Elfyn Llwyd
Main Page: Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)Department Debates - View all Elfyn Llwyd's debates with the Home Office
(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Mrs May
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the support he has shown for the National Crime Agency. I think that the agency is on the right track. There is always more that can be done, but the NCA is obviously building up its operations and capabilities. One crucial difference between the NCA and SOCA is the way in which the NCA operates with police forces around the country. There is also a clear intelligence hub at the heart of the NCA, which means that operations are being focused on the most harmful threats. In every case, a decision is taken on whether it should be a collective operation, an individual force operation or an NCA operation, and on what assets should be brought to bear in those operations.
I shall talk about those aspects of the Bill that will strengthen our ability to get hold of criminals’ assets, as that forms an important part of the work that is being done. Criminals want to make a profit out of their activities, and the more we can do to disrupt them and to access that money, the better. Of course, there is always more that can be done. Parts 1 to 4 of the Bill deal with ensuring that we are able to give the NCA and other agencies the powers that they need to bring offenders to justice, to deprive them of the proceeds of crime and to prevent them from engaging in further criminality. Under this Government, asset recovery has been stronger than ever before. We have recovered around £746 million of criminal assets. We have returned some £93 million to victims, and denied the use of £2.5 billion-worth of assets that have been frozen by the courts. However, we can and must do even better.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I fully endorse the provisions of the Bill that will make it easier to attach assets resulting from criminal behaviour. The Home Secretary referred earlier to pensioner scams, of which there have been many in my constituency recently, as well as in other parts of north Wales and in Cheshire. Sometimes we have the Cheshire police, the Greater Manchester police and the North Wales police all investigating the same crime. Surely we need better co-ordination if we are not to waste effort in such an unproductive way.
Mrs May
The way in which the National Crime Agency operates involves a decision on how best to deal with any particular organised crime group that comes to its attention. The agency works with individual police forces as well as with the regional organised crime units to ensure that assets are being used as effectively as possible against the organised crime groups. I am not saying that a situation such as the one the right hon. Gentleman describes could never happen, or that different forces are never involved in investigating the same crime. However, before the NCA came into being, we set up an organised crime co-ordination centre to consider precisely that issue. We do not want anyone to slip through the net, but we also do not want police officers operating against an organised crime group to be put in danger because of the operations of another force. There might be more work to be done in this regard, but there is now a much greater ability to co-ordinate, particularly through the regional organised crime units.
Mrs May
I look forward to hearing what my hon. Friend says about this later and the detail that I am sure he will fill in. We are addressing the whole question of the risk that an individual may face from female genital mutilation in the new offence of failing to protect a girl from the risk of FGM. It is important that those who have responsibility for these young girls and are aware of what might be happening recognise that they need to do something to ensure that the individual is not at risk and is not put through FGM. I look forward to hearing the arguments that my hon. Friend will advance later in relation to his point.
Part 5 of the Bill includes another child protection measure in making it an offence to possess so-called paedophile manuals—material that contains practical advice on how to commit a sexual offence against a child. It beggars belief that such things actually exist, but regrettably the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, a command of the National Crime Agency, has seen a number of examples. That being the case, it is right that we act to outlaw the possession of such material. In doing so, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), who has campaigned assiduously on the issue.
If there are other gaps in child protection legislation, we are determined to take the necessary action to safeguard those at risk of harm. That is why last month my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced that we will amend the Bill to make it an offence for an adult to communicate sexually with a child. Many hon. Members have supported the campaign by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and I pay tribute to them for highlighting this gap in the law.
Before leaving this part of the Bill, I confirm that we will table amendments in Committee to strengthen the protection afforded to the victims of domestic abuse. As the House knows, over the summer the Home Office ran a consultation seeking views on whether a specific offence was needed to criminalise coercive or controlling behaviour in intimate personal and family relationships, and 85% of respondents agreed that the law in this area needed to be strengthened. With over 1 million calls for assistance to the police each year for domestic abuse-related incidents, but only 78,000 prosecutions, it is clear that the criminal justice response to domestic abuse is woefully inadequate. The new offence will provide an additional charging option where there is a pattern of non-violent controlling conduct, the cumulative impact of which can be no less traumatic for the victim.
Mrs May
Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will allow me the next sentence.
I am aware that a number of hon. Members, including the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), have campaigned for the introduction of such an offence. I pay tribute to Members who have brought this important matter to the attention of the House. Does the right hon. Gentleman still wish to intervene?
Mrs May
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the interest he has taken in this subject and the way he has pursued it.
Finally, the Bill will close a gap in our current legislation in relation to terrorism. Clause 72 extends the reach of the UK courts so that those who prepare or train for terrorism abroad can be prosecuted should they return to this country. As the House is aware, a significant number of UK nationals or residents have travelled to Syria and Iraq to take part in the conflicts in those countries. We face the very serious threat that those fighters may seek to return to the UK and carry out attacks or radicalise people here. Extending extra-territorial jurisdiction for the offences in sections 5 and 6 of the Terrorism Act 2006 will bolster our law enforcement agencies’ ability to protect the public—but we will need to do more. Later this week, the House will have the opportunity again to debate the wider provisions of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, which is designed to disrupt the ability of people to travel abroad to fight and to counter the underlying ideology that feeds and supports terrorism. Given the immediacy of this threat, we will bring forward amendments in Committee to provide for the provisions in clause 72 of this Bill to come into force on Royal Assent.
