Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Baroness Doocey Excerpts

Monday 28th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, I broadly welcome the Bill, but I have some concerns about Part 1. My greatest concern is how the Bill will affect the battle against child trafficking and I endorse all the comments made in this area by other noble Lords.

It is not clear to me where responsibility will sit in the proposed new set-up or how the NCA will address the trafficking of children as part of its remit. The information available suggests that responsibility will be split between two separate operational commands of the NCA and child trafficking will not be a primary duty of either of them. If this assessment is correct, the Bill will create a very unsatisfactory situation. The ideal solution would be the establishment of a single, child-focused operational command within the NCA, whose specific remit is to deal with all child-related crime, including all forms of child trafficking and child exploitation.

I would like now to turn to budgets. The NCA will have a wider reach than its predecessors, yet it is proposed that the NCA will be delivered within the budget of its precursor organisations. This is to be achieved through effective prioritisation and smarter use of assets. But the NCA will be a major new organisation, which will require considerable IT support and equipment for it to be effective. I have great difficulty believing that this can be achieved within existing budgets.

I very much welcome the proposal to establish an intelligence hub within the NCA, but it will not be effective unless it is properly resourced, staffed with real experts, and equipped with state-of-the-art information technology. Efficient IT must play a key role in the NCA. However, most existing police IT systems are incompatible, antiquated and require the endless keying and rekeying of the same data. Given that the intelligence hub will be central to the functioning of the NCA, and that IT will be central to the functioning of the intelligence hub, it is absolutely essential that IT systems facilitate easy access to electronic intelligence. So we need to know how the Government propose to resolve the issues around the interoperability of the various IT systems.

The Bill is unclear about the relationship between the NCA, chief officers and police and crime commissioners. In particular, the directive powers of the NCA, especially directed tasking, appear to conflict with the statutory responsibilities of PCCs for the totality of policing within their jurisdiction. The Bill seems to assume that the priorities of PCCs will automatically be aligned with the directive powers of the NCA’s director-general. But what happens if the NCA requests or requires police force A to provide assistance to police force B just before an election, when the PCC of force A wants his officers to concentrate all their energy on local issues in order to get re-elected? The Government need to provide greater clarity regarding the interrelationship between the NCA and PCCs and how conflicts will be resolved.

The NCA will have considerable powers, so formal scrutiny, investigations and inspections must be rigorous and transparent. The NCA will be subject to investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission and to inspections by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. The Bill proposes that the IPCC will treat any wrongdoing in the NCA in the same way that it treats ordinary police forces. Although the IPCC may implement any of four modes of investigation, in practice, in most cases, it opts for supervised investigations, which effectively means the police force investigating itself. The IPCC justifies this policy on the grounds of limited resources.

The NCA will have far greater powers than an ordinary police force. It therefore follows that any wrongdoing must be independently investigated, so that the public can have confidence in the processes and procedures. Likewise, the proposal that HMIC will arrive at an agreed framework for inspections with the NCA is unsatisfactory. There also need to be unannounced inspections to help maintain public confidence.

At least some, and perhaps most, NCA officers will have operational powers, but NCA officers do not necessarily need to have held operational powers previously. There is also a proposal to appoint volunteer officers, similar to special constables. I very much welcome that, because I think that it will enhance the agency, but there will be a significant need for training for both full-time officers and volunteers. This training will need to be done on a one-to-one basis rather than by officers sitting in front of a computer, so it will cost a lot of money. Will the new professional police body be responsible for organising training for the NCA, or will training be split between various providers? If the latter, how will consistency be maintained?

How will the culture and benefits of employees who come from significantly different backgrounds be brought together? How will police terms and conditions be aligned with those of the security services or Customs and Excise? If one employee has a larger pension, does it follow that another gets higher pay? If there are differences in pay and benefits between NCA employees, that could cause internal problems, but if the employees are all on similar benefits, there could be disparities with the organisations from which they are drawn. That could lead to perverse incentives at one end of the equation or the other, with either a glut or a drought of employees with particular skill sets.

I hope that the Minister can address those concerns in his response.