If someone walks around the most expensive neighbourhoods of London—Knightsbridge and South Kensington—they will see house after house dark every night. Some have no lights on because the owners are out, but many more have no lights on because they have been bought as an investment and lie empty most of the time. Some of the most expensive properties in the capital are unoccupied because they have been bought solely for the purpose of laundering dirty money.
In 2016, money laundering is not just happening in accountancy offices or the back rooms of banks. It is happening in plain sight of ordinary Londoners, because we see some of the most expensive domestic properties in the world change hands but remain mysteriously and persistently empty. We welcome the Bill, which has been introduced with the express purpose of providing new powers and safeguards to improve the Government’s capacity to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing and, above all, to recover the proceeds of crime. I want to make it clear that, in principle, the Opposition support the aims of the Bill.
We do so because it is vital to do as much as we can to bear down on illegal activity, including targeting the enablers of illegal activity: lawyers, accountants and estate agents. We support the Bill partly because public opinion, encouraged by the work of the Public Accounts Committee under distinguished past and present leadership, rightly demands that politicians do more to stop tax evasion. We also do so because some of the poorest countries in the world have had their Treasuries denuded by money laundering. If the UK, which is often described as one of the money-laundering centres of the world, could act effectively against money laundering, not just
our own tax authorities but the populations of countries in the global south, from which some of this money has been looted, would benefit.
We will wish, however, to ascertain that the provisions of the Bill will actually work and impact in reality on the harms that the Minister set out. We will weigh carefully the civil liberties implications of those provisions. Furthermore, we seek assurances that the Government agencies tasked with implementing the legislation will have all the resources and support that they need.