Before I conclude, I want to advise the House of one further amendment that we will bring forward in Committee. The use of unauthorised mobile phones in prison poses a significant threat to prison security, as well as affording prisoners the opportunity to continue engaging in serious and organised crime while serving their sentence. While significant effort is put into tackling this problem within prisons, physically detecting handsets, let alone SIM cards, is clearly challenging given the ease with which they can be hidden. We need to find a more cost-effective way of denying prisoners the use of mobile phones. Our amendment will therefore confer a power on the civil courts to require mobile network operators to disconnect unauthorised mobile phones in use in prison.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) who has brought a great deal of expertise on cybercrime to the House. As we approach the last 12 weeks before Parliament must be dissolved, some might have thought that the temperature would rise. However, we have a crime Bill that will pass through the House of Commons not unchallenged by the Opposition, but with their support and that of all the other parts of the United Kingdom. That is a recognition of the fact that we are dealing with very serious issues on which there is common ground. I welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate and support the Government’s agenda, with the caveats expressed by the shadow Home Secretary in such a constructive way. I am not quite saying that peace has broken out, but it is good to see Parliament working together on an issue of such importance.
This would be a Christmas tree Bill, but we have passed Christmas and are now in the new year—I am not sure what the parliamentary term is for so many different parts of the Home Office’s agenda put into one Bill.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee earlier reminded us that we are within about 12 weeks of breaking off for the next election. I am in the happy position, as he also reminded us, of not standing at the next election, so I hope I can speak with a touch of objectivity. That said, the debate so far has been interesting and, for a change, it has provided more light than heat and there has been very little political bickering. Everyone who has spoken has accentuated certain points in this wide-ranging Bill in different ways—interesting ways, and no doubt sincere ways, too.
It is a great pleasure to follow my fellow Welsh Member, the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams), and I am aware of the work he has done, with other Members, on the subject he addressed. I am pleased that it seems likely that the matters for which he has been pleading will come to fruition. In my experience, however, civil servants are always more difficult to persuade than Ministers—a common experience that we all share, I am sure.
I by and large welcome the Bill and believe that the provisions on confiscation orders, for example, will be helpful to the courts, making sure, as was said earlier, that crime does not pay. That is so, particularly in the more straightforward cases in which the courts exercise their power to determine the extent of the defendant’s interest in a property. There remain, of course, rights of third parties to intervene and claim proprietary rights and so forth, but in the round I think the provisions are quite well drafted and I suspect that they will be used more often than the Government assume. The default provisions are welcome, too, and may well persuade a defendant to pay up rather than serve a substantial extra sentence.
The Bill is a good example of legislation having been improved by its passage through the other place. During its stages there, the Government conceded a number of amendments, which have arguably made it a better piece of legislation. One example was the Government amendment to the provisions in clause 44 relating to being part of an organised crime group. When the Bill was first announced in June this year, the Government couched these provisions as a mechanism that would
“send a clear signal to discourage corrupt and complicit professionals and others who provide the materials, services, infrastructure, information and other support that organised crime groups need.”
It was evident from the start that this aspect of the Bill was one that the Government were keen to highlight for various reasons.
However, organisations such as the Law Society voiced their opposition to the original wording, and made the point that the way in which the mens rea of the offence was drafted was too broad and could, in fact, catch individuals who were unintentionally caught up in a situation. The Government accepted the recommendation of the Law Society’s money laundering taskforce to change the mens rea from “reasonable cause to suspect” to “reasonably suspects”—in other words that the individual had participated in an organised crime group. That is to the good, for sure.
As the noble Lord Bates said in the other place:
“In Committee, noble Lords were concerned that ‘reasonable cause to suspect’, as an objective test, could capture the unwitting or naive and that there might be instances where the ‘reasonable cause to suspect’ became clear only with the benefit of hindsight. In providing for a threshold of ‘suspects’ without qualification”
in the amended Bill, it
“certainly deals with the concerns about inadvertently capturing the naive or unwitting.” —[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 October 2014; Vol. 756, c. 143.]
That acceptance by the Government is important not only in its own right but as an example of accepting the advice of experts. I find it reassuring in light of the furore about joint enterprise charges relating to murder. Although it is slightly tangential, it is still relevant. The serious disquiet of many senior members of the judiciary and of the Justice Select Committee is, it seems to me, good evidence of that.
I shall, however, concentrate on part 5 of the Bill, which I believe contains the most progressive measures. Clause 65 introduces an offence of child cruelty, and, crucially, does so by balancing physical with psychological harm. I am pleased that the Government have seen fit to recognise the debilitating impact that psychological abuse can have on children, which was mentioned a moment ago. I shall say more about the principle that psychological harm can be every bit as damaging as physical violence when I explain why I wholeheartedly support the Government’s proposal to insert an offence of coercive control at a later stage.
