Serious Fraud Office: Bryan Evans

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Robert Buckland

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Solicitor General]

I know that the hon. Gentleman raised that point in an intervention in the September debate, so he has consistently advocated on behalf of his constituent. It would be wrong of me to start prejudging or second-guessing what the independent prosecutorial authority should do—that would be inappropriate—but I can tell him that the co-ordinated work that he, his constituent and other similarly affected people do, of course, improves the intelligence picture. It cannot do anything but assist the authorities in understanding the true extent of frauds of this nature, so I am grateful to him.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The Solicitor-General is giving a very helpful answer. Is he struck, as I am, by the incredible system similarities between the case outlined today by the hon. Member for Gower (Byron Davies) and the case that my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) and I outlined? The parallels between the two cases are incredible, and I know of at least half a dozen more out there that other Members of Parliament have raised.

[The Solicitor General]

I have heard the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Member for Gower. Although I do not want to start making evidential judgments about similar fact evidence, I take the point.

In the brief moments I have left, I turn to the specific allegations that my hon. Friend has made today. It is, of course, unusual to comment in detail on specific allegations, but I want to say a few brief words about the case.

As has been explained, Mr Evans had obtained a secured loan from the bank in relation to a land development in 2007 on the basis that the land would be turned into a mixed leisure development. It was valued accordingly at between £4 million and £6 million. However, by 2009, due in part to some planning permission issues, the development had not been carried out. The bank appointed a receiver and the value of the land, which was security for the loan, was reassessed and subsequently put at the dramatically different figure of £1 million. The allegation is that this was an orchestrated devaluation by the bank and the receiver.

The reason why the SFO has not opened a formal investigation relating to Mr Evans’s allegations is that they do not, of themselves, amount to the type of matter that the SFO is there to investigate. That is not to minimise the seriousness of the allegations. The situation would have a significant impact on most of us if it happened to us, but in the context of the SFO criterion, the potential scale of the loss is somewhat limited and the allegations are not complex. They relate to one surveyor falsifying a valuation on behalf of a bank, and therefore I have to be honest and frank and say that the issue of the wider public interest does not actually apply, so the situation would not call for an SFO investigation.

However, as I have said, the SFO will keep the allegations and the information that it has received on file, and will consider the matter again if further information comes to light. In particular, given the points that hon. Members have made today, if there is evidence to suggest that the allegation is part of a more widespread issue, the matter will be revisited.

I hope that what I have said gives my hon. Friend the Member for Gower some assurance that the Serious Fraud Office has fully considered the allegations referred to it and will consider any further evidence, but, for perfectly proper reasons, at this stage has decided not to investigate the allegation.

Question put and agreed to.

Alun Richards and Kashif Shabir: SFO

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Robert Buckland

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Solicitor General (Robert Buckland)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I pay warm tribute to the hon. Members for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) and for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) for bringing this important debate to the Chamber and for having not only the courtesy but the sense of co-operation to approach me before it so that I could clearly understand the cases that would be raised. I hope, in the light of that, to offer an appropriate response. My response has to be calibrated bearing in mind the nature of the office I hold and the importance of having an independent prosecutorial service, and I know that Members on both sides of the House understand that.

I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) and welcome her to her post as shadow Attorney General. I was delighted to hear her remarks. Although no doubt we will disagree about some issues, I am sure we will be able to work constructively together in the finest traditions of the Law Officers and shadow Law Officers, and their unique role within Government.

The issues that have been raised—it is almost axiomatic, but it is important to say it—are important. They are wide-ranging and the presence of the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) has been helpful, because, as he reminded us, he was the Chair of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee that took oral evidence in March. I am grateful to him for coming to the debate. He will appreciate that issues of regulation are for other arms of Government, but one function of debates such as this is for the House to hear the bigger picture, so that all arms of Government are fully aware of Members’ concerns.

The hon. Member for Cardiff Central asked for a general review. As she will know, there have been a number of reports and reviews on specific aspects of this type of alleged misconduct. We heard reference to the Tomlinson report, which, in itself, gave rise to what is termed the skilled persons report under section 166 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. That report is due to be produced at the end of the year. It relates to another bank, but the type of alleged activity is highly germane to the issues that we have been discussing.

I hope that hon. Members will forgive me for confining myself to the debate’s terms of reference. What I aim to do, first, is to offer strong reassurance to hon. Members about the importance with which the SFO regards all allegations and the threshold test that it must apply.

I listened to the shadow Attorney General’s remarks with great interest. I disagree with her about the very nature of what is a demand-led service and the importance of having blockbuster funding to allow for the flexibility that the SFO needs, in terms of hiring or engaging staff, and larger numbers of staff at different times, particularly to deal with finite inquiries. There is also the impracticability of maintaining very large staffing numbers at all times because of the inevitable pressures that will exist upon its budgets, whatever the economic weather. With respect, the point that the hon. Lady was missing was the terms of reference within which the SFO was set up, and it is important to remind the House about those, because they are highly germane to the test that has to be applied to all allegations of fraud.

