I rise to speak to the Liberal Democrat new clauses tabled in my name, with a particular focus on new clauses 3, 30, 31 and 39. Before I come to those new clauses, I put on the record my support and thanks for the many varied new clauses that we have been discussing, including those tabled by the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson), the right hon. Members for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) and for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) and many others.
In their breadth and depth, those new clauses reflect my own somewhat conflicted feelings about where we are with the Bill. On the one hand, it is very clear that we are much further on than a year ago, which is surely a good thing. That has come off the back of strong cross-party working, and I echo what the right hon. Member for Barking said earlier about that restoring faith in the democratic process. If only our constituents could see that we do work together and that it results in positive things.
However, it is also fair to say that we still have much to do. I know that those are not just my thoughts, because they have also been expressed by the former Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), who is now the Minister for Security. Indeed, in a sense, he and others are the great hope—the men on the inside who we hope are going to push much of what we want to see. I hope that they are hearing yet again in this debate, and in the hopefully very brief Third Reading debate later, just how much further we want to go. Notwithstanding that positive movement in the right direction, I am worried that we have started to back-pedal in some areas.
One of those areas is golden visas, which new clause 3 would address. Let us look at them in some detail. Tier 1 investor visas were the “blind eye turned” route straight into the UK that was used and abused by so many of Putin’s cronies, not to mention kleptocrats from other regimes. They were a golden ticket—quite literally—to come to the UK and launder money with barely any scrutiny or transparency. Recognising that, the then Conservative Home Secretary instituted and launched a review, and the promise was that the findings would be published. For a long time, I—and others, I am sure—had been tabling and asking questions of the Home Office to show that we had not forgotten and that the delay was inexcusable.
So imagine my delight when, the week before last, Members saw a written ministerial statement in the name of the Home Secretary entitled “The Tier 1 (Investor) route: Review of operation between 30 June 2008 and 6 April 2015”. My heart leapt for joy. Finally, five years on, were we going to get the answers that we sought to questions such as: to what extent had Putin’s cronies managed to embed themselves into the UK economy or even into the upper echelons of British society, and I include in that politics? How many of the golden visas issued went to Putin’s cronies or their family members? What other countries were these visa holders from? Crucially, where are these people now?
How many of them are still in the UK? How many of them have acquired citizenship, and what have the Government done about that?
Given that we waited five years, and given that the Government and successive Ministers had promised from the Dispatch Box that we would get some or all of those answers, we were entitled to a substantive response. When the review was published, my heart sank, because instead of what they had promised, the Government published what they termed a “summary” of the recommendations—not even the actual recommendations themselves, but a summary. Furthermore, the summary frankly told us nothing that we did not already know. It is galling that we still do not know how many people have exploited this system. The statement did not even give us a number or a rough ballpark figure for golden visa holders who had been identified as a risk. The Government admitted that they had identified a “small minority”, but given that 6,000 visa holders were being reviewed—a figure that, by the way, we already knew before the publication of the statement—what is the figure for that small minority? Is it in the tens, hundreds or thousands? I think that anything under 3,000 would still qualify, so what is it?
We know that 10 oligarchs who were sanctioned held golden visas. In March, Liberal Democrat colleagues in the other place found out it was eight—presumably the difference is that we have sanctioned more people since then, so the number of people on the list who are sanctioned increases, and I can understand that, although confirmation would be helpful. That shows the Government can be specific when they want to be, so why can they not be specific on this? The statement does not say very much about how many acquired British citizenship, what nationality they were or what will happen to them now, beyond very broad generalities.
Furthermore, the bit that worries me most is that in the words of the Home Office, this written statement was its “final response”. Following my point of order that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, graciously answered in the House on the day of the statement’s publication, I wrote again to the Home Office to ask, “When are you going to do this? Why have you done this?” It said that was its substantive response, and
“we will not be commenting further”.
I sincerely hope, especially given the comments that the Minister has made in the past, that he will do the House the courtesy of giving us an answer or explanation for what on earth happened here. I seem to remember—it might even have been in the first week after his being appointed, and we were all very excited about that—that he confirmed from the Dispatch Box that the information would be released, and then it was in written statements later that the tone and the words changed. What happened? We deserve to know the answers.
I am afraid to say that from where I sit, the whole thing stinks. It undermines much of the good work we are doing here to try to get transparency. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. After years of the Government saying that they would do this, for them to back-pedal stinks of a cover-up. I am not accusing the Minister of doing that, but I think we can legitimately suggest that it could be perceived that way, and that undermines everything else we are doing. I sincerely hope, should we be allowed to divide on the new clause, that Members will come with us through the Lobby and do what the Government said they would do in the first place.