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Money-laundering and the Financing of Terrorism: EUC Report

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his comprehensive reply. As a committee, we will particularly welcome his undertakings about a written statement on the affairs of FATF. I was pleased to hear that he expressed personal sympathy for the remarks of my noble friend Lord Hodgson and I hope very much that he will act on that and meet my noble friend at a later stage because his sympathy and apparent understanding of those points was most welcome. I felt a certain amount of disappointment because when we talked about the urgency of some of these matters, the Minister fell back on saying "as soon as possible". I know that it is difficult to give replies to detailed questions, but I hope that the Minister will try to ensure that "as soon as possible" means "very soon" and "get your skates on". I hope he will be kind enough to do that. I was most pleased to hear the kind remarks directed at me and more particularly at members of the committee who all worked extremely hard on this issue. It has been a great pleasure to be chairman of the committee. We were pleased that there seemed to be a good deal of press and media interest in our report when it came out, as a number of noble Lords said. There are many technical matters involved in the whole issue of money-laundering and the committee would not have been able to produce such a good report as I believe it is had it not been for the technical assistance of Professor Bill Gilmore, who was our technical adviser. He co-operated with our Clerk and his staff in a most successful way. The lessons that have come out of the debate are our concern about the burden on the private sector and the intrusion through the ELMER database on individuals. There is also a concern about the failure to sign and ratify international agreements. The Minister referred to that and I referred to it myself a second ago. Provided that the Government are prepared to get their skates on, we shall see a much better and more progressive picture to cover all the problems brought about by money-laundering. Motion agreed.