Extract from report stage (Lords) of the Criminal Finances Bill
Lord Naseby (Con):...I have had the privilege of working overseas
in Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka, and I spent part of my national
service in Canada. Certainly when I was in commerce, with the
Reckitt & Colman Overseas group, one of the bugbears about
international trade—I am talking about several decades ago, but I
am afraid it has not changed—is that it is not a level playing
field. Here we are, approaching...Request free trial
Extract from report stage
(Lords) of the Criminal Finances Bill
(Con):...I have had
the privilege of working overseas in Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka,
and I spent part of my national service in Canada. Certainly when I was in commerce, with
the Reckitt & Colman Overseas group, one of the bugbears about
international trade—I am talking about several decades ago, but I
am afraid it has not changed—is that it is not a level playing
field. Here we are, approaching Brexit and hoping to trade
internationally, but the tragedy of the situation is that somehow
neither we in the United Kingdom nor other countries have ever
managed to persuade the United States, Hong Kong and Singapore to
have a central, non-public register. We have not even got that far.
Even on the basis of what we are doing now, we have rivals. Make no
mistake about it: most of our overseas territories are in the
Caribbean, their main competitor is the United States and they do
not even have a central beneficial ownership register. Not only
will they lose business if we go too far but if the other parties,
particularly the US, Singapore and Hong Kong, take business from
our overseas territories, the net result will be that where we are
getting information out of our overseas territories, if the
business goes elsewhere then the co-operation that the UK gets from
those territories—which is good and is going to be even better—will
be totally undermined. Frankly, we will not get any information
from the US, Hong Kong or Singapore...
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Extract from Lords debate
on the Steel Industry
(Lab):...That is
why our steel industry has declined to the point
where Canada, Poland and Belgium all produced more
than us last year. This is not a case of a productivity gap—British
steel workers are productive and flexible. It is very seldom that
they have gone on strike. It is a lack of long-termism, investment
and innovation which fetters them...
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