My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell. I apologise to the noble Baroness for not hearing the totality of her speech.
I shall not repeat what the noble Lord has just said. He cited in particular Jersey. I declare an interest as vice-chairman of the All-Party Group for the Cayman Islands, and I necessarily had some discussions about this Bill. I also have a member of my family working in the Cayman Islands. As to verifying beneficial ownership, which is what we are primarily talking about here, the situation in the Cayman Islands is that it has been a legal requirement there for 10 years now, and the authorities do verify the accuracy of the information that is given, in contrast to what the noble Lord rightly says about the UK Companies House, which is basically a self-registration system. That is clearly nowhere near comparable to the norm in the best of the overseas territories.
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However, it goes further than that, certainly in the case of Cayman: that register is constantly updated, and therefore more accurate. That is much more useful to the law enforcement agencies and the regulatory authorities. It will be of interest to noble Lords that in June—only a couple of months away—there will be a new Cayman beneficial ownership platform which will give the UK authorities access to accurate, real-time
and verified beneficial ownership information within 24 hours, seven days a week. In dealing with the rogues in the world, time is often of the essence. For the interest of noble Lords, including my colleague who spoke earlier, I asked how often Her Majesty’s authorities had sought information. Over the past 13 years, UK law enforcement has made an average of only five requests a year. On the other side, beneficial ownership information for Cayman companies has been collected and verified, as I have said, for 15 years.
I do not need to say any more on that, but there are two other dimensions. As far as all the overseas territories are concerned, they should obviously be brought up to the best standard that is available among the overseas territories. But we have to realise that this is happening in the real world: there remain four states of the United States, the largest and richest economy in the world, which do not have any register of any sort and refuse to co-operate with the central government. So it would be lunacy, certainly for the West Indies overseas territories, to go out on a limb and lose all their business to Delaware, Utah, et cetera, with the resulting adverse effects on the UK, which would be quite significant. Of course, if there is a global agreement, that is a different kettle of fish, but it must be global and include the United States.
Finally, in 2009, at the meeting at Lancaster House, the Cayman Islands entered into a new constitution. That is not very long ago. That constitution contained measures on the rule of law and human rights that meet the most stringent international and European standards, including a bill of rights which includes a right to privacy and laws on data protection. That was entered into after much discussion and is working and successful. I submit to your Lordships that the amendments before us are certainly extremely premature in terms of the world situation, and not needed in relation to the Bill. This Bill is a good Bill and needs to be supported.