Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (Search, Seizure and Detention of Property: Code of Practice) (Northern Ireland) Order 2024
Lord Morrow Excerpts(2 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Lord Browne of Belmont (DUP)
My Lords, I support this draft instrument. It goes a long way in allowing the police and law enforcement agencies to seize and recover illicit proceeds of criminal activity. Unfortunately, in Northern Ireland the threat from terrorism remains at “substantial”. Paramilitary organisations remain active and many former paramilitaries are heavily involved in criminal activity. They are highly organised and sophisticated in their activities. As we have heard, they are well versed in utilising modern technologies to their advantage.
In particular, cryptocurrency has increasingly become involved in almost every criminal activity that matters to anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing. Marketplaces on the dark web use cryptocurrency to facilitate the sale of drugs and unlicensed firearms, which provides a substantial monetary advantage to these criminals and paramilitaries. The Financial Conduct Authority’s marketing rules have brought crypto assets into the spotlight. Criminals can launder this money using clean intermediary pseudo-anonymous e-wallets and virtual private networks. Through a series of steps, they can withdraw cleansed funds, so it is important that the legal authorities have all the necessary powers to keep ahead of the criminals.
The measures contained in this order will go some way to combating illegal activity. Of course, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Empey, these illegal activities can operate across borders and worldwide. I therefore ask the Minister: has there been any consultation and is there any co-operation with the Garda Síochána in the Republic of Ireland? Again, are our law enforcement and police properly resourced to carry out this new order?
I believe that this revised code of practice relating to the search, seizure and detention of property meets the right to private and family life under the European Convention on Human Rights. I am sure that law enforcement will go about this in a proper manner, so I am pleased to support this order.
Lord Morrow (DUP)
My Lords, first, I apologise for my earlier indiscretion; I thought my phone was on silent but it was not.
I am looking at the extension of powers in relation to restraint orders. I hope that it is as good as what it says here; in fact, I would like it to be even better because, in the past, we have often been the victims. In saying this, I am not casting aspersions on anyone sitting here today, but we have been the victims of political restraints. We often find that, if it is not politically expedient for things to happen, they do not happen. I hope that, as a result of what we are hearing here today and this draft statutory instrument, that will not be the case.
In paragraph 13 of the code of practice, which is headed “Extension of powers in relation to restraint orders”, we are told—I have no problem with this—that this measure will align Northern Ireland more with the United Kingdom. As the noble Lord, Lord Empey, rightly said, we have too much unalignment at times. If this is implemented—it is a sincere piece of work—we can look to better days. In the past, in Northern Ireland, bordering the Republic of Ireland, there has always been this element of smuggling from one territory to another; some people have gotten very wealthy on it. I just hope and trust that, when this SI comes into force, there will be co-operation between the security forces on both sides of the border to bring this scandalous activity to an end.
In the past, in terms of government, there has been too much of us turning our heads and looking the other way; it is a feature that happens here. I trust that that is going to cease and that we will no longer have to tolerate an activity that, to put it mildly and succinctly, is illegal criminality—as well as everything that goes along with it—happening on our borders. I hope that this instrument will go some distance, if not the full distance; I would like it to go the full distance but, if it does not, I welcome the fact that, as is mentioned here, there will be a genuine effort to stamp these criminals out and take them out of activity, no matter whom that hurts. In the past, it has perhaps not been politically expedient to do that, so I ask the Minister to assure us that that will not be given any account as a result of this instrument here.
Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)
My Lords, I, too, will welcome the Minister’s reply. I regard him, as I have done for many years, as a friend; I am delighted, therefore, that he is here answering our questions. May I make a statement? First, it is so important to put anything that makes life more difficult for criminals on the statute book because no one should benefit from criminality, irrespective of where they may come from.
The truth is that criminals always seem to be ahead of the game and Governments always seem to be catching up. No matter how far you go, criminals’ skills and craft to carry on their criminal activity seem without bounds. Therefore, we have to do all we can to ensure that their programme is impeded.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, said that the code is not as yet drawn up, but I noticed that paragraph 5.7 of the Explanatory Memorandum says, “The codes require”. If they are not drawn up, how can they require? It says:
“The codes require an officer who is contemplating using the powers to consider the impact on the community in their use, balanced against the public interest and the benefit the use of the powers would add to the case”.
