Lords amendment: No. 1.

I beg to move, That this House
agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

With this we may discuss Lords amendments Nos. 2 to 12, 41, 42 and 48 to 56.

It may help our deliberations if I say immediately that I shall be advising the House to accept all the amendments made in the other place. In most cases I shall urge the House to accept the amendments with alacrity, given that they were Government amendments. In one instance, however—the provisions on incitement to religious hatred—I shall, with heavy heart, invite the House to agree with the Lords amendments. We shall come to that in a while; suffice it to say that we agreed to remove the incitement provisions only in the interest of securing the passage of the rest of this important legislation.

All the amendments in this group relate to part 1. Clause 10 would have given the Home Secretary a power to direct the Serious Organised Crime Agency to set itself targets to measure how well its performance fulfilled any strategic priorities determined by the Home Secretary under clause 9. That would have added to SOCA's accountability. Nevertheless, both here and in the other place the Conservative party expressed concern about the perceived political influence of the Home Secretary over SOCA. In the interests of securing consensus on the SOCA measures, we agreed that clause 10 need not stand part of the Bill. After all, the SOCA board would itself want to establish a robust performance management and assessment regime.

In the same vein, I commend the amendments to clauses 18 and 19. The amendments would also have the effect of reducing any alleged political interference in the affairs of SOCA. They remove the Home Secretary's ability to attach conditions to the payments of grants to SOCA, thereby giving the agency greater flexibility in apportioning its funds to meet the unique challenges of tackling serious organised crime in the 21st century. On the other hand, the amendment to clause 17 will ensure, reasonably, that were the Home Secretary to request Her Majesty's Inspectors of Constabulary to inspect SOCA wholly or partly in Scotland, he must consult Scottish Ministers before doing so.

Amendments Nos. 8 to 10 and 52 deal with the prosecution of offences investigated by SOCA and ensure that SOCA has access to the best possible legal advice during a criminal investigation and that the most appropriate prosecutor can be assigned to take a case to court. The new clauses inserted by the amendments extend the functions of the Revenue and Customs Prosecution Office, the new prosecution body that is to replace the Customs and Excise Prosecution Office, so that it may also institute and conduct criminal proceedings that arise out of a criminal investigation by SOCA. That will ensure, in line with the Attorney-General's wishes, that the skills and experience that have been built both within the Crown Prosecution Service and CEPO in prosecuting serious organised crime are available to SOCA. The new clauses also provide for the issue of joint directions by the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Director of Revenue and Customs Prosecutions, setting down criteria for determining which prosecutor will take responsibility for any given case initiated by SOCA. Amendments Nos. 10 and 52 make technical, consequential amendments.

Amendments Nos. 12, 48 to 50 and 53 to 56 are straightforward and deal with the area of discrimination legislation as applied to persons seconded to SOCA. The sentiments behind the amendments were brought to our attention by the Police Federation, to which we are grateful. The amendments bring into one place under a single clause the discrimination legislation to provide that SOCA is liable for any act done by it in relation to persons seconded to the agency, as well as anything done by such persons in the performance or purported performance of their functions. They also expressly provide that SOCA is liable for any discriminatory acts committed by any of its secondees, be they constables or other persons.

Amendments Nos. 41 and 42 give effect to the one recommendation in the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee report on part 1, namely, that the order-making power in clause 50 should be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.

Amendment No. 51, which was necessary in light of the Road Safety Bill's not securing Royal Assent this Session, will allow SOCA to be included in the provisions that exempt emergency vehicles from speed limits where it is necessary in the pursuit of their functions. Section 87 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, which makes that exemption, will not automatically extend to SOCA, as the agency will not be a police body pursuing police purposes. The provision includes safeguards limiting the exemption to SOCA staff who are carrying out the purposes of the agency and to those who are undergoing training to do so and covering only those vehicles driven by someone who has had training to drive at high speeds.

I hope that I have outlined the Government's thinking and given an explanation of the deliberations in the other place.

May I, in the spirit of the words of the Minister, say that the Opposition agree with these amendments and therefore we will not vote against any of them? I do not think that that will come as much of a surprise to her. She is aware from the words of the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend David Davis, that we largely agree with the Bill. Our reservations were on the issue of religious hatred. As she says, we will come to that issue shortly.

We largely support the Bill. The Minister will confirm that it has been constructively debated in Committee and in both Houses. I believe that it has been improved. It has not had added to it the constructive approach that we took on intercept evidence. That has been debated in both Houses and there have been differences of view across the political parties. We regret the fact that that provision has not been included. We also regret that the provision for 24-hour fully manned surveillance and embarkation controls at our ports, which would have brought a big improvement to immigration and customs, has not been added to the Bill, although, as the Minister will be aware, that is a Conservative pledge in the forthcoming election. Had it been included in the Bill, it would have greatly improved it.

I am grateful to the Under-Secretary for outlining what the amendments will achieve. In Committee, Opposition Members were keen that the agency should have operational independence and that the Home Secretary should not be able to set performance targets. We fully accepted that the Home Secretary should be able to set targets in respect of strategic performance, but not performance targets. These amendments accept our arguments.

Amendment No. 12 concerns an important issue that touches on the role of constables. The Under-Secretary knows that there was disagreement in Committee and on the Floor of the House and we remain concerned that the Bill could undermine the role of the constable. She will have heard the words of the Police Federation and we are disappointed that the words of the Conservative party and of the federation appear to have fallen on deaf ministerial ears.

The Under-Secretary has explained what the new clause is designed to do. I am grateful to her for that and, on that basis, we accept the amendments.

Lords amendment agreed to.

Lords amendments Nos. 2 to 12 agreed to.