Bill Newton Dunn, rapporteur for the opinion of the Committee on Development. - Mr[nbsp ]President, I am speaking for the Committee on Development to give its opinion. We are very concerned that EU aid to countries in need of it should not fall into the hands of dictators and their supporters, who money-launder it away into Swiss bank accounts, but that it should go to the people of those countries. This is very obvious, but it is an extremely important issue.

The second point I want to make is that – as those who followed the work of the Special Committee on Organised Crime, Corruption and Money Laundering (the CRIM Committee) will know – money laundering is extremely easy, so there is a great deal of work to be done. Member States do not even implement existing legislation: this is truly shocking, and we look to the Commission to make sure that they start to do so, and to follow through and abolish tax havens, rather than just saying they will take action but actually doing nothing.

Finally, Commissioner, with regard to small-scale gambling operations such as racecourse bookies, please remember that these are SMEs, and that we need jobs, and do not just sweep them away because you want to. Small on-course bookies cannot be home to large-scale money laundering. We need to protect small-scale employment, so please do that.