The Small Business, Enterprise & Employment Bill – which contains a wide range of different measures – received its Second Reading in the Commons this afternoon (16th July). Catherine spoke in the debate, with a copy of her speech – covering beneficial ownership, whistleblowers and community pubs/PubCos -below:

Catherine McKinnell MP: Speaking in my capacity as co-founder and co-chair of the all-party group on anti-corruption, I welcome the proposals in the Bill to create a public register of beneficial owners known as the register of people with significant control. That move will mean that the UK is the first major economy to have a public register providing details of who really owns and controls what are currently anonymous shell companies. That is important because, although businesses play an important role in developing thriving societies around the world, some companies abuse global corporate structures. Secret ownership structures allow wealth to be hidden away. Many companies and individuals avoid or evade tax by keeping their money in a complex network of trusts and shell firms, which are often based in secretive tax havens. That deprives developing countries of much needed tax revenue that could be invested in public services and infrastructure.

It is secret company ownership that makes most cases of large-scale corruption, criminal money laundering and terrorist financing possible. A World Bank review of 213 big corruption cases between 1980 and 2010 found that more than 70% of them relied on anonymous shell entities. Many of the company service providers were registered in the UK or in our Crown dependencies and overseas territories.

The cost of this activity to developing countries is vast. The best recent estimates suggest that between $21 trillion and $31 trillion in private financial assets is held in tax havens, which is greater than the entire global aid budget.

That is why the all-party parliamentary group has been lobbying hard and speaking to Ministers about how we can ensure that the public register does the job that it sets out to do. We want to ensure that a number of issues are taken into consideration. We want to ensure that the information on beneficial ownership is available to the public as open data, that it is machine-readable and that it conforms to the Open Knowledge definition. We want to ensure that the information can be verified and that there is sufficient information to distinguish one individual from another. For example, a date of birth might be necessary. We want to ensure that there is a legal responsibility for companies to acquire and declare information on the identities of beneficial owners, as well as a legal requirement on beneficial owners to declare to companies that they are the ultimate owner. As I said to the Secretary of State, we want to ensure that there are significant penalties for failure to comply to ensure that everybody complies with the requirements. People must not think that it is worth while ignoring the requirements and they must not get away with doing so.

I want briefly to raise the concerns of Public Concern at Work about whistleblowing. The proposals go some way towards addressing those concerns, but do not go far enough. There are still concerns about gagging clauses. Many people who receive severance payments believe that they are gagged, but in law they are not. There are concerns about blacklisting and job applications. There is no cause of action in law if somebody who has blown the whistle and has been put on a blacklist is not recruited on that basis. There is currently no protection for armed forces and national security whistleblowers who raise concerns about wrongdoing or malpractice. We need greater protection for individuals who seek advice from trade unions. For example, people who raise concerns but do not take the matter forward still need protection under the law. We all welcome greater support for whistleblowers, so I would be interested to hear the Minister’s views on the concerns that have been raised.

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to touch on the proposals in the Bill on pub company regulation, particularly as I am due to meet members of the Tyneside branch of CAMRA at the Millstone pub in South Gosforth on Friday. Many of the issues have been discussed by hon. Members, but Tyneside CAMRA believes that the Government need to go further in protecting community pubs. Its members are particularly disappointed that the Bill does not include market rent only and guest beer options, because it believes that requiring the big pubcos to provide tied licensees with those options would be the simplest means of ensuring fair play. Those options would support not only community pubs, but microbreweries across the country, such as the excellent Big Lamp brewery in Newburn in my constituency.