Clause 68
Serious Crime Bill [Lords]
2:46 pm
James Brokenshire (Shadow Minister (Police Reform), Home Affairs; Hornchurch, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 199, in clause 68, page 37, line 41, at end insert—
‘(3A) The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (c. 15) is amended as follows.
(3B) After section 7(6), insert—
“(6A) It shall be the duty of the Secretary of State to make a motion in the House of Commons in respect of the annual report laid under subsection (6) within three months of the date on which the report was laid.”
(3C) After section 7(7), insert—
“(7A) It shall be the duty of Scottish Ministers to make a motion in the Scottish Parliament in respect of the annual report laid under subsection (7) within three months of the date on which the report was laid.”’.
I turn now to a very different issue: the scrutiny of the Serious Organised Crime Agency in its enlarged and expanded form. The Bill would transfer the assets recovery functions of the Assets Recovery Agency to SOCA—an issue that I shall address during the stand part debate. SOCA was created just over a year ago, and drew together the National Crime Squad, the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the National High Tech Crime Unit and parts of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, as well as parts of the immigration service. Its budget for the current financial year is £399 million of resource funding, plus £43 million of capital funding. Its status is that of an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by, but operationally independent of, the Home Office.
It is understandable that the sensitive and intelligence-led nature of SOCA’s work makes it unable to provide complete information to the public on its operations. However, that does not mean that its effectiveness should not be subject to regular examination, scrutiny and oversight. The Opposition believe that the amendment would provide an important mechanism for Parliament to apply such scrutiny and would ensure that there would be a clear, direct and annual mechanism under which SOCA and its annual performance would be held to account, reviewed and debated by the House.
SOCA is an essential part of the structures that exist to address the continued threat to the country and to our constituents from serious organised crime. The importance of its work should not be understated, but in many ways that underlines the need for appropriate mechanisms of scrutiny. SOCA’s remit is harm reduction, which is a very broad concept that is difficult to measure and assess. It is all the more important, therefore, to enable Parliament to examine that role and function and to hold SOCA to account.
The concern about the checks and balances on SOCA’s operations has been brought into stark focus by recent comments from the Court of Appeal. In the case of UMBS Online Limited v. Serious Organised Crime Agency, the Court of Appeal held that SOCA had acted unlawfully in freezing payments to a company suspected of VAT fraud. Whatever the merits of that case, the reported comments of the Lords Justices of Appeal are potentially disturbing. They said:
“A feature of the way SOCA operates is that it does not condescend to detail either in the reasoning for its decision or in disclosing the facts upon which it relies in coming to that decision. This is not a very satisfactory position.”
Lord Justice Sedley added:
“In setting up the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the state has set out to create an Alsatia—a region of executive action free of judicial oversight.”
Those seem to be quite strong words from learned judges, and they are made even starker by the fact that Parliament itself does not have any direct oversight over the working of SOCA either. If such serious comments are being made about the operation of SOCA, that should give us cause to stop and think.
We also need to test and question SOCA on the performance information that it does provide. For example, questions have been raised about the robustness of information provided by the agency on the level of its drug seizures. Such seizures are an essential element of SOCA’s role and performance and the Conservatives welcomed the information about the volume of drugs seized when it was revealed in SOCA’s annual report. However, SOCA has refused to substantiate those figures, saying that it was not prepared to provide specific details of its ongoing work and that previous protocols for assessing drug seizures did not apply to it because it is a new and different organisation and that
“our reporting is, in consequence, different too.”
Frankly, that is not acceptable, particularly when we are considering extending the scope, responsibility and ambit of the work undertaken by SOCA. Of course, there may be, quite rightly, operational matters that need to be kept secret and certain areas of SOCA’s work do not need to be put into the public domain, because of their sensitive nature and the need to protect the public. However, I do not think that that necessarily means that there should not be some form of direct scrutiny of SOCA’s reports and the way that it operates.
In evidence to the Public Accounts Committee on 7 March 2007 about the transfer of the assets recovery functions to SOCA, Sir John Bourn, the Comptroller and Auditor General, was asked whether SOCA would have the financial systems in place to assess whether the costs of those functions were greater than or less than the assets that it had recovered. Sir John said:
“It should have a proper system of management accounts which will provide that information and we shall see that it does have.”
Can the Minister indicate whether other measures are currently being undertaken or will be undertaken of the other functions of SOCA, so that the reporting of those other aspects of its work can be assessed in the same way as the Comptroller and Auditor General proposed that its assets recovery functions will be assessed?
As SOCA has been in operation for just over a year, it would be premature to pass any comments on its effectiveness. There are positive indications in terms of improved international co-operation and drug seizures. On the downside, SOCA has prosecuted fewer cases in the UK courts than its predecessor and missed targets on seizing criminal assets. There have also been criticisms of its bureaucracy.
It is vital that SOCA learns the right lessons during this early period and develops its operational capacity to disrupt and put behind bars those involved in serious organised crime, but in doing so it must also withstand scrutiny and examination. We believe that the mechanism of providing for a motion to be laid both in Parliament and in the Scottish Parliament within three months of the laying of SOCA’s annual report would be an important means of offering that oversight. We believe that such a mechanism would also help to strengthen the position of SOCA in its essential fight against those who wish to harm the interests of this country and damage the lives of our constituents.