Sir Andrew Mitchell

Thank you very much, Sir Roger, for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell)—I agree with every word of his speech—and to congratulate the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone), who introduced this debate, on what he had to say. There is a feeling of all-party agreement on this issue, which is perhaps not surprising, because we will soon be celebrating the 10th anniversary of the decision made by Parliament that, unless open registers of beneficial ownership are accepted and implemented by the overseas territories, the British Government will enforce them, as is their right. It has taken nearly 10 years; I think that it was 2018 when I and others led a rebellion against our own Government to get this in, and the Government conceded. It was the right thing to do, and it is all taking far too long. The reason we have not made progress is partly a mixture of inertia, crowded agendas and vested interests, but the Government need to confront it at this summit with all possible vigour. The Minister was kind enough to call me to explain why the summit had been delayed. I completely accept his argument, but we must use the delay period to make sure that it is all the more effective. The hon. Member for Bolton West mentioned the figure of nearly £800 billion, which shows that in Britain, when it comes to dirty money, we have a real dog in the fight. Remember what this money is: money from cyber-crime, the drugs trade and the sex trade, and money stolen from Africa and Africans. We say to the overseas territories and Crown dependencies, which are in exactly the same boat, that if they want to have the British flag, our laws and our sovereign, they must also accept our values. The list of offenders so kindly produced by the all-party parliamentary group on anti-corruption and responsible tax’s beneficial ownership tracker is very clear: Montserrat, St Helena and in particular Gibraltar are to be congratulated on what they have done; the Cayman Islands have made some progress but are certainly not there yet; Bermuda, Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands are marked as “poor”; and there at the bottom—“critically poor”—is the chief, but not the only offender, the British Virgin Islands. These issues must be dealt with. On Guernsey and Jersey, and to a lesser extent on the Isle of Man, we need specific, time-bound commitments by the time of the British G20 summit so that we can hold our heads up. The scale of dirty money going through London, the overseas territories and the Crown dependencies is absolutely appalling, and we need to clean up our act. Finally, I endorse the asks from the APPG: the ending of anonymous ownership of UK property, which has already been raised and is extremely important; the recovery and return of stolen assets, particularly those from Africa, which I have mentioned to the House many times in the past; and the bearing down on professional enablers. We need to ensure that such bureaucratic change as we might then introduce does not harm honest practitioners. There is work to be done on that, but in principle we should do everything we can to stop professional enablers from behaving badly in this area.