Criminal Finances Bill — House of Commons, 2017-02-21
Topic: Civil Rights
Nick Herbert (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for clarifying what he said, but my point still stands, which is that we have taken action in the UK to require such publication. Why is it right in the UK but wrong in the overseas territories? That was the point I was seeking to make. Perhaps the Minister can explain Secondly, I understand that constitutional objections have been raised to the new clause. The argument is that it would be wrong to insist that the overseas territories take action. If so, why did we propose it in the first place? As a result, hon. Members like me now find themselves on the wrong side of the Government’s opinion, when we thought we were supporting a policy in our manifesto. If there is a constitutional objection, was it not surprising that the previous Prime Minister announced the policy of transparency for the overseas territories Is it even right that the British Government never impose policies on our overseas territories? In 2000, the Government, by Order in Council, decriminalised homosexuality in the overseas territories. I doubt that many Members would oppose that policy, although I suspect it was opposed in many of the overseas territories. Do hon. Members say that the British Government were wrong to do that? Murder might still be a capital offence in some of the overseas territories had the Government not insisted on the abolition of such capital crimes in 1991. The principle is established that the Government are constitutionally entitled and have in practice, where there is an overriding public policy justification, legislated in relation to the overseas territories The third argument advanced against this measure is that the overseas territories are doing it anyway. We are told that it is not necessary to back new clause 6 because the overseas territories are well on their way to doing the right thing, but that takes us back to the question of what it is that they are doing. If they are producing registers, that is welcome, but my question still stands: why did we think transparency was a good thing, but now no longer believe that it is a good thing? We have reset that bar. We are now saying that the overseas territories are on their way to doing the right thing, but the right thing is now defined merely as the register, and it is no longer transparency I think the reason this has happened has been revealed by some of my hon. Friends for entirely honourable reasons, and it is that some of these overseas territories and therefore some of my hon. Friends fear that there will be a competitive disadvantage for the overseas territories if they are required to produce a public register as the new clause suggests, in the way they will eventually be required to do, and as the Government suggested at one point that they should However, let me say simply that if we accept the argument that being at a competitive disadvantage is an obstacle to taking measures against tax evasion or corruption, this House would do very little on those issues. It can always be argued that we could be putting our own banking arrangements or those of other countries at risk by taking steps deemed to be in the public interest on the grounds that they could produce corruption. To turn that around, if we accept the argument on competitive disadvantage, there would be no reason why the House should not reverse all the measures taken on banking transparency and establish some sort of regime that used to pertain in countries like as Switzerland where there would be wholesale banking secrecy, because that would be good for business and it would place us at a competitive advantage by comparison with other countries. It could be argued that such a thing would be entirely acceptable Clearly, that would not be acceptable. We have taken the opposite view: there is a reason to demand transparency and that transparency is essential in order to tackle corruption. We are talking about measures that are necessary to protect not just the UK taxpayer but the poorest countries in the world, which are disadvantaged and penalised because people are able to siphon off funds unlawfully and immorally and shelter them in various regimes. We are apparently saying that we are willing to accept that, because if we take action against it, some other regime will perform that immoral task. That seems to me to be a wrong position for the House of Commons to take, and if it were accepted, we would not have a Bill such as this one or any transparency measures at all I therefore hope that the Government will reconsider their position. New clause 6 is entirely reasonable, providing a period of time for the overseas territories to comply with the transparency requirement. I, for one, will take a great deal of convincing that something that was held by the Government to be desirable and that we hold to be desirable and right in our own country is wrong for the overseas territories.