Clause 72
Serious Crime Bill
10:30 am
Vernon Coaker (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Gedling, Labour)
I will speak to clause 72 and add points that are relevant to one or two of the following clauses. I am aware that the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham tabled amendments to leave out this and the subsequent three clauses. As he said, those clauses provide for accredited financial investigators to act under the powers of the 2002 Act. Such investigators already have access to an array of powers: investigating money laundering; investigating the extent and the whereabouts of a suspect’s benefits of crime; and, applying for an order to restrain a person’s assets. Those powers have proved a great success.
The Government recognise the important contribution of the agencies for which such investigators work to the rise in the value of money recovered from criminals. An extension of those powers beyond the police and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to others, such as the Serious Fraud Office, fraud investigators in the Department for Work and Pensions and the immigration service, has strengthened our overall capacity in the recovery of the proceeds of crime. The important point is that we are trying to improve our capacity to recover the proceeds of crime from people who are seeking to gain from criminal activity.
Currently, appropriately accredited financial investigators can apply for restraint orders. Those are interim orders to freeze property and are made in anticipation of a confiscation order following conviction. Police and customs officers have separate powers to seize property, subject to a restraint order, to prevent its removal from their jurisdiction. The clause will extend the powers of accredited financial investigators, giving them the ability to seize such property.