Clause 82 - Foreign surveillance operations
Crime (International Co-operation) Bill [Lords]
3:15 pm
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 his contribution, because he laid out clearly some problems with the amendments. They would prevent us from properly implementing our participation in the Schengen convention and trying to achieve our aims in combating crime without borders. I refer to amendment No. 81. Article 40.2 of the Schengen convention, which the clause implements, provides for a grace period of five hours, during which surveillance may be continued across a national boundary under urgent circumstances.
My understanding is that the reason given was that five hours was thought to be sufficient time for the authority of the receiving member state to respond to immediate notification from the incoming officers signalling that the border had been crossed, and for the receiving member state to take over the surveillance or send one of its officers to the scene to accompany the officers from the foreign member state. That is crucial when dealing with serious criminals.
I think that there is general agreement that foreign officers may, on rare occasions, need to cross the border into the United Kingdom to continue surveillance. We anticipate that they will be picked up by UK officers as soon as possible; if, for example, the foreign officer came into the country via Calais, and the suspect was going to London, there would be a port at which that could happen. We feel strongly that a one-hour time limit might frustrate the large amount of work that goes into surveillance operations, and would be of no help.
I remind hon. Members that the arrangements are reciprocal. There will be occasions on which UK officers will need to use the arrangements to follow a suspect who travels abroad at short notice, and we could hardly expect foreign colleagues to give us the benefit of the full five hours if we did not reciprocate. It is important that the provision stays as it is.
On amendment No. 82, we appreciate the arguments put forward for setting a specific point at which the UK border may be considered to be crossed, but as the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland eloquently said, how do we decide when that border is
crossed? Police officers may have training and professionalism, but they cannot know, when travelling on an aeroplane, boat or train, the exact moment when they enter British airspace or waters.
For reasons that have already been outlined, we feel that the amendment is unnecessary and would jeopardise the good intentions behind the clause. The amendment does not take into account the complex nature of maritime law. The Government's approach provides a point that can be readily identified by officers and that will not be so complex to discern that they are distracted from the operation in hand. The clause protects the interests of the United Kingdom.
Those are the reasons why we have used the words ''enters the United Kingdom'' in the clause. We will consider the UK to have been entered when the foreign officer arrives at a port or airport or, in the case of Eurostar, when the train leaves the tunnel and enters Kent. Legally and practically, that is the simplest approach, for reasons that we have outlined.