I support Amendment 167, so ably moved by my noble friend Lady Stern. I apologise to the House that I was not able to be present at Second Reading. I applaud the Government for bringing forward this important Bill, which will do much to improve our capability to recover the proceeds of crime and to tackle money laundering and corruption.
My particular interest in the amendment comes from my awareness, over the past decade in particular, of the devastation to many countries—particularly Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala and many others in central America and, increasingly, west African states—
caused by the production of, and international trade in, narcotics. The Governments of the drug-producing countries have to spend billions of dollars dealing with the drug barons. These are scarce resources which need to be devoted to the development of their infrastructure and to social support for their people, who are, frankly, pretty poor. The secrecy surrounding bank accounts in our overseas territories enables huge wealth to accumulate untaxed, and to be used to control substantial tracts of these countries. For example, I understand that one-third of Guatemala is completely under the control of drug barons, not its Government. Perhaps the single most effective criminal justice response to the situation is through access to their bank accounts in tax havens.
The prevention of corruption and money laundering is therefore of the utmost importance to those countries and Britain, along with our European neighbours, is of course a major contributor to these problems. Britain is a substantial consumer of narcotic drugs: without the demand for these there would be no production or trade. We therefore have a particular responsibility to deal with corruption and money laundering by those involved in the drugs trade. The Minister did assure me that our overseas territories are making good progress towards producing registers of beneficial ownership of companies registered in their territories, albeit not public ones. Like my noble friend Lady Stern, I hope that the Minister will say more in her response about the progress made so far. For example, how many of the territories will actually have registers accessible to police services in place by the end of this year? When do the Government anticipate that all our overseas territories will have such registers in place?
The key element of Amendment 167 is that the registers must be publicly available. The potential for kidnap of innocent very rich people with large balances held in our overseas territories needs consideration. Clearly, none of us would want to create a system which would increase the risk of kidnap. However, rich people are very inclined to be easily recognised by their lifestyle—the size of their yacht or their private plane, for example. People who amass great riches generally do not want to hide them. They really do want the world to know what they have achieved. It is their own actions which appear to me to cause risk of kidnap. I therefore do not believe that we should reject the proposal in Amendment 167.
The important underlying point is that the UK, together with our tax havens, is still the biggest financial secrecy jurisdiction in the world. I have no doubt that much of the black money from the drugs trade in Central America and west Africa is lodged within the wider UK jurisdiction. Having led the world in legislating for a public register of beneficial ownership in 2015 for the UK, money will surely have been moved to our overseas territories. Is the Minister able to give the House any information about the transfer of funds to our overseas territories following the 2015 Act? Presumably, for the very reasons why we need Amendment 167, the Government may not be in a position to give us that information, which would be very helpful to know.
According to Christian Aid, Save the Children and other leading charities, Ministers have for more than three years made it clear that they want public registers of beneficial ownership in the overseas territories, and that they are working to get them. Despite the Minister’s comments to my noble friend Lady Stern a little earlier, I hope that she will therefore agree that the case remains as strong as ever to extend transparency to those territories and to bring them into line with the UK itself.