Clause 15 - Postponement
Proceeds of Crime Bill
3:00 pm
Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He has illustrated how useful it is for members of Committees such as this to have a variety of experience, regardless of the party that they might represent.
As my hon. Friend has explained, his opinions on the matter are informed by two aspects of his experience. He worked in a leading City solicitor's firm. Labour Members are often happy to criticise lawyers, but—as a lawyer who sits on the Government Benches but is not a member of the Committee recently said to me—they tend to forget the huge contribution made to the United Kingdom's invisible earnings by firms such as Freshfields, Slaughter and May, and Linklaters. The best commercial legal firms in the world are in the City of London, and they make a vast contribution to the nation's wealth. When people are considering where they want their commercial disputes to be settled, and on whom they wish to rely, if they are representing a company in South America trading with a country in Africa, or a company in the former Soviet Union or the former Warsaw pact countries trading with a company in Canada, they do not tend to choose their own legal systems. They tend to want everything to be decided by English law, and to be resolved by firms in the City of London. That is the commercial reality.