Edwards Report On Jersey, Guernsey And The Isle Of Man

EDM number 149 in 1998-99, proposed by Austin Mitchell on 17/12/1998.

That this House welcomes the publication of the Edwards Report on Financial Regulation in the Crown Dependencies of Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man as the first effort to cast light into the murky waters of offshore financial havens; congratulates the Home Secretary for commissioning the Report and notes that it has been welcomed in the islands in consulation with whose authorities it was written, a procedure which should ensure that all the reforms proposed by the Report are implemented speedily and in full; and urges the Government to regard this limited report as only the start to reform which should now be followed up by a Royal Commission to report on the constitutional structures, the lack of any separation of powers, the conflicts of interest, and the problems of small, intimate political systems in regulating huge financial flows and thousands of companies so as to ensure firstly that the benefits of this lopsided development in offshore finance do not just acrue to the island elites but are spread out to all the people of these statelets and secondly that these Crown dependencies are not turned into offshore havens for large numbers of companies, individuals and speculators evading obligations and escaping responsibilities, thus leading to dependency and distortions which could corrupt what should be jewels in the Crown.

This motion has been signed by a total of 46 MPs, 2 of these signatures have been withdrawn.