Clause 2 - Functions of SOCA as to serious organised crime
Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill
3:30 pm
Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Huntingdon, Conservative)
Creating SOCA for its own sake is not a reason in itself for doing so. As of yet, the Minister has not adequately set out the Government's intentions. The question is not so much how SOCA will work, but how its functions will deal with the particular problems that society faces and which now give cause for the agency to be created. In other words, what are the functions of SOCA? What is its purpose?
We know, for example, that drugs use has shot through the roof in recent years. We know that more British children try drugs than do children in any other European country. We know that a dose of cocaine is half the price that it was 10 years ago. How will the agency stop that? What is it that we now do wrong that SOCA will correct? As I said before, just because the Conservative party supports SOCA, it does not mean that we, and the Committee as a whole, should not question its function and how it will solve the problems we face. That is the purpose of the criminal law.