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Summit on Illicit Finance

A quick recap: a gentle jibe at the Minister, a sharp poke at Reform and a commitment to doing my bit in helping the Government with a few ideas that might constitute a successful summit.

First, when many think of property in this country, they might think of the words of my predecessor as a Norfolk MP, Sir Edward Coke, about how an Englishman’s home is his castle. I am not sure whether Sir Edward foresaw so many being owned by a complex and secretive array of companies and trusts, lacking clarity about their ultimate beneficial owners.

Properties under secretive ownership are not only multimillion-pound mansions in Kensington; in fact, if many of us looked closer to home, we would be shocked by what we found. The Tax Policy Associates’ “Who secretly owns Britain?” map says that an unassuming cottage near the centre of the village of Cley next the Sea in my constituency is ultimately owned by a faceless company called Claystone Investments Ltd, registered in Switzerland. A Companies House search finds a similarly named company registered in the British Virgin Islands, which in turn gives its beneficial owner as a company registered in Panama. A search of the Panamanian company register gives no indication of who actually owns that cottage. That level of complexity and layers of ownership for a cottage in a quiet Norfolk village simply cannot be right.

This summit is a chance to call this out for being as ridiculous as it seems. The Government need to work with international partners to bring an end to anonymous property ownership. If an Englishman’s home truly is his castle, it cannot be a castle registered through multiple trusts, bouncing the legal rights halfway around the world and back again. If someone owns a property, they need to declare who they are and face the music, not hide behind shell companies and legalese.

It is also important that we get our own house in order on this. We have laws around beneficial ownership and property transparency, brought in under the last Government, with the help and hard work of my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) and others. However, “Who secretly owns Britain?” indicates that rule-breaking is rife, and little seems to be being done to crack down on those flouting their obligations. I hope the Minister can assure us today that he is looking into the wealth of publicly available evidence of companies not doing what they are required to do, and will take action.