Specialist Printing Equipment and Materials (Offences) Bill
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
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The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)
I add my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Mr Amess) for taking the Bill through the House and for raising awareness of this serious issue, which affects a significant number of people throughout the country. I am certainly grateful for his kind words of introduction, and I am very pleased to be here to support him, as I have in so many different ways over the years, and to see this Bill progressing.
Stealing people’s identities, or creating false identities, is generally used as an enabler for a number of serious crimes such as fraud, terrorism, immigration offences or gaining access to children and vulnerable adults. I therefore agree with my hon. Friend that the Bill is a very important step in tackling a crime that has the potential to endanger the safety and security of our citizens. I welcome the support for the Bill across the House and endorse the comments of the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), who spoke for the Opposition. My hon. Friend, working in a cross-partisan way, has secured the support that the Bill requires, underlining the important issues, recognised on all sides of the House, that show why the Bill is needed.
It is important to tackle this issue at its source and prevent criminals from gaining access to the specialist printing equipment that is capable of making a range of identity documents, such as false passports, driving licences, travel documents and birth certificates. As the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd) rightly pointed out in Committee, it is possible to prosecute individuals or businesses for conspiracy to defraud under the Fraud Act 2006. However, this is not easy to prove and requires a lot of time and resources to take forward.
The Bill will strengthen the police’s powers in this area and send the message that this Government and this House take criminal behaviour very seriously: if you are colluding with criminals, you are a criminal. There is strong support for this Bill from both the police and the specialist printing industry. Some 81% of respondents to the Government’s public consultation supported this measure, with 93% agreeing that legislation would act as a deterrent to those who seek to sell this equipment to fraudsters. That is important, because if fraudsters cannot get hold of the specialist equipment that they need to manufacture false documents, they will not be able to manufacture them, and we shall be able to prevent a range of crimes that could otherwise have been committed through the use of those false documents.
The Bill is proportionate. It does not affect the law-abiding majority, but introduces sanctions to deal with those who knowingly collude with identity fraudsters. I hope that all Members will support this much-needed measure, which is an important step in the tackling of identity crime. I congratulate my hon. Friend again, and I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.