Clause 43 - Information about a person's bank account
Crime (International Co-operation) Bill [Lords]
10:45 am
Ms Caroline Flint (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (reducing organised and international crime, anti drugs co-ordination and international and European issues), Home Office; Don Valley, Labour)
Let me clear up any confusion. When the Bill was discussed on Second Reading, the hon. Member for Surrey Heath expressed worry about alleged practices by some banks when obtaining inappropriate information from their customers, but here is not the place to discuss such matters. I am not sure that they have anything to do with the Bill.
However, the amendment is listed on the selection list, and I want to clarify a few points. There is no question of a bank or financial institution contacting its customers about any of the requests made under chapter 4. Indeed, they will be guilty of an offence if they disclose the existence of a request or an investigation, let alone if they disclose it to the customer in question. The Bill does not create a new obligation on banks about the records that they hold about its customers. Its purpose is to find out information about an existing account, pursuant to criminal investigations, not to find out new information about the individual. It is about gaining access to a person's financial records. That is the purpose of the customer information and account monitoring orders. If banks were to contact their customers about anything else, they would be guilty of the offence of disclosing the existence of a request for an investigation or of, at least, putting that investigation in jeopardy.
To include a provision along the lines of that proposed by the amendment would be inappropriate. Clause 43 regulates outgoing mutual legal assistance requests from the United Kingdom to identify and provide details of accounts that are held overseas. It deals with requests from UK prosecuting authorities to overseas judicial authorities, which they will execute in the way most appropriate to their law. In France, for example, there will be no need to involve banks at all in requests to identify accounts, because it has a central register of bank accounts. While I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman has more general worries, I hope that he will withdraw the amendment in light of my comments.