It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), whom I join in welcoming this long-delayed Bill. I think I have co-chaired the all-party parliamentary group on anti-corruption and responsible tax for nearly seven years; as she says, we were promised this measure six years ago. The irony is that at the time the Government were ahead of the curve, and probably ahead of the world, in coming up with such measures. If we had only had these rules in place and these disclosures available to us now, we could have moved so much faster in this crisis. I wholeheartedly welcome them today and support them all.
I just want to take a few moments to disagree slightly with some comments that have been made. The transparent register of overseas entities is not about economic warfare; it is a perfectly normal and necessary measure to ensure that we have a clean economy free of dirty, criminal and corrupt money. It should not be seen just as a measure for this crisis, but as a measure for life. It is needed for our economy, and it is not intended to be an attack on investors who are perfectly normal and acting properly. It will catch Americans, Australians, Canadians and Europeans; anyone who has property in this country owned by a company will be caught. They are still welcome to come here. We want them to come here, invest here and create jobs.
What we do not want is dirty, corrupt money. People involved in that can sling their hook—they can go. That is what these sanctions are aimed at correcting. People who are coming here to invest have nothing to fear if they are doing nothing illegal—that is what we want. Please, let us not pretend that this measure, which has been planned as an anti-corruption measure for all these years, is solely one for this crisis. I hope it helps in this crisis and that somehow we find some property owned by an oligarch or two that we would not otherwise have found, and we can freeze or sanction it. I suspect that this measure will not make much difference on that. If we do not know what assets they have got already, through our intelligence services, and we cannot get those sanctions and freezes in places quickly, I suspect that having a register in place in a few months’ time, which these people may or may not comply with, is not going to make a lot of difference.