UK MPs call for transparency crack down at overseas territories summit

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Forty MPs have called on the foreign secretary to press for faster progress in tackling tax evasion in the British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies ahead of a ministerial summit this week.

The cross-party MPs, including former cabinet ministers Andrew Mitchell and Liam Byrne, have written to David Lammy demanding that he press for speedier establishment of public registers of beneficial ownership in the territories and dependencies.

Their call comes ahead of the annual Joint Ministerial Council on November 19 — the first such meeting since Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories such as the Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands missed a December 2023 target for implementation of the registers.

Disclosure of the data was mutually agreed following a 2018 UK parliament vote that called for the records to be made public.

The parliamentarians argued in their letter that publishing the registers, which record who ultimately owns or controls a company, would enable journalists and investigators to follow money held offshore to uncover economic crime, rather than relying on leaks such as the Panama Papers.

Lammy campaigned on the issue in opposition and work has progressed since Labour took office in July. Monserrat implemented a publicly accessible register last month and St Helena is due to follow suit next year.

Other Overseas Territories have agreed to implement legitimate access registers, which grants access to journalists and NGOs — a move the UK government regards as an interim step towards a fully public register.

A spokesperson for the Cayman Islands government said it was continuing to work towards an “enhanced beneficial ownership framework” by the end of 2024, with Deputy Premier André Ebanks adding that this was a clear step “towards greater [financial] transparency”.

Natalio D Wheatley, premier and minister of financial services of the British Virgin Islands, said it continued “to make preparations to introduce public access to beneficial ownership information where there is a legitimate interest”.

However, Mitchell, the former deputy foreign secretary, said the missed deadlines were “undermining UK ministers and parliament.”

“The British family of nations and territories who enjoy our laws, flag and monarch must also accept our values,” he added.

In a speech to the International Public Policy Institute in May, Lammy, then the shadow foreign secretary, called for “a clear time-bound action plan” to bring all UK Overseas Territories into “full compliance with all transparency requirements”.

The letter — which was co-ordinated by Joe Powell MP, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Anti-Corruption and Responsible Tax — asks that Lammy “raise the matter of registers directly with Ministers at the council”, following his commitment to make the “UK the world’s foremost anti-corruption champion”.

In 2018, Transparency International identified 237 cases of corruption, worth more than £250bn, which were enabled by companies based in the Overseas Territories.

TI has also linked £830 million worth of property in the UK’s offshore financial centres to individuals close to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Russians accused of corruption. 

Margot Mollat, senior policy Manager at TI, said corporate secrecy in the territories continued to play “a critical role in enabling corruption, money laundering and the evasion of tax and sanctions on a global scale”.

A spokesperson for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said the government had made tackling illicit finance “a priority since day one”, adding: “As the Foreign Secretary has said, he is taking up the issue of public registers of beneficial ownership with full vigour.”