Clause 82 - Foreign surveillance operations
Crime (International Co-operation) Bill [Lords]
10:00 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)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and he is absolutely right. Powers of surveillance would be more readily used where land borders met with many other countries. That is much more the case in mainland Europe than in the UK. All other Schengen states have already implemented the arrangements, as the hon. Gentleman said. The convention has been in force since 1995 but, as I said earlier, the Republic of Ireland has not yet signed up.
I wish to correct a point that I made earlier about Northern Ireland. A French officer heading to Northern Ireland would always be escorted by the Police Service of Northern Ireland due to the special situation there. I hope that I did not mislead anyone earlier. Owing to the special circumstances of Northern Ireland, a foreign officer would always have to make contact in advance.
In response to the request for more information, I understand that we have already written to the hon. Member for Surrey Heath on the matter that he raised. All other EU states have implemented Schengen, apart from the Republic of Ireland. I wish to return to the main body of my speech. We will debate the issue of surveillance as we progress through the clause.
In my answers to the interventions, I have outlined some of our reasons for opposing amendment No. 71. Defining ''reasonably practicable'' in the way that has been proposed would create serious operational and practical difficulties. New section 76A(1)(c) already makes it clear that the section applies only if it is not reasonably practicable for UK officers to take over surveillance when they arrive in the UK. The section therefore applies only in the urgent cases envisaged in article 40.2 of the Schengen convention. If the foreign officers could have telephoned sufficiently far in advance to give a UK team enough time to take over surveillance, but choose not to, the proposed section will not apply. Similarly, if they ring up, but the UK authorities do not try to put a team in place, the proposed section will not apply. That is because in both cases it would have been reasonably practicable for a UK team to take over the surveillance. It would be clear in such circumstances that a pre-organised arrangement could have been forthcoming, so the powers under foreign surveillance operations could not apply.
Furthermore, the amendment envisages that the time it would take a UK team to take over the surveillance will be fixed. It will not. It will vary and depend on several matters, including the resources required for that particular surveillance. For example, a foreign officer might ring up from Calais and say that he was about to follow a suspect to Dover. Sometimes, it will be possible to put a UK team in place to meet him, but sometimes it will not. The question is whether it is reasonably practicable to do so in the time available. Only if it was not reasonably practicable would proposed new section 76A apply. That will be the effect of the clause and, accordingly, we consider that defining ''reasonably practicable'' by reference to journey times is unnecessary and unhelpful.
Sufficient safeguards are already in place to ensure that foreign officers do not abuse the powers granted under the provisions. In response to worries expressed in another place and to make the position clear, we have placed in the Bill several restrictions to be imposed on foreign officers. The restrictions clarify that foreign officers must contact the National Criminal Intelligence Service on arrival in the United Kingdom and that they are not allowed to enter private property to conduct surveillance. For those reasons, we cannot accept amendment No. 71.
Amendment No. 72 would ensure that the order-making power under subsection (3)(b) might be used only to extend such surveillance to crimes that are an offence in the United Kingdom. Concern about the provision has been expressed again today. However, we consider that it strikes the right balance between the need to allow for a new agreement to be brought into effect and for it to receive proper parliamentary oversight.
Subsection (3)(b), as drafted, gives the Government flexibility should we wish to join a new international agreement that included provisions on cross-border surveillance, as my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) intimated. The sort of offences that might be investigated by
foreign officers on our soil as a result of the provisions will be similar to those covered by article 40 of Schengen. They would be serious crimes. I stress that we do not agree with that sort of arrangement in respect of petty offences. The reason for such flexibility is that we prefer to take a generic approach to one that depends on harmonisation of offences between countries. The list of offences to which article 40.2 of Schengen applies are widely drafted, but refer clearly to serious matters.
We expect a future agreement to take a similar approach. I do not anticipate a situation in which foreign officers who suspect a person of committing, for instance, an offence of xenophobia would be allowed to conduct that type of surveillance in the UK. It is worth remembering that foreign officers would not be conducting investigations in this country because they would not have the executive powers to do so. They would not have the power to arrest or interact with the person under surveillance. It would be a matter of discreet surveillance for a short time.
Examples of the type of crime that might be considered in addition to those currently covered by article 40, and which have been discussed in the context of the Schengen convention, are organised fraud, smuggling of illegal immigrants, laundering of the proceedings from organised crime and illicit trafficking in nuclear and radioactive substances. A future agreement containing such provisions would be subject to parliamentary oversight before it could be ratified. For those reasons and those that I outlined earlier, we will not accept the amendment.