My hon. Friend's reputation would stand even the involuntary slur of being associated in that way. Everyone knows that he has done a tremendous public service in exposing this show.

The article continued: His son denied it.'I understand that an Irish firm of accountants provided someone who would come over and give his name for our activities in this country and that the agent's name was Brady '. We are all familiar with the shop which sells limited companies to land-lords who can use them for their purposes of transferring property to avoid prosecution, but I did not know before that there was a personnel management which could give names of men of straw who could be used for similar purposes. This points to another glaring weakness in the Amendment and the failure to be able to make this part of the Bill bite.

My final quotation from the article illustrates the problem of chasing from one company to another: The most recent registered office of a number of companies is 3 and 4 Preston Street, Brighton. On the door of the two-room office in the London and Manchester Assurance Co. building is the name of J. Edwards and a list of six companies: Providers of Homes, Metropolitan and Surburban Estates, Various Tenancies, Various Tenancies (South London), Various Tenancies (Pollock and Deacon) and Various Tenancies (Four). Staff in the assurance company offices knew little of their new neighbours. Mr. Edwards hardly ever comes here…two elderly ladies used to call in every afternoon…the mail is collected occasionally…we get people in here who have travelled all the way from London and are worried about evictions and that sort of thing,' your Correspondent was told. 3.45 p.m.

This article appeared in The Times three months ago and confirmed what my hon. Friends and I have been saying and what has been known to anyone who has made any attempt to enforce the 1961 Act. This will be an inherent weakness in the Bill. The kind of man who goes in for this kind of racket in a big way will be able to shift his name, shift his address and have bogus addresses, so the two elderly property and trying to collect the money ladies can collect the mail and the man responsible will never be served with a notice because one will never be sure where he is. There will be the difficulties of the Irish firm supplying names of men of straw to appear as secretaries and typists, and so on.

It is urgent that the Government should try to tackle this problem of pinning down the beneficial owner of a company so that this facade of trickery and fraud can be brushed aside and so that this penal Clause will bite on the man who gets the profits. I cannot believe that it is too difficult to do that, and I very much hope that it will be done in a later Amendment.