Clause 2 - Functions of SOCA as to serious organised crime
Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill
3:45 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)
Clause 2 lays the foundations for the organisation of SOCA's functions in respect of serious organised crime. I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Huntingdon has read the White Paper that we produced and widely consulted on, which dealt with why we are establishing the Serious Organised Crime Agency, but if he has not, he should have a look. If he has read it, he should have another look. That document contains extensive arguments about the nature of organised crime and how it manifests itself. It talks about the harm caused by organised crime and why we have reached the point where we feel that, despite the good work carried out by those individuals who work for the NCS and NCIS, those who work on drug investigations in Customs and Excise and those in the immigration crime unit who deal with the heartrending personal tragedies of human trafficking, there is consensus in principle that the organisations and the people within them could do even better under one organisation. That is a simple answer to a difficult and complex question.
The law enforcement activity surrounding criminal entrepreneurs requires some of the traditional powers of police officers, but it also requires an number of different approaches to intelligence and harm reduction. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome quoted an article in The Independent and subsequently in the Daily Mail in reference to the way in which organised crime is debated in our media. I have not read the full article—I shall do so—but I think that it is important to appreciate and understand how the harms of crime, locally, regionally or nationally, are perceived by the public and impact on them.
Sometimes, we politicians or those involved in law enforcement may feel that we know the right areas to investigate and pursue. However, we might not have the impact that we want in supporting communities and individuals. That is why one of the step changes reflected in the rationale of SOCA is that, although we are not taking our eye off the ball of the serious criminal offences in which some of those whom we would like to see behind bars are involved—drug smuggling, people trafficking, bringing arms into the country, the distribution of weapons—we are considering how we can frustrate their networks and disrupt their organisations. In addition, if appropriate, we are considering how to establish whether such people are involved in other, level 1, crimes. In the short term, the immediate priority is to tackle such people and take them out of action, rather than wait—perhaps for many years—before going for one individual who might be protected and sheltered from our investigation in all sorts of ways. Such approaches are important when we consider the harms and the impact on communities. The Home Office is certainly not arguing that the priorities for SOCA should be dictated by column inches in newspapers. However, we should be mindful of how the public perceive organised crime.
Many people may not even see the connection between what happens to them in their communities and organised crime. A good example of that is money laundering. Ordinary members of the public may go into a shop, buy goods and not realise that that enterprise is a front and that they have unwittingly become part of the laundering of money in the wider community.