An all-party group at Westminster devoted to Cayman affairs has not restarted almost ten months after the new Labour government was formed in the UK.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for the Cayman Islands, like all other groups and committees, ceased to exist after the UK Parliament was dissolved in May when the general election was called.
The last entry for the group on the APPG register, in May last year, said its purpose was “to maintain links with and develop an understanding of the Cayman Islands”.
The Conservatives were replaced by Labour and the new Parliament convened last July, but the group was not reconstituted.
Groups for other UK overseas territories – such as Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands and Chagos, the British Indian Ocean Territory – as well as the Channel Islands, which are Crown Dependencies, have restarted and were on the register at the end of last month.
A separate Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories group has also been reconstituted.
Tasha Ebanks-Garcia, the head of the Cayman Islands Government Office in the UK, said, “New APPGs have been established, and more will continue to be formed over the course of the Parliament.
“The long-standing chair of the Cayman Islands APPG did not stand for re-election to Parliament.
“The Cayman Islands Government Office UK has been engaged in positive discussions to re-establish the group under a new chair.”
Ebanks-Garcia added that the groups had an useful role to play in making sure lawmakers were properly informed on Caymanian affairs.
She said, “All-party groups bring together parliamentarians from across political parties, and both the Commons and the Lords, to learn more about specific countries and subjects.
“It is helpful, therefore, to have a self-selected number of parliamentarians who are interested in the Cayman Islands and, most importantly, informed about our economy, culture and constitutional status.”
The former chairman of the group, Sir Graham Brady, a veteran Conservative MP, stood down from the House of Commons before the last election and joined the House of Lords as Lord Brady of Altrincham.
He did not respond to a request for comment.
Former members of the committee, Andrew Gwynne, an ex-Labour MP, now an independent, and Andrew Rosindell, a Conservative MP, also did not respond to requests for comment.
APPGs include members of both Houses of Parliament and must be registered with the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.
The special register contains financial and other information about the APPGs, which is published.
The registry said the groups “provide a valuable opportunity for parliamentarians to engage with individuals and organisations outside Parliament who share an interest in the subject matter of their group”.
But officials emphasised that APPGs are not “official parliamentary bodies” and should not be confused with select committees, which are set up by the UK Parliament to investigate specific issues or scrutinise the work of the government.
The former head of the Cayman office in London, Eric Bush, who took up the role in 2016, was credited with a major role in getting the Cayman APPG up and running again after a gap of several years.
The Cayman government said at the time that meetings had been arranged with Brady and others to assess how the islands were seen in the UK.
The government added, “It was at this point where it became evident that Cayman’s absence from Westminster for an extended period was counterproductive and possibly harmful to Cayman in the long term.”
The government said the lack of contact had seen charities and NGOs, such as Oxfam, Christian Aid and Transparency International, mount a “campaign of rhetoric geared towards their anti-offshore financial centres agenda” and had gained “a strong foothold” in Westminster.
It added, “For many years, the voices of these NGOs were the only ones being heard and used as reference points when discussing the Cayman Islands and other overseas territories with financial services.”
The government said the primary result of the reboot was the “effective utilisation of this body to undo misperceptions with regards to the Cayman Islands financial services and to change the narrative with the help of relevant and positive stories around the islands”.