There are already arrangements for the sharing of information and data, but it is not enough. It is absurd. When I talk to the enforcement agencies and the anti-money laundering people working in the banks, they tell me that they cannot share information. If one bank has information that makes it suspicious about a particular client, it ought to be able to share it around the banking system so that they can all take action. There are pragmatic steps that we could take to share information and knowledge across jurisdictions, from America through to Europe to us, which would massively improve things and actually bring in money.
Let me take one example that came out of the FinCEN files. Standard Chartered Bank is a British bank. In 2019, it was fined by both America and ourselves for poor money laundering controls and other offences, including breaching sanctions in Iran. The British bank was fined £842 million in America, but only £102 million here by the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK. The Americans have got it right. There are lessons that we can learn from them. There are also ways in which we could properly resource all the enforcement agencies. We could perhaps reduce them as well—we do not need all these people. Every time I refer a matter, whether it is for a corrupt or an illegal activity, to one enforcement agency, I am either told that it is the responsibility of another agency or it goes into a big black hole and I never see anything arising out of it again. That situation is completely and totally unacceptable.