Sir Andrew Mitchell

As vice-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group, I want to express my appreciation to the chairman, the hon. Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell), for the brilliant way he has led the debate. He underlined that there must be an all-party approach, which he expressed with great eloquence and factual back-up. He made the point that we all have a constituency interest in this issue. We certainly recognise that in the royal town of Sutton Coldfield. I also thank his predecessor as chair, the hon. Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell), who I note the Government have now neutered by putting on the payroll. As a former Government Chief Whip, I know exactly how these things work, and it is a recognition of his great abilities that he has now been put on the non-ministerial payroll. I want to emphasise why this issue matters. We are talking about dirty money—money stolen from Africa and from Africans, money from the sex trade and money from the drug trade. Although Africa is my principal concern, because I believe that development is being held up by the enormous amount of money that is stolen from that continent, the hon. Member for Bolton West also made an extremely important point about tax. After all, in a few days’ time, the Chancellor will be looking for as much tax revenue as she can get. If she follows the hon. Gentleman’s advice, there is no doubt that billions would flow into the Exchequer, for the reasons that he set out. For many years, we believed that closed registers were doing what was required. Closed registers enabled law enforcement authorities to dip into the details and, in the case of terrorism, get a response within 24 hours, but the publication of the Paradise and Panama papers showed definitively why we must have open registers of beneficial ownership. Without open registers, we cannot join the dots of who is doing what to whom. That is a very important point. The scales fell from our eyes when the Paradise and Panama papers were published—all praise to the BBC and The Guardian for doing so—as they showed precisely why open registers are absolutely essential. That is at the heart of this debate. Let us be in no doubt, either, that we are talking about the Crown dependencies as well. They may come after the overseas territories in the Government’s enforcement action but, like the overseas territories, they are on the frontline of this issue. As the hon. Gentleman said, we are not talking about all the overseas territories. Many of them have implemented, or are implementing, registers in good faith; it is just a pity that some of them have not. It is also worth saying that the UK has big questions to answer. From what the National Crime Agency said some years ago, we know that up to 40% of money laundering goes through London, the overseas territories and the Crown dependencies. That is one of the reasons why David Cameron made tackling corruption an important aspect of the G8 in 2016. Britain can be proud of leading that attack on dirty money. We should remember not only Britain’s leadership, but the fact that we have a dog in this fight. I also want to emphasise how we got here. The hon. Member for Bolton West rightly said that the Government gave way because otherwise they would have been defeated—an embarrassing moment for me, as a former Government Chief Whip, to have led that rebellion with Baroness Hodge. With the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act we made it absolutely clear that, if the overseas territories did not accept the will of Parliament, it would be imposed through the ancient and arcane process of an Order in Council. Baroness Hodge and I took a legal opinion from some of the best lawyers in the country, including one of the most brilliant former Directors of Public Prosecutions, Lord Ken Macdonald. The opinion made it absolutely clear that the Westminster Parliament had the right, indeed the duty, to impose an Order in Council if the will of Parliament was not accepted in the overseas territories. It so happens that the Foreign Office, with the skill and dexterity for which it is famous, interpreted that measure as meaning not that an Order in Council would be imposed after a year, but that it would be drafted after a year for imposition after another year—thus giving the overseas territories an extra year. That was condemned in the House of Commons by two former International Development Secretaries—myself and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the right hon. Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn)—and by two distinguished former Chairmen of the Public Accounts Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) and Baroness Hodge. It has still not been done. That is where we are now. I echo the questions that the hon. Member for Bolton West asked the Minister. It is very important that we get a definitive approach from the Government to implementing that measure. The Minister is a good bloke. He and I have been discussing development matters for nearly 20 years, so I know exactly what his view is. I hope very much that he will stiffen up the relevant Foreign Office officials, who like to ensure good and harmonious relations, and who do not like a row. He must remind them that officials advise and Ministers decide. Ministers are the servants of Parliament, and Parliament decided as long as seven years ago why these matters must be brought to a head. I have recently seen senior representatives from Bermuda and the Cayman Islands who, in my judgment, were truculent and disrespectful of the will of the Westminster Parliament. As the hon. Member for Bolton West rightly said, the BVI is one of the key countries that needs to accept that, if these overseas territories and Crown dependencies want to use the British flag and to have our monarch and our laws, they must also accept our values. Although the hon. Member has admirably summed up the first of them, I will end my remarks by quoting three points in this excellent brief from the APPG, which I hope will be widely distributed. Backed by Transparency International, Tax Justice Network and others, the report deals with the impact of financial secrecy in the overseas territories on UK communities. The hon. Member spoke about Transparency International UK’s revelation that at least £5.9 billion-worth of suspicious funds have been used to purchase UK properties—an astonishing figure. Secondly, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation found that, since February 2022, over a quarter of all suspected sanctions breaches were made intermediary jurisdictions including the BVI and Guernsey. Finally, Transparency International UK’s research has linked to our overseas territories £250 billion-worth of funds diverted by rigged procurement, bribery and embezzlement in 79 countries, of which the British Virgin Islands accounted for 92%. What is more, Tax Justice Network’s report, “The State of Tax Justice 2024”, shows that countries are losing nearly £375 billion to multinational corporations and wealthy individuals using tax havens to underpay tax, with over £1 trillion in profits being shifted into tax havens. Those are significant figures; they show why Parliament was absolutely right to vote for and implement the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018. They show why today we need to hear the Minister say that his patience is running out, and that he will issue the Order in Council if the overseas territories do not accept the will of the British Parliament.