Counter-Terrorism Bill

My Lords, we on these Benches support the broad thrust of these amendments, which introduce important powers to help combat money laundering and terrorist financing and proliferation by restricting financial interactions with the designated groups or individuals that the Minister talked about. We understand that this is a very important step which is in line with the recommendations of the FATF. Therefore, we are sympathetic to the introduction of the powers. However, we believe that it is necessary to introduce an amendment at least to seek some assurances from the Minister. These are very potent regulations with the ability to require, at the say-so of the Treasury, a business to completely cease trading with another business or with the whole of a Government. In fact, they constitute some of the widest powers on finance matters that I can remember coming through this House. As the Minister said, only any one of three conditions needs to be complied with. After the recent example, which the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, mentioned, of the Landsbanki Freezing Order, we really have to be very careful about hasty decision-making which can lead to problems later on. Although I have heard the Minister’s explanation, I am surprised that the Government have introduced the amendments so late in the day. I emphasise that, and I would be grateful for the Minister’s comment on that. The FATF conducted its third mutual evaluation report of UK compliance and made its recommendations over a year ago, in June 2007, as I understand it. Why has the Treasury left it until now to introduce the amendments? Unless I have that date wrong, it has had more than a year to think about it. I would be grateful to understand why it has taken that length of time. The difficulty created for Parliament by that lateness has been compounded by the fact that the Government have presented Members of this House with a moving target. I am very grateful to the Minister for giving us sight of the amendments in advance, and to members of his team, who went into considerable detail on questions that my researchers raised. However, the Government have changed the amendments over the past few days, so that it almost seems as if the Treasury is conducting an ad hoc consultation right up to the wire. Its willingness to discuss the amendments in depth with us has helped that, but it is certainly a very difficult situation to deal with. My second point relates to the mutual evaluation report published by the FATF last year. Why has the Minister chosen to react to only a small selection of the FATF recommendations in bringing forward these recommendations? The UK has a comparatively good record on powers to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, and some of the suggestions made by the FATF have since been met in the third EU money laundering directive, but other FATF concerns still seem to be outstanding. For example, in 2007, its analysis of preventive measures in this country found the UK to be non-compliant on obligations for politically exposed persons and correspondent banking, and it had concerns about record keeping in shell banks. Will the Minister give the House an assurance on all the other recommendations made by the FATF in June 2007, including institutional concerns, for example, as to why the UK does not maintain comprehensive statistics on cross-border disclosures or the breakdown of offences and the number of requests granted for mutual legal aid assistance? I tabled Amendment No. 61B to compensate for the scrutiny gap that comes with the speed with which these powers are being introduced. We are grateful that the Minister has decided to include the annual report to Parliament, which we considered to be the biggest gap in the amendments that were initially brought forward. My amendment is intended to probe what would be in that report. I would not want to see the amendment added to the Bill, because by specifying exactly what should be in the report, one is bound to overlook something. It would then be said, ““That is not in the report because it was not specified””. I would very much like the Minister to comment on the specific issues raised by my amendment. Of particular concern is the fact that under proposed new paragraph 3(1)(a), the Treasury can issue a direction to a particular person, which could be a financial institution, without any sort of parliamentary oversight. For directions that apply to a sector, on the other hand, an order would have to be laid before Parliament. The Minister’s team tells me that the reason why individual firms could not enjoy the same parliamentary protection is that it would be resource-intensive and would waste time. However, they also told me that they do not imagine that the power would be used very often; but those arguments seem somewhat contradictory. How often do the Government anticipate using these powers to issue directions to sectors and particular persons? I recognise that that might be a difficult question to answer, but there must be a little bit of history to rely on. The government briefing suggests that they are ready to use these powers in relation to Iran. Perhaps that provides some indication of the number of occasions on which they intend to use them, if they have carefully looked into this matter. Because of these concerns, my amendment requires the justification of the use of a direction against a person, rather than a sector. My amendment then requires the Government to provide a breakdown of each of their three new powers and the countries to which they will apply. In addition, I specify that the Government should disclose the names of businesses affected and a summary of the intelligence that backs up the decisions, with a safeguard specified at the end of my amendment that national and commercial interests should be protected. That detail may be so redacted as to be somewhat worthless, but I have included it as a discussion point for the Minister. In a major piece of new legislation we need as much detail as possible on what will be in the report. I would be grateful for replies on those issues.