Orders of the Day — Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:32 pm on 7 December 2004.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of David Blunkett David Blunkett The Secretary of State for the Home Department 12:32, 7 December 2004

Yes, they will. If my hon. and learned Friend is lucky enough to be on the Committee—although I am not sure whether he would feel lucky to be there—we should value his contribution to getting this right.

Clauses 65 to 68 are about what we colloquially call turning Queen's evidence, and will put a common-law power on to a statutory footing. To give an example, similar powers are used in Australia in about 15 per cent. of convictions for drug trafficking, and in about a quarter of such convictions in the United States. In Britain, the figure is 1 per cent. There is therefore scope for us to look at this issue, with great care. I know that Members will want to examine in Committee how these provisions can operate without encouraging criminals to commit criminal acts to get themselves out of a spot. Obviously, we need to ensure that the proper powers are put in place to ensure that that does not happen.

Clauses 69 to 73 are about financial reporting orders. These measures will close the absurd loophole in which people are able to return to organised crime after they have served their sentence and, in some cases, pick up the assets that they have stashed away so that they can continue to fund and invest in their criminality. As with supervising those coming out after long sentences in other ways, the power will now be available to supervise the use of the resources still held by those individuals, including their bank accounts and other financial holdings, so that we can monitor what they are doing and link it to the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and any further activity can be dealt with and any resources obtained by criminal activity can be confiscated. I am sure that hon. Members will agree that this should have been done a long time ago. The Assets Recovery Agency will be intrinsically involved, and we shall also be able to use the new powers to undertake monitoring.

Clauses 74 to 86 are about witness protection. We need to put on a statutory footing provisions involving the duty to co-operate of agencies such as housing authorities, housing associations and education authorities—in terms of being able to place the children of families who have had to be rehoused, for example. Further provisions include measures to tackle the ridiculous situation involving the disclosure of names, addresses and whereabouts of witnesses, and to ensure that this is simply about witnesses and jurors, rather than about people who have been involved in criminality.

Clauses 89 to 100 are about amending the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, and about the faster disposal and execution of cases involving civil assets. These measures will get rid of a situation that we did not foresee—it has to be said—when the massive Proceeds of Crime Bill was going through Parliament. The situation arises when, if we have not released some of the assets that an individual had, we end up having to pay legal aid in order to be able to prosecute his or her case.