Organisations such as the Children’s Society fear that the Bill does not do enough to protect victims of child neglect and cruelty, because the Government have not taken the opportunity to amend the definition of a child to include everyone under 18. We often pay lip service in recognising that lacuna in the law, which has already arisen in many other pieces of legislation since I have been a Member of Parliament, and we all say sincerely that we need to do something about it. I am sure that amendments will be tabled in Committee to address what is an all-important issue.
As Members in all parts of the House know all too well, both the United Nations convention on the rights of the child and the Children Act 1989 define a child as a person under the age of 18. However, the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, which provides legal protection for children from abuse and neglect, defines a child as anyone under 16. As a result of that discrepancy, 16 and 17-year-olds are not afforded the same protection as those younger, in spite of the fact that last year 1,110 of them were recognised as children at risk of significant harm and were subject to child protection plans. Furthermore, in 2014 Ofsted reported 40 serious incident notifications from local authorities relating to 16 and 17-year-olds, and, distressingly, 25% of victims of forced marriages fall into the same age bracket. Those young people need our protection, but, in the other place, the Government would not accept the need for the Bill to be amended to give them the same legal protection from cruelty and neglect. I hope that they will see fit to change their mind during its Commons stages.
I welcome clauses 68 to 70, which result from Government new clauses that were passed in the other place. Female genital mutilation is a scourge on any society that allows the practice to continue—and that includes our own communities here in the United Kingdom, where too many young girls are forced to undergo an horrendous procedure from which they will never fully recover. I pay tribute to Members of the other place for passing the new clauses, which introduce, severally, an offence of female genital mutilation, an offence of failing to protect girls from the risk of it, and FGM protection orders, as well as—crucially—anonymity for victims of this shocking crime.
The other place backed the new clauses, which is something that it does not do lightly. What is more, it did so with the support of scores of outside groups and organisations, not to mention that of the public at large. That is really no wonder, given that, according to a study compiled by Equality Now and City university, nearly 137,000 women and girls in England and Wales are affected by FGM. We owe it to young girls from communities that still employ this barbaric practice to do all that we can to ensure that they do not fall victim to the same fate.
Let me now say something about the proposed new clauses introducing an offence of coercive and controlling behaviour in the context of domestic abuse. In the other place, peers such as my noble friend Lord Wigley and Baroness Howe discussed how the Bill might be amended and used as a mechanism to strengthen the law covering domestic violence. They tabled an amendment which argued that, for the purposes of the Bill, domestic violence was considered to be a serious offence. During wider debate on the amendment, peers discussed the need to give greater protection to victims of domestic violence that is psychological and coercive.
I must declare an interest. Last February, I introduced a 10-minute rule Bill that would give statutory underpinning to the cross-Government definition of domestic violence, which is
“any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality. The abuse can encompass, but is not limited to: psychological; physical; sexual; financial; and emotional”.
In fact, the Association of Chief Police Officers got there before the Government: it has employed that working definition for some time, which is another reason for it to be enshrined in statute. As I said when I introduced my Bill, it is not currently a legal definition. Gaps in the current legislation allow perpetrators of psychological, emotional and financial abuse to continue their abuse without facing recourse for their actions.
The principal gap in the law is the fact that coercive and controlling behaviour is not currently an offence in the law of England and Wales. My Bill, which also sought to close that gap, received cross-party support. I am grateful for the support of the hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland), who is now the Solicitor-General; the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan); the hon. Members for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech), for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) and for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell); the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier); the hon. Members for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), for South Down (Ms Ritchie) and for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn); and my hon. Friend the Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams).
Over the summer, the Home Office launched a consultation on whether to strengthen the law on domestic violence, which included discussion of whether an offence of coercive control should be introduced. I understand that the consultation received more than 700 responses. On 18 December last year, the Home Secretary published a written ministerial statement which confirmed that a new offence of coercive control would be introduced now, and I welcome that move. Clearly the devil is in the detail, but I am sure that the proposal is well intended, and that, given proper scrutiny, the right measure will be on the statute book.
At present, in the absence of any laws relating specifically to domestic violence, conviction rates in England and Wales are depressingly low, and the crime is still under-reported. Research conducted by my office established that, in American states where specific domestic violence laws have been adopted, conviction rates are impressive. It is understood that in England and Wales, in the five years leading up to 2011, only 6.5% of domestic violence cases reported to the police resulted in convictions. That is an appalling statistic. In contrast—and according to a slightly different measure—studies compiled in the United States have reported a 39% incarceration rate in Brooklyn, New York, and a one-third conviction rate in North Carolina. Evidently, adopting stronger, specific domestic violence laws could have a real impact in England and Wales as well. Moreover, the overall incidence of domestic abuse of this kind has fallen dramatically in the United States: according to commentators, it is about 30%.
I hope that we shall be able to enact such a provision, although it would require extensive police training. The police would need to learn how to investigate the new offence, and how to recognise the behaviour involved. I hope that, if I am nominated to do so, I shall be able to discuss the issue in greater depth during the later stages of the Bill. However, I welcome the Government’s intention to introduce the provision.
All in all, the Bill has many good aspects. It needs proper scrutiny and it needs to be strengthened, but it goes in the right direction.