Election 2024: Dirty money ‘won’t create growth’, Labour candidate warns

Dirty money is “not going to create growth in this country”, a former anti-corruption campaigner-turned-Labour candidate has said, as he argued for greater enforcement.

Joe Powell, Labour’s candidate for Kensington and Bayswater, wants to see a Labour government elected to “finish the job” on tackling the UK’s economic crime issues.

Powell, who co-founded the Kensington Against Dirty Money campaign in 2022, with a stunt that saw him load a washing machine stuffed with cash in one of the capital’s most affluent areas, now hopes he can take on former Tory MP Felicity Buchan and win the seat.

Speaking after a Labour housing event in the borough, Powell told City A.M.: “People had promised that they would tackle [dirty money] for years and years and years.

“And it took the full scale invasion of Ukraine for the government to finally pass two economic crime acts, but it was riddled with loopholes.”

He added: “So in the same way we were discussing with leasehold reform, we’ve got to finish the job. We’ve also got to finish the job on economic crime.”

Powell, who also previously spent 12 years working for the Barack Obama founded Open Government Partnership (OGP), an international transparency platform, thinks part of the challenge is down to how “fragmented” the UK’s system is.

“The National Crime Agency (NCA) as an example, their team has been boosted a little bit, but it’s still a relatively small agency when you compare it to the size of the problem or to their peers in the US or in other countries,” he said.

“We do need the enforcement side to be much more joined up and be clear about which different agencies do what and also what due diligence requirements, and what support we can give to business to follow due diligence requirements.”

Labour published a dirty money plan, just days before the election was called, spearheaded by shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, which outlines their planned crackdown on economic crime, including £250,000 rewards for whistleblowers of sanctions breaches.

Powell says: “No one financial centre can tackle this alone – with [Russian] sanctions, a lot of the money went to Dubai. So the question was, can we move internationally together?”.

The party also wants to host a summit of financial centres, bringing together cities like New York, Paris, Frankfurt, and London, to create best practice.

“It’s not just a tick box exercise, businesses like estate agents or professional service providers may need some help to do that,” Powell continued.

“But the vast majority of people working in professional services don’t want to be handling dirty money. They know it’s not good capital. It’s not going to create growth in this country.

“They don’t necessarily have the right mechanisms and checks and balances to stop it, and we don’t want them to become enablers… we want them to be part of the answer.”

The constituency, part of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, contains some of London’s richest areas.

But in 2019, then-Labour candidate and former MP Emma Dent-Coad – now standing as an independent after leaving the party over Jeremy Corbyn – lost to Buchan by just 150 seats. 

Activists are eager for a successful rematch.

“There are lots of people who didn’t vote for us in 2019, who have already told us they’ll be voting for us this time,” Powell says – but admits plenty are also “still making their mind up”.

Labour thinks the seat will be close run, and Powell – who became a father of twins in the first weeks of the campaign – is keen to highlight his local links, from growing up in Queens Park and playing football under the Westway, the flyover which splices North Kensington.

“We are blessed in many ways with fantastic community organisations, Portobello Market, the parks and museums and so on,” he stresses. “But it is also a place that is one of the most unequal constituencies in the country.”

Key issues, he says, are housing, including conditions for social tenants as well as “tackling dirty money in luxury property”, and pushing for house building and private rental reforms.

While improving St Mary’s, Charing Cross and Hammersmith hospitals are also on his priority list, as well as delivering “truth, justice and change” for the Grenfell survivors, seven years on from the tower block fire tragedy.

Powell notes: “If we are fortunate enough to be elected, one of the big early moments of a Labour government will be for Keir Starmer to respond to the second phase of the inquiry.

“That will be a really important moment for this local community to see. Are we going to commit to those changes in building safety, respecting tenants rights, building more social and affordable housing, because people really want to see that change?”

“The Labour government has committed that they will implement all those recommendations from phase one. That is unfinished business.”

Candidates standing in Kensington and Bayswater are: Mona Adam, Green Party; Felicity Buchan, Conservative Party; Marc Burca, Reform UK; Emma Dent Coad, Independent; William Houngbo, Liberal Democrats; Una O’Mahony, Party of Women; Roger Phillips, Christian Peoples Alliance; Joe Powell, Labour Party; Emperor of India Prince Ankit Love, Independent; and John Stevens, Rejoin EU.