Lord Jones (Lab)

My Lords, I rise on the principle that the Executive should be accountable. I shall be brief. I thank the Minister for shedding some light on these dense and complicated regulations. They are obviously of help to the department, to Ministers and to business, but I dare say the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not reading them on her recent outward journey to the People’s Republic of China. I found the factsheet helpful, and I acknowledge the strong statements therein. It states that the requirements will “make it challenging for individuals to create a fictitious identity, or fraudulently use another person’s identity, to set up or run a company”, and talks about being “registered with a UK supervisory body for anti-money-laundering purposes”. As the Minister implied, economic crime is debilitating to the nation and, without a doubt, we have problems with it in Britain. Who is the registrar and when was she or he appointed, for what term and at what salary? Is Companies House running smoothly, so as to cope with requests and approaches from directors and people with significant control? Are there bottlenecks or significant hold-ups, perhaps even labour disputes? Are there impediments to those who file? How many money laundering cases did the registrar take to court in 2023 and 2024? These questions are designed to be helpful. If they are not answered immediately, perhaps there might be a letter.