation and community events. Why are the Government so terrified of scrutiny? Their toxic combination of incompetence and indifference is failing the Windrush generation, just as it is failing the country as a whole.”
“The reality is that this Government’s treatment of the Windrush generation is surely one of the most shameful episodes in our post-war political history. The Windrush community played a pivotal role in rebuilding Britain. We all owe them a debt of honour and gratitude but, instead, consecutive Conservative Governments have treated them with utter contempt. First, they were victimised under the hostile environment policy, and then they were let down by a poorly administered compensation scheme, under which just 1,300 people have been awarded compensation when the Government originally estimated that 15,000 should be eligible. Now it is reported that the Government are set to betray the Windrush generation once again by U-turning on their commitment to implementing all 30 recommendations in Wendy Williams’s lessons learned report.”
“I am sure the Minister would agree that a key aim of the support scheme must be to ensure that our steel industry can compete internationally on a level playing field. The German Government have guaranteed their steel industry an electricity price of €130 per megawatt hour for 2023. In contrast, what the Minister has announced today only provides our steel industry with a discount on electricity prices above £185 per megawatt per hour. That leaves UK steel producers to pay an estimated 63% more than their German counterparts. Why are the Government once again letting down our steel industry and forcing our steelworkers to compete with one hand tied behind their back?”
“On partnership between the public and private sectors, the steel industry is a crucial aspect of that. Does the Minister agree that the Government should be looking to set indicative targets for the amount of domestically produced steel that we are putting into Government-funded projects? That would enable us as a country to make, buy and sell more in this country, which should surely be a strategic objective of the Bill.”
“My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Returning to the issue of the three fleet solid support vessels, the MOD contract was awarded to a Spanish-led consortium. That in itself was a deeply disappointing decision, but what is even worse is that the Government are not insisting on legally enforceable guarantees from Navantia, the Spanish company that leads the consortium, that the ships will be built with British steel. Does she agree that it is outrageous that we have three key vessels being built without British steel?”
“The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 is profoundly counterproductive legislation, as illustrated by the fact that, since it was passed, the number of dangerous crossings has reached a record high. The Act includes the so-called inadmissibility clause, but the fact that the Government have failed to negotiate a returns agreement with a single European country means that just 21 out of 18,000 inadmissible people have been returned. Sending 300 asylum seekers to Rwanda will not even touch the sides of that 18,000. Does the Minister recognise the inadequacy of the legislation? Will he explain why the Government’s utterly self-defeating approach has led directly to the British taxpayer footing an extra bill of £500 million?”
“My constituent David Farrugia is part of what is called the fatherless generation. The scandal and the length of time it has taken to address these issues have had a profound effect on his mental health, as I am sure the Minister can imagine. Does he agree there is a clear and compelling moral case for compensation for the children of victims, which they are not currently eligible for? If he agrees that there is a clear and compelling moral case, can he set out when the compensation will be forthcoming?”
“I thank the Minister for giving way; he is being very generous. My constituency office is being contacted by a great many people who have still not received their prepayment vouchers from the energy suppliers, but are receiving letters from the suppliers telling them that if they do not use the vouchers by January they will be cancelled, which would of course push those people further into debt. What are the Government doing to ensure that they receive the vouchers and do not lose the money to which they are entitled?”
“Fifthly, we would work internationally to address crises that lead people to flee their homes.”
“Recently, the Labour party has been pushing for that system to return in the context of the number of Albanian channel crossers rising to 12,000. The Government have announced their intentions, but the detail is still unclear. It feels like more rhetoric, but we hope we are proven wrong on that. Labour’s common-sense fast-track system, combined with the much-needed injection of energy and competence that we would bring to government, means that we would deal with the issue in our first 100 days. Thirdly, we would reform resettlement schemes better to target those most at risk of exploitation by trafficking and smuggler gangs, and liaise closely with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to get the Afghanistan scheme working properly. Fourthly, we would replace the Dublin agreement on returns.”