I have published this video this morning. In it I argue that there is still massive opacity available to businesses in the UK, many of which provide little or no information as to who they are, especially on the web. Labour could change that by demanding full disclosure wherever a business trades, meaning we should all be better protected from fraud.
The audio version of this video is here:
The transcript is:
I'm talking about rule changes that Labour could make as a new government to make life better for everyone in the UK at almost no cost to the government itself. Let me put another idea to you in this series.
I think Labour should demand that every business in the UK should make itself vastly more transparent to the people that it is trading with.
In other words, what I'm saying is that in every place where a business trades, including on the internet, it should state what the name of the person who owns the business is. Is that a company? Is that individuals? I don't mind which, but it should be stated.
If it's a company, it should say what its number is.
And in every case, there should be a real address where this company or business can be contacted. So that there's none of this hiding behind post office boxes or the accommodation addresses for the registered office of the company. I want to know where the company is actually located, and from which it is trading.
I want to know what its VAT number is, if it has one.
I want to know who its bankers are.
And if it's a regulated business, I want to know who they are as well. Because, clearly, if there's a complaint to be made, we need to know who to send it to.
And why do I need to know the banker? Because you're going to make a payment to them. And if there's a dispute, you want to warn that bank that there's a problem with this particular customer.
Finally, I want this information to be very clearly displayed. I mean on letterheads, at the front door of business premises or somewhere nearby, and most particularly on the website.
What we need is corporate accountability.
So, Labour, put businesses on record. Make them tell us who they are. We need to know this information so that there is a fair balance between the risks that we and the people we trade with face when acting in the marketplace.
You could do this. Come on, get on and do it now.
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Thank you and well said, Richard.
This will also call the bluff of the free marketeers who are anything but.
Further to Richard’s call, Richard and readers may be interested in https://unherd.com/newsroom/tony-blair-wants-to-run-starmers-government/.
Further to my comments about Blair a week or so ago, how shallow and ill informed he is, I forgot to add to the anecdote about Hong Kong. Fresh from his success in Sierra Leone, Blair approached South Africa, then led by Thabo Mbeki, about a joint invasion of Zim to oust Robert Mugabe and India, then led by led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, about a joint invasion of Myanmar.
I hold no brief for the thugs and kleptocrats in Zim and Myanmar, but for Blair and his cheerleaders to think that Africans and Asians will team up with Britain to invade neighbours is delusion to an extreme. Unfortunately, that mind set persists in the UK’s neoliberal and neocon (vassal) elite.
Invaluable info Colonel. Thank you.
Thank you.
My first job in the 1960s was a clerk for an insurance broker. On the letterhead it claimed it was represented at four other towns in the region.
One day I asked the boss who worked there. ‘Oh, they are just plaques.’
I didn’t ask delve into why. At 17 you tend to accept much of the world as it is.
A house in Jersey, in the 1970s, had about six by the front door!
These things were called market day offices by accountants. They only had someone there on those days.
A lot of bank ‘branches’ are like that too, now. The websites suggest such locations are real, but often you actually need an appointment, and mostly all they can do is ‘help’ you with Internet banking. If you don’t trust that, they’re just a waste of time. (We spent an afternoon driving round Cambridgeshire recently discovering just how much of a waste of time they can be!)
I think displaying VAT numbers on invoices and corporate web-sites is already compulsory.
Have you (with your multiple IDs on Companies House data) or someone you know fallen victim to a fraud recently and venting?
My multiple identities at Companies House is something I am unable to control. They made them, not me. You are stupid enough bit to know that, just as you are apparently unable to think someone can have a concern without personal experience of the situation, which is quite extraordinary.
Displaying VAT numbers on invoices is, indeed, compulsory. As is displaying company registration numbers, registered addresses etc on websites, invoices and all communications. But it does not happen. On some websites it is buried deep inside the privacy policy. It should be the footer on every page. If the information is not disdplayed, as it often isn’t, to whom can you complain so that action will be taken to rectify it? What about sole traders?
There is literally no one to complain to
And that is why new law is needed
It’s annoying when you can’t get a postal address for a business on their website
Tends to put me off doing business with them
If there’s no postal address in their privacy policy 1. Let them know, if no response 2. Report them to the ICO and ask them to remove their right to collect personal data
ICO Information Commissioner’s Office
The Information Commissioner is the UK’s independent regulator for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, with key responsibilities under the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) and Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).
https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/
I would like shell companies to be forced to identify their beneficlal owners, and the UK overseas tax havens to be drowned in regulatory demands.
