Money Laundering
Debate between Ben Wallace and Nigel Huddleston(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Wallace
The right hon. Gentleman knows that I will not come to the House and publish the names of individuals who may or may not be the subject of an investigation or of operations against them because it could threaten our ability to have an effect on them. Needless to say, we are determined to ensure that we use intelligence-led policing to find money and deal with those individuals, whether they are from here or abroad.
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
These crimes can be horrendously complex. Can we be confident that the SFO, the NCA and other bodies have the skills and resources to investigate them properly?
Mr Wallace
Yes. As I said at the beginning, one of the challenges of taking on people with deep pockets or large corporations is that they have no qualms about setting off to the Supreme Court or the High Court to challenge us. We are keen to ensure that we support the NCA with unexplained wealth orders, because some of the people to whom they serve them have a brass neck and are happy to challenge us. That is why we put in blockbuster funding for the SFO, which means that when there is a case of significant scale, it can access funding directly from the Treasury to ensure that money is not a barrier to taking on some of those very bad people.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ben Wallace and Nigel Huddleston(6 years, 8 months ago)
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Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
Is the Home Office confident that it and its agencies can compete with the private sector, and recruit and retain people with the key digital and cyber skills that we need?
The Minister for Security and Economic Crime (Mr Ben Wallace)
For security reasons, I am unable to comment on specific recruitment levels and on the geographical distribution of police and intelligence agencies in specialist areas, but I assure my hon. Friend that we are seeing strong levels of recruitment. GCHQ and the National Crime Agency are doing great work in encouraging the next generation of cyber-sleuths through their Cyber First programme.