MPs register desire for transparency
TWO parliaments separated by five days and about 180 miles gave very different impressions of where we are on beneficial ownership.
While the States of Guernsey was last week being assured that only a handful of pressure groups and media types were pushing for a public register of who owns companies registered in the island the version presented to the Houses of Parliament on Tuesday was quite different.
There MPs from both sides of the House of Commons were pressing the Home Office minister of state for security Ben Wallace for clarity over the government's position.
Critics, including the Shadow Home Office crime minister Rupa Huq and former Tory minister Andrew Mitchell, lined up to ask how committed the government really was to transparent registers.
Had the government changed its mind and, despite the UK moving to an open register, resigned itself to letting the Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories off the hook?
The answer that followed indicated that the issue is far from dead in the eyes of the UK and, even under a Conservative government, this is something to which the island may have to return.
Far from it being just the media in cahoots with organisations such as Amnesty International and Christian Aid in pushing for a public register it seems that there is some cross-party support for the matter, just a disagreement over how quickly and forcefully to get there.
The minister, for example, assured MPs that he was a great believer in transparency and the government had not changed its ambition to have public registers in the Crown Dependencies.
Indeed, he claimed to have reiterated that desire to leaders of the Dependencies and Overseas Territories just two weeks ago.
So a few days before Guernsey deputies were being told that the register must be private otherwise it would not be possible to show that it was secure, the UK was pressing for the exact opposite.
Mr Wallace told MPs that, while the UK would not be using gunboat diplomacy to coerce democratically elected governments, he is determined to get there nonetheless.
Quite what means are at his disposal apart from time and persuasive skills remains to be seen.
