Schedule 1 - The Serious Organised Crime Agency
Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill
2:30 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 will not give way at this juncture, as I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will intervene in the next few minutes.
Welcome to the Committee, Mr. O'Brien. I look forward to working with you today and during future sittings. This morning, we had a strong and expansive discussion, particularly about the fundamental issue of whether, in creating the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, we would be creating another police organisation or something entirely different. The latter is the Government's vision for the organisation. As I said earlier, if we felt that we were already doing the most that we could do to tackle organised crime, we might be satisfied with the status quo.
That is not to say that the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the National Crime Squad, Customs and Excise drugs investigators and, for that matter, the immigration crime side of the immigration authorities are not doing very good work independently and in partnership. We are at this point because we are trying, as the consultation paper said, to be one step ahead of organised crime. I would like to pay tribute to the specialist staff who currently work in the NCS and NCIS. Alongside their police colleagues in those organisations, they often put themselves at risk in tackling dangerous criminals. We are trying to create a new organisation, one that can define its own culture in order to be one step ahead of serious and organised crime.