Serious Crime Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Swinfen and Lord Howarth of Newport

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, when I first studied the Bill and saw that there were clauses relating to cybercrime as well as substantial parts focused on the problems of drugs, I thought that the sections on cybercrime would have something to offer on the development of the Government’s strategy to deal with our immense problems with drugs. However, I cannot see that there is any connection between these different parts of the Bill. That is a disappointment.

Will the Minister share with the House some of the thinking of the Home Office as to how it proposes to address the rapidly developing and immense problem of drugs-related cybercrime? As I noted at Second Reading, the internet has transformed the marketing and distribution of drugs, whether they are proscribed or whether they are new psychoactive substances that are not proscribed. It is now far easier for those who produce these substances and those who sell to be linked up with those who are interested in consuming them. Social networking has intensified this ease of communication. For example, I understand that it is not at all uncommon when party invitations are distributed by means of social networking that the message will contain a link to the point at which particular fashionable, newly arrived substances can be obtained.

This problem presents huge challenges to policing in terms of protecting the safety of all people, particularly young people. The Government and law enforcement agencies must be thinking very hard indeed about this. It would be helpful if the Minister would say, were he to accept my noble friend Lady Smith’s amendment, what he would expect to see in these annual reports on the subject of drugs-related cybercrime. We have social networking, which uses relatively familiar and accessible networks of communication, but there is of course the dark web. The Home Office must again be pondering and working very hard indeed to find ways in which it can even know what is going on on the dark web, let alone to police it. These are hugely important issues, and perhaps the noble Lord would share his thoughts on them with us.

[Lord Swinfen]

I also support the amendment. In doing so, I declare an interest: I run a medical charity that does all its work online, with doctors and nurses in 74 different countries. However, I am not so much worried about that, because I hope that our confidential information is secure. I am thinking of people using cybercrime to find their rivals’ pricing information and new product designs when tendering for various projects; in other words, hacking into other people’s and firms’ computers and getting confidential information for their own pecuniary and business advantage. This is an important amendment and I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will consider it sympathetically.