The hon. Gentleman makes a very interesting point. We need to clamp down on enablers of all kinds, and we need to get tougher in lots of ways to crack down on this in the way that we would all like to see. I know that provisions on whistleblowers will not be part of this Bill—although there may be amendments in Committee to that effect—but we want those brought forward as quickly as possible.
The failure to prevent is so important. It has to include the ability to hold an individual director to account, which would start to reduce the incidence of money laundering and the facilitation of all kinds of offences, including the huge profits made from drug dealing. An illustration of this is what happened with health and safety legislation back in 1974, when directors were made individually responsible and could go to jail if they did not prevent or seek to prevent serious injuries on their building sites. It became a health and safety offence that could be pinned on the individual. After that happened, deaths and serious injuries dropped by 90%. Of all the measures we have talked about today, this would have the biggest effect in terms of cutting down on economic crime, because lots of our financial organisations are complicit when it suits their interests to be so.
There are many other things we should do. We should extend what we did with unexplained wealth orders in terms of cost protection to other elements of the Proceeds
of Crime Act 2002 such as property freezing orders and recovery orders. Bill Browder, who is very outspoken in these cases, has come up with an interesting idea. If an individual is sanctioned, anyone who has dealt with that individual—whether it be an accountant, a solicitor or anyone else—should have to hand over their records in connection with that individual to the authorities, so that we can track down the money more effectively. I cannot see a good argument against that.
We have talked about freezing and seizing assets. That is difficult to do, because we have to prove that there was a crime, and we believe in property rights and the rule of law in the UK, so taking these assets off individual oligarchs is tough. One thing that seems like an open goal is the fact that we hold about £30 billion in Russian foreign currency reserves. It is clear that Russia is guilty of international crimes in its invasion of Ukraine. We could legislate to ensure that that money is not just frozen, as it is currently, but confiscated, seized and used to pay reparations to Ukraine.
There are many other things we could do, which I will talk about further during the later stages of the Bill. I may well table one or two amendments, which I know Ministers will continue to engage with and, I hope, will look kindly on, because all these measures will clamp down on economic crime, which is good for the UK and good for business. It is not bad for the economy—it is good for the economy—and it will drive out these heinous crimes all around the world, not just in the UK. We will then be able to point proudly at our record on tackling economic crime, and I hope the Minister will take credit for that as this legislation passes through the House.
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