(Barking) (Lab):...The UK’s
record is abysmal. I am going to put this on the record. The
NCA has had five prosecutions each year for the
last five years. That is hopeless. Money laundering prosecutions
are down 35% over the last five years, at a time of exponential
growth in money laundering. Less than 1% of the billions of
pounds laundered annually is ever restored to us. And the number
of criminal fraud cases by the SFO has halved in the last three
years, although again I welcome the Glencore case, and I agree
with the Minister that it shows the importance of introducing the
offence of failure to prevent economic crime.
This is not a criticism of the agencies; it is a criticism of us
and our failure to fund this work properly, which is what we are
trying to do here. If we look at the totality of the UK’s
expenditure on enforcement, we see that it is pathetic. It is
0.042% of GDP, whereas we know that the cost to the UK economy of
economic crime is 14.5%, so there is an absurd relationship
between our need to detect and prevent crime and our capability
to do so. The FBI is 15 times larger than the
NCA. We have already said that the police spend
less than 1% on fraud, even though it represents 40% of crime—and
that is just reported crime. And we have already said that the
Americans have increased their budget, because they see this as a
security threat, whereas we have reduced one.
I would welcome a comment from the Minister on this matter. My
understanding is that the Government contribution to the fight
against economic crime is £100 million. Out of the totality of
£400 million in the budget, £300 million comes from the economic
crime levy and only £100 million, over the comprehensive spending
review period, comes from the taxpayer, so that is a mere £32
million or £33 million a year.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy
and Industrial Strategy (): If the right hon.
Lady includes what we resource—the SFO, NCA and
other enforcement agencies—it is not entirely clear, but we give
about £825 million a year to our enforcement agencies.
: The Minister knows
that that is not necessarily to fight economic crime, but to
fight other crimes. I was talking about the economic crime levy
and those are the figures that I have...
(Feltham and Heston)
(Lab/Co-op):...Limited partnerships are a specific type of
business structure in UK law that confer limited liability on
some partners and therefore have to be registered with Companies
House in line with the Limited Partnerships Act 1907 and the
Partnership Act 1890, but numerous reports and consultations by
the Government have identified the risk of economic crime through
limited partnerships and Scottish limited partnerships. As I know
the Minister will be well aware, the consultation in 2018 also
emphasised the apparent attractiveness of such partnerships as
vehicles for organised crime, and I am sure we will come back to
that when we consider amendments to this part of the Bill. The
consultation noted specifically that the National Crime
Agency reported a high volume of suspected criminal
activity involving Scottish limited partnerships. It also
referred to claims made in an investigation that 113 SLPs were
involved in a much larger money laundering scheme that
transferred more than $20 billion out of Russia between 2010 and
2014...
