My Lords, I reiterate what the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, has said. I spent the best part of my very long legal career acting for small businesses and start-ups, and nobody could be more in favour of them from virtually every point of view. However, we absolutely cannot leave a gap through which coaches and horses will ride with impunity. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Flight, does not need reminding of the fact that shell companies are a vehicle of choice for huge fraud. It is reckoned now internationally that fraud amounts to £27 trillion to £35 trillion, while our own fraud figures are rising at a startling rate. The amount of tax evasion—I shall not use the word “avoidance”, because it is discredited—is staggering and rising exponentially. The principal vehicle by which fraud, evasion, irresponsibility and immorality are effected in our country is the shell company. I am sure that I do not need to tell your Lordships that Barclays, I think it was the year before last, paid some derisory proportion of tax on its profits by using over 100 shell companies, in a huge chain, switching through virtually every tax haven on the globe.
If there is one thing that we really must do, and which I believe everybody in this House is determined to try to do, it is to prevent the evasion of the intention of us as legislators over a whole raft of measures—particularly tax but not by any means confined to tax. At present, because of such companies largely using
the considerable wits of thousands of lawyers and accountants in the City, with the aid of the tax havens throughout the globe that sit with open mouths looking for funds to pass through them, we are in a parlous state. The highly beneficent intention of this legislation is to do something about that, and I hope that we will not be engaged in yet another legislative self-delusion, of which I have sat through so many. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Flight, does not misunderstand me—I totally go with his basic proposition—but we cannot leave this Bill in a state that facilitates the very thing that all of us are determined to try to deal with.
Even if we got the legislation right, for us to rely on the proper implementation of the law that leaves this place would be another self-delusion. Our implementation agencies are so terribly underresourced that it is not David and Goliath in this country—it is so often David without his sling and Goliath. To my mind that means that, when we are in doubt, we should screw the template tighter to the intention that we have for this legislation. I am afraid that that leads me to be unhappy with the amendment.