Extract from Commons
statement on Corporate Transparency and Economic Crime
(Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
(Lab): This is at best a half measure. Companies House has
11,000 shell companies where there is no person of significant
control registered, yet there have been only 112 prosecutions,
which is just 1%. We have 12 different agencies in charge of
economic crime, there is no Minister with clear responsibility,
and the National Crime
Agency says that its budget needs to be doubled.
Irony of ironies, journalist Tom Burgis is being taken to court
this Wednesday for daring to reveal the truth about the corrupt
company ENRC; our courts are being used as arenas to shut down
journalists. We need a far bigger, bolder plan from the
Minister.
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial
Strategy (): What the right hon.
Member says about Companies House reform is not accurate at all.
This set of measures will be the biggest reform to Companies
House in 200 years. It is something significant. It has not been
done in 200 years and it is something which we are very proud to
have expedited—[Laughter.] I would have thought there would be a
bit more recognition of the fact that this is vitally important
legislation that is going to be brought in in a timely way.
For context, CLICK HERE
Extract from report
stage (Lords) of the Nationality and Borders Bill
(CB):...Let me
illustrate my understanding of how those exceptional grounds
could arise in practice. A terrorist may be living in a safe
house here, or more likely abroad, without realising that his
whereabouts are known to the authorities. To require a notice of
citizenship deprivation to be served on him at that address would
reveal to him that he is the object of covert surveillance,
contrary to the interests of national security: proposed new
sub-paragraph (i). The same may be true of a participant in
“organised or serious crime”—the phrase being taken from Section
1 of the Serious Crime Act 2015, which defines the remit of
the National Crime
Agency proposed new sub-paragraph (ii). If
intelligence as to location was supplied by a foreign liaison
partner which does not wish its cover to be blown, notification
at that address could jeopardise our intelligence relationship
with that country: proposed new sub-paragraph (iv). The person in
question might be, for example, with a dangerous armed group in a
failed state. To require a courier to travel to such places to
serve notice, at great personal risk, would be wrong: hence
proposed new sub-paragraph (iii)...
For context, CLICK HERE