I think all land title registrations should name the beneficial owners too, and this be enforced.
Agreed
Thank you and well said, both.
With regard to land, now increasingly owned off shore, even by trusts set up in favour of aristocrats, not arrivistes, this issue may get an airing in 2027, the anniversary of William the Conqueror’s birth. The issue is also getting local media coverage as land owners such as the Blenheim estate in Oxfordshire and Fitzwilliam estate in Yorkshire, one of whose beneficiaries, is Mrs Rees-Mogg, seek permission (and even evict tenants) for giant solar farms.
The BBC and CBS are marking the event with a documentary series. One wonders if the BBC address the issue of land.
About 20 years ago, the BBC made a series about the Normans. Only the French historian, and that was at the end, mentioned dispossession.
In recent years, local authorities have begun to remove reference to land owners.
The likes of Andy Wightman and Guy Shrubsole and their local networks of sympathisers are doing good work by documenting such ownership. This issue of land ownership overlaps with use, climate change and justice, local social and reparations for slavery and colonialism.
Much to agree with
The FSCS bank guarantee for customers is limited to £85,000 per account. And only to 1 account with the same ‘bank’. Banks owned by the same group are considered as the same ‘bank’. So why is there no requirement that every organisation covered by the guarantee lists, on all communications all other organisations with which they are associated?
Seems a no brainer – we pretend or assume we are an open society – in fact we seem to be rather closed.
Just on your theme:
‘ rule changes that Labour could make as a new government to make life better for everyone in the UK at almost no cost to the government itself.’
A good one would be a consumer charter imposed on banks , energy companies, govt departments – with minimum performance standards for consumers trying to communcate with them – to make the horror stories on R4 ‘You and Yours’ a thing of the past. People hanging on the phone for days on end retelling their complaints ( a £60k electricty bill etc) to endless different bots … all this could be put right by a few simple rules in a consumer charter. I have a draft.
Noted
On a related theme, I have long advocated that there should be a ‘licence’ similar to a driving licence in order to be a director of a UK firm, and the licence number of each director should be recorded and searchable on the Companies’ House website. A basic written exam to ensure directors’ competence would help to avoid other abuses too.
Agreed
” I want to know where the company is actually located, and from which it is trading”.
Richard, you make a crucial point. The fact that more and more business is little more than a digital platform, this is only going to become far, far worse. Location should be fundamental; location, presence and transparency is a necessity. Nothing else can be trusted; in a digital, global world lack of location, presence and transparency is frankly, no better than an open invitation to crooks from anywhere, owned by anyone, for any purpose to make hay – without let or hindrance. No legal system can function effectively in such a world. Frankly politics and the law are giving up on civilised, usable business life, I mean by presence not just a specific location, but a responsible – and answerable – owner, who must be identified, and accessible within British, direct jurisdiction: no exceptions.
In a sense the ruoles are already so lax we already have turned business into a form of AI – Artificial Invisibility. We are slowly and discreetly making ownership and responsibility in business completely invisible, and inaccessible to law. And nobody cares – being ripped off can be made to seem so easy and convenient.
Agreed
Thank you and well said, John.
In my, ahem, profession, banking, it’s an appalling exercise in smoke and mirrors.
If you feel it’s so important that an entity’s bank should be disclosed on the entity’s website, why is there no such disclosure on the websites of any of the entities you are connected with?
Coop Bank
You only had to ask
All of them
Once upon a time, IIRC, it was a legal requirement for a sole trader to register the name they were using, but this was dropped many years ago, presumably being deemed too costly to administer and enforce. As a result most legitimate sole traders do not have a “company registration number”. This occasionally requires explanation, though if you happen to be VAT registered the VAT number will often do duty instead.
This was a requirement of the Business Names Act, abolished in 1985 as I recall.
But it could, of course, be run economically. You just make the fee high enough. It would be incredibly pro-business to do so to eliminate the crooks.
In reply to Colonel Smithers ‘comment about ‘land’, I must recommend a magazine called The Land, which appears twice a year(no adverts) . Their manifesto concludes: ‘ Capitalism is a confidence trick, built on dazzling promises. It may stand longer than some of us anticipate, but when it crumbles, the land will remain’