My noble friend Lord Morrow, mentioned that point. This is what concerns me because, as my noble friend pointed out, we had this scourge in the past: if it somehow impacted on a particular community, you did not act. People were therefore not only surprised by the authorities’ inactivity but annoyed because it seemed that they could act if it was a different community but, in a certain community, they did not. I want the Minister to assure me that, when it comes to this statutory instrument, no officer will be compelled
“to consider the impact on the community in their use, balanced against the public interest”,
because criminals do not care who they impact on. Therefore, we have to ensure that their programme is impeded and that the proceeds of their crime are taken.
Paragraph 6.1 of the EM says:
“POCA provides powers to recover the proceeds of crime”.
Can the Minister clarify where the proceeds of crime go when they are seized? Who benefits from the proceeds that are seized? Knowing exactly where the proceeds go is important.
The last thing I want to draw attention to is paragraph 7.2, which says:
“On the codes generally, law enforcement agencies’ responses requested clarification of certain definitions in the legislation and additional guidance on the practical operation of the powers to seize cryptoassets and related items”.
I would like the Minister to clarify whether these clarifications on the definitions were requested by the people who responded. Has proper clarification of certain definitions in the legislation and guidance been given?
Finally, it is right to say that the resource implication is so important, because we know that we do not have sufficient officers to carry out policing on the ground in Northern Ireland. We are well below the target that was said to be necessary to police Northern Ireland. I do not want resources to be taken from that and put into this; rather, money needs to be given to ensure that we have the proper agency to tackle those who carry on with criminal activity.
King’s Speech
Lord Morrow Excerpts(4 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Lord Morrow (DUP)
My Lords, I too congratulate our new Ministers. I suspect they will not have a bed of roses, but nevertheless I wish them well. I know they will make an honest attempt to do what is right, should the stars fall.
In my opinion, the British justice system, once viewed as the finest in the world and the envy of many nations, has been brought into disrepute by the political contortions of consecutive Governments, particularly in Northern Ireland, since the early 1990s. Indeed, on one occasion in this very House I heard a noble Member call for inquests into the fatal shooting in June 1991 of three terrorists in the small rural village of Coagh, which is in my home county of Tyrone. These terrorists were intercepted by the army while they were engaged in a murderous attack in 1989 on unarmed men, two of whom were pensioners having a conversation in a garage, but there was no call for a public inquiry into their deaths. I thought that quite ironic, and I suspect that many in this House think that too.
It seems that justice, in Northern Ireland in particular, is now defined as justice for the perpetrator. Victims are relegated to the second division or treated like second-class citizens. It is time that the Government promote true justice for victims and not demean our justice system by seeking new ways to distort the justice system; I am speaking about the whole of the United Kingdom. It is a system that seems to placate the enemies and those who carry out these dreadful deeds. I hope that the new Government will bear this in mind—I am hopeful that they will—when they consider new legislation in repealing the legacy Act. We have had enough amnesties in Northern Ireland to do us for three lifetimes.
Unless the law is changed between now and November, this is the last King’s Speech before a profound and disturbing home affairs development which the new Government inherit from their predecessors. In March 1972, the Westminster Parliament intervened to collapse Stormont. I can just about remember it. The Stormont Parliament was dismissed at the fell stroke of a pen. Since that point, there has been an absolute principle of Stormont that, on matters of controversy where a proposition is regarded by either community as constituting an existential threat, no decisions can be made at Stormont on a majoritarian basis. We do not do majority government at Stormont.
However, this important protection of devolved government was not convenient to the European Union and so it is to be swept away. At some point between 1 November and the end of December this year, Northern Ireland is to be propelled back over 50 years, and the first majoritarian decision at Stormont is to take place since 1971-72. I was informed just today that the actual date has been set.
To really understand the enormity of what is proposed, we must understand two things. First, we are looking not only at the first majoritarian vote in 50 years on a matter of controversy but at the most controversial vote to ever come before Stormont in its 103-year history. The effect of supporting the Motion that the Government are currently required by law to send to Stormont in November will be for MLAs to effectively renounce their rights and the rights of their constituents to be represented in the legislature making the laws to which they are to be subject in some 300 areas. I am not talking about 300 laws; I am talking about 300 areas —and they will extend, I think, to well over 1,000 laws, when calculated.
If this is not enough, those laws will be made by a legislature that, while not involving any part of the United Kingdom, involves the Republic of Ireland. The most immediate effect of the legislation is the creation of an all-Ireland economic nationality. Simply put, that means the joining up of two economies—a de facto united Ireland by another name.