Clause 56 - Disclosure notices
Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill
9:30 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)
My hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. McWalter) is right to say that we are dealing with a spider's web of connections and networks. I have talked before about criminal entrepreneurs who corrupt legitimate businesses in pursuit of their aims. We need safeguards and we have safeguards in the Bill.
The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome raises an important point about when it is appropriate to give a disclosure notice to a person suspected of one of the specified offences. Several hon. Members raised that on Second Reading. Our intention is that notices will usually be given to people other than the primary suspects, partly as they are more likely to co-operate and partly because of the protections against self-incrimination for the subject of the notice.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead said, however, the full involvement of all the players in complex organised criminality is often not obvious at the beginning of an investigation. Also, in certain circumstances the prosecutor may decide to give a notice to someone suspected of one of the offences anyway. For example, a junior member of a criminal group may be suspected of one of the specified offences, but the prosecutor may believe that serving a notice on him would provide information of substantial value to the wider investigation, and that the benefit of that would outweigh not being able to use a self-incriminatory statement made by the junior member.
The clause currently creates a bit of an artificial statutory distinction between those suspected of an offence on the list and others. The analogous powers work effectively without such a legislative distinction, and prosecutors can manage the issues in deciding whether to issue a notice against a suspect, based on their oversight of the full investigation. I therefore propose to introduce amendments on Report to remove that distinction.
I draw to the attention of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome the word ''and'' between paragraphs (b) and (c) of clause 56(2). The provisions do not stand alone. His amendment would strengthen the artificial distinction. Rather than leaving the matter to the prosecutor's discretion, it would allow someone suspected of one of the specified offences to be given a disclosure notice only when it was ''necessary'' to do so. In practice, it would be quite difficult to argue that it was necessary to interview anyone, so I call on him to withdraw the amendment and to understand the reasons why prosecutors should have flexibility, albeit based on comprehensive guidelines on disclosure, which provide safeguards for individuals against self-incrimination.