Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Smith and Robert Buckland

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor General]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his place—another experienced lawyer. The work that has been done by the Crown Prosecution Service in the past five years in removing excessive expenditure in the back office and concentrating on the front line has yielded results. I am absolutely confident that issues of resource will never get in the way of the proper investigation and prosecution of such allegations.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

3. What his future funding proposals are for the Serious Fraud Office; and if he will make a statement.

[The Solicitor General (Robert Buckland)]

The Serious Fraud Office is a small and demand-led organisation that comprises investigators, prosecutors, accountants and other specialists. The model, which is known as the Roskill model, gives the director of the SFO the flexibility to have the right combination of expertise to tackle the most complex and large cases. The current blockbuster funding approach allows him to take on cases that are exceptionally demanding in terms of resource, such as the LIBOR case, while avoiding the need constantly to maintain high levels of permanent staff, which are not always necessary.

[Nick Smith]

The SFO going cap in hand to the Treasury when it wants to take on a major case could mean delaying justice. Why not let moneys recovered by the SFO be kept by it so that it has autonomy?

[The Solicitor General]

Attractive though that proposal sounds—I take it in the constructive spirit that I know the hon. Gentleman intends—my worry is that that is an even more uncertain means of funding the SFO. The advantage of blockbuster funding is that it allows the SFO the flexibility it needs, allows significant amounts of money to be allocated to its work, and proves the point that funding will never be a bar to the work of the SFO in investigating serious fraud.