Kevin Hollinrake: I welcome the measures that my right hon. Friend is introducing, but many Members fear that people who have already bought their properties through a discreet structure will sell them before the measures take effect. Will she look carefully at amendment 64, which Mr Speaker has graciously accepted—a manuscript amendment—and which would effectively prevent people from doing that by means...
Kevin Hollinrake: What steps she is taking to support farmers and food producers through trade deals.
Kevin Hollinrake: Environmental regulations and restrictions, on pesticides for example, are there for good reason, but they cost our farmers money either in sourcing alternatives or in lower yields. The farmers I speak to are very concerned about the use of chemicals, such as Paraquat in Australia and neonicotinoids in large parts of the European Union, that they are not allowed to use here. Their costs are...
Kevin Hollinrake: Some pork producers, including Cranswick, which has premises in Thirsk and Malton, did the right thing and self-suspended export licences to China due to a covid outbreak. Seventeen months later, those licences have not been reinstated. Can we do whatever we can to get these licences back in place? It would help Cranswick, those other producers and the pig industry generally, which is...
Kevin Hollinrake: I very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, particularly the bit about overseas entities. There are a couple of things that he might consider for his White Paper. Some 43% of all financial crime is identified by whistleblowers, so proper whistleblowing protection is absolutely critical to identifying this stuff. The other thing is failure to prevent economic crime. If we want our...
Kevin Hollinrake: I thank Members on both sides of the House, and indeed the Minister, for their efforts. As for the 555, lives have been ruined. Now lives have been lost; people die. The compensation must be delivered quickly. Why can people not have access to interim payments? That is the least we could provide. I accept that there are the legal challenges that the Minister mentioned, but this is something...
Kevin Hollinrake: What progress his Department is making on moving civil service jobs outside of London.
Kevin Hollinrake: May I associate myself with my right hon. Friend’s words? In this Parliament, we will stand in solidarity against the deranged tyranny we have seen and make the road that President Putin has chosen as painful as possible. York is a beautiful city. It is the beating economic heart of the York city region, the new devolved region of York and the whole of the beautiful county of North...
Kevin Hollinrake: It is clear that Putin is not afraid to weaponise his foreign policy through his armed forces, and through oil and gas supplies. It is therefore only right that we look to weaponise our foreign policy in this regard using the City of London. It may well be that, as the Minister said, we will go further quickly, but so far we have not gone far enough. Of course it might not be in our financial...
Kevin Hollinrake: That is certainly how it looks to me at this point in time, so it is important that we now move very quickly to take the further measures we have discussed today on the Floor of the House. There is, of course, a wider context around this debate. Many Members on the Government and Opposition Benches have been calling for an economic crime Bill and talking about the failure to prevent economic...
Kevin Hollinrake: My hon. Friend is making a superb speech. One thing that often gets missed in this debate about how we crack economic crime is the role of whistleblowers. They are the most likely people to identify wrongdoing in the banks he mentions and bring it to light and to the enforcement agencies. Does he agree that whistleblower protection, and potentially remuneration, should be included in this context?
Kevin Hollinrake: I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way; he is being very generous. I am interested to know the criteria we have applied in choosing those five banks, which are relatively small. He talked earlier about sanctions on entities of economic significance. The big banks in Russia are Sberbank and VTB. Why have we chosen five small banks, rather than the two largest ones?
Kevin Hollinrake: Does the Minister think that it is acceptable for commissioners to take 20 months commissioning a service when we have dentists who want to take that work and take on that surgery?
Kevin Hollinrake: I thank the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) and my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) for securing this important debate. It is clearly a huge, topical, cross-party issue that has largely been discussed in a collegiate fashion. On the rare occasions that I get any press coverage for my work as a Member of Parliament, I am often referred to as “senior” or...
Kevin Hollinrake: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Kevin Hollinrake: The hon. Gentleman is not making a particularly collegiate speech, but never mind. I have a lot of time for him. I do not know where the £10 billion fraud figure he throws out has come from. If it is about PPE, he should look at the facts behind that: £4.6 billion of that was write-down of current value versus value at the time of the pandemic. If we are going to debate in this place, it...
Kevin Hollinrake: I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Another point that needs developing is that in Helmsley, in my constituency, the commissioners have still not recommissioned services after 20 months. The commissioning of dental services by the NHS is simply too slow and too bureaucratic. It is a real deterrent for new dentists to take these contracts.
Kevin Hollinrake: I welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement today. Does he agree that a cut in VAT to solve this crisis is a completely flawed policy, as evidenced by the three economists who spoke to the Treasury Committee this week, including Torsten Bell from the Resolution Foundation, who wanted something far more targeted, such as what my right hon. Friend has announced today? It is clear that one...
Kevin Hollinrake: It is a pleasure to speak in this debate; I welcome the Opposition motion on fraud. I am one of several people on the Government Benches who often speak out about tackling fraud, so I object a little to one or two of the comments from the Opposition that Conservative Members are not bothered about fraud. Nothing could be further from the truth, for a number of reasons, including the cost to...
Kevin Hollinrake: The hon. Member makes a very good point. The whole country would acknowledge that we need to be better prepared for a future pandemic. One of the lessons that we need to learn is to have a template ready for bounce back loans and other measures that we can roll out at pace, but we should not undermine the ability of that scheme to get money out to businesses in need. The British Business Bank...