Clause 1 - Establishment of Serious Organised
Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill
9:45 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)
I welcome the remarks of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), including what he said about probing our reasons for committing ourselves as we have done in the clause. I hope to be able to allay some of his concerns.
The hon. Gentleman several times referred to a police agency or police organisation. It is important at the start of our deliberations to make it clear that we are not creating a police organisation. The point of establishing the Serious Organised Crime Agency is to bring together the National Crime Squad, the National Criminal Intelligence Service, drugs investigation by Customs and Excise and, of course, the immigration crime side of the immigration department of the Home Office. We are not creating a police organisation or a merger; SOCA is a new organisation bringing together talent and skills from different sectors to assist us in combating serious and organised crime. I am sure that we shall return to that aspect of the matter in later debates, so it is important to establish the context.
As the hon. Gentleman suggested, the amendments would widen the remit of SOCA in, I suggest, two ways. First, they would lead to the new agency subsuming the functions of the Serious Fraud Office; secondly, they would extend the agency's remit so that it would be concerned with defeating not only serious organised crime but crime in general. The unwelcome effect of the amendments would be to undermine the agency's core focus on defeating major-league drug smugglers, people traffickers and gun runners, who cause immense harm to our communities. Although SOCA is being set up to deal with level 3 crime, there is no doubt that such activities have consequences in relation to level 2 and level 1 crime, and I accept that a case could be made for incorporating the Serious Fraud Office into SOCA, but that approach would mean setting up a very different law enforcement agency. The focus would shift from tackling drug smuggling and people trafficking to tackling serious crime at large. Extending SOCA's remit in that way would risk spreading its resources and effort too thinly, to the detriment of its core objectives.
The Serious Fraud Office has a clearly defined role—the investigation of serious and complex fraud. Those engaged in organised crime might see large-scale fraud as one means of reaping ill-gotten gains, but many of the cases pursued by the SFO are very different from those on which SOCA should concentrate. A quick scan of the SFO's annual report shows a very different category of criminality: the cases completed by the SFO in 2003–04 included one involving false accounting, theft and conspiracy to defraud a retail chain that went into liquidation; one involving conspiracy to defraud two start-up companies; a third involving the operation of fraudulent investment schemes; and another involving false accounting at the Milk Development Council.
As the hon. Gentleman has pointed out, SOCA and the SFO will need to work closely together, but clause 3 provides for that. A merger would not be appropriate. That is not to say that SOCA's remit and its relationship with other law enforcement agencies should not be kept under review in the light of experience. We will see how SOCA, and crime, develop, but we do not believe that it would be right to merge the SFO and SOCA at this point. Referring to clause 2(3)(b), the hon. Gentleman asked what would happen if the SFO declined to act. Some cases of fraud might be so intimately connected to wider serious organised crime under investigation that it will make sense to take both together. We do not want an absolute bar that prevents a practical decision from being taken in a specific case, which is why the Bill needs that flexibility.
On amendments Nos. 81 and 91, I am the first to admit that crime does not always fit into neat compartments, as the hon. Gentleman rightly points out. We talk about level 1, level 2 and level 3 crime—local force level, national and international crime—but the boundaries between those levels can become blurred. Nevertheless, the responsibility for reducing level 1 and 2 crime clearly rests with police forces, while SOCA will focus on level 3 crime. The change to clause 2 proposed in amendment No. 81 would heighten the risk of SOCA and police forces treading on each other's toes, which we must avoid at all costs. That is not to say that SOCA's activities will be confined entirely and exclusively to combating serious organised crime: information gathered by SOCA in accordance with its function in clause 3 may well be relevant to combating level 2 crime, and the agency can be expected to pass it on to the relevant police force.
In addition, clause 5 enables SOCA to act in support of the activities of the police or other law enforcement agencies. A police force may, for example, seek SOCA's help with a kidnapping. Kidnapping is obviously a serious crime, but it is not necessarily serious organised crime. The clause also enables SOCA to carry out activities in respect of lower-level crime if those activities accord with the functions in clauses 2 and 3. That is very important, because one of the main reasons for establishing SOCA is to see how we can reduce the harm done by the activities of very serious criminals. By recognising that, we recognise that there is more than one way to skin a cat. If it is possible to put away a drug smuggler for a lesser offence, SOCA should be able to pursue such an investigation if, in the circumstances, that is the most effective way of reducing the harm done by that individual.
In short, there is common ground between the hon. Gentleman and the Government regarding the way in which SOCA will fit into the wider law enforcement family, but the amendments would send the wrong messages about SOCA's priorities and core functions. I therefore invite the hon. Gentleman not to press the amendments to a vote.