Answer from Hansard

The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)

I welcome the progress that many overseas territories have made on financial transparency. St Helena, Montserrat and Gibraltar now have fully public registers of beneficial ownership, while the Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands have implemented legitimate interest access registers. However, I have also been clear with those overseas territories where progress has not been quick or comprehensive enough, including the British Virgin Islands, and at the joint ministerial council in November, I pressed for further progress, and agreed to provide technical-level support for that work. We will reconvene later this month to assess the latest position, and we reserve the right to consider all options, if progress is not made. Of course, we prefer to work in constructive co-operation, recognising the wide range of constitutional arrangements, but there are crucial issues here for tackling illicit finance, and for our national security.