Those of us with a long memory will remember the Roskill report of 1986. It was groundbreaking because it made important recommendations about the investigation of serious fraud that gave rise to the Criminal Justice Act 1987. The Roskill model, which was the embedding of investigators and prosecutors together in one group, gave rise to the Act and setting up the Serious Fraud Office.

The sort of cases that the SFO deals with are what I, and I think all of us, would regard as the very high-profile, big-risk cases involving huge sums of money, large numbers of victims or new types of fraud, whether the manipulation of LIBOR rates, or allegations involving major companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, Barclays, Tesco and Rolls-Royce. This is a particular type of serious fraud for which the threshold has to be high and, in fact, it is set out in the Act. We therefore have to recognise that, sadly, not all cases of alleged fraud are going to fall to the SFO to investigate. As I said, it can only formally commence investigation if the criteria and circumstances set out in legislation are met.

The police have the primary responsibility for investigating crime here, and Action Fraud has been established as the national reporting centre to which reports of alleged fraud should be referred in the first instance. The SFO’s role is limited to the investigation and prosecution of cases of serious and complex fraud. However, I can assure the House that when referrals are made to it, a member of the SFO assesses every single one. That task is not to be underestimated. The vast majority of referrals to the SFO are not about matters that it can properly investigate, but it takes every single referral seriously, and it will give each one due consideration and pass on details to other agencies that may be more suited to dealing with it or placing particular cases. It also retains the material that it has been given, using that for intelligence purposes to help inform other agencies and, indeed, sometimes in its own work to identify those top-tier cases that are appropriate for it to investigate.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I thank the Minister for the helpful way in which he is laying out his points. He mentioned the threshold test. If evidence was to be gained that this went beyond two individual cases and that there were far more, would it pass the threshold test? If that is the case, rather than relying on the CPS or on individual prosecutions, would it be, in the light of the questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central, appropriate—or, in fact, necessary—for the SFO to make inquiries of Lloyds, RICS, and Alder King in relation to how many examples of conflict of interest and potential financial gains along the way this could affect? If we are talking about thousands of people—my apologies for the length of this intervention, Mrs Main—I suspect we are in SFO territory.

[The Solicitor General]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman can be forgiven for the length of his intervention, because he asked a very pertinent question. Although I cannot prejudge the precise parameters of what might happen in the future, circumstances may well change, and the SFO, keeping matters under review as it does, would then have to be guided by that change in circumstances. In other words, we cannot rule that possibility out. It would be wrong of me to do that.

Dealing, then, with the specific allegations, I have to acknowledge that it would be unusual for me to comment in detail about allegations either leading towards an individual or made by an individual or a company, but I am aware of course that Mr Shabir and Mr Richards have raised their allegations with a wide range of people and organisations, and I do not underestimate their importance. The two gentlemen clearly have had a very difficult time. The consequences of what has happened are extremely serious for them. That said, I have to stress that these remain allegations. It is not for me to comment on their merits or whether they are well founded. I have to acknowledge the effect of allegations that are made, and that is an important point when discussing them in a public forum such as this. Those are the constraints within which I think I should operate.

Although Mr Shabir and Mr Richards have presented their cases together, they are making slightly different allegations. It is right to say, as has been said in the debate, that the SFO has met the gentlemen on more than one occasion; the allegations have been considered in great detail; and there has been close liaison with other law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies to gather any relevant material that they may hold. However, the SFO has explained to both gentlemen that their cases, individually, would not meet the threshold and would not be investigated, because as stand-alone allegations, they do not come into that top tier. That has been made clear. We have already—I am grateful to the hon. Member for Ogmore—started to outline and discuss what might or could happen to change that position, but that is the status quo.

I have said that it is important to recognise that the SFO does not investigate every case of alleged fraud—that is not its purpose—and I know that despite referrals to other organisations, no proceedings have yet been brought. However, the material provided by Mr Richards and Mr Shabir is being kept or has been kept under active consideration by the Serious Fraud Office, and this matter is kept under review as new information may arise. It is not a closed file, but obviously at this stage the threshold has not been reached.

This is exactly what the SFO should be doing. It is seeking to make intelligent and intelligence links to identify cases of serious or complex fraud. To seek to investigate every case would defeat its purpose and overwhelm its resource, and frankly it would have no statutory footing on which to do so. I argue strongly that the current director has demonstrated that he is prepared to take on difficult and high-profile cases. The seriousness of the investigations to which I have referred will, I hope, demonstrate to hon. Members the sort of case that the SFO should be taking on. In other words, the office has a specific role that Parliament has given it. If the SFO can put all these allegations together with other intelligence to establish a case of serious or complex fraud, it will do so, and that is why it has decided to keep this significant matter under review.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Robert Buckland

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor-General]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. The amount of money or financial equivalent now being generated by pro bono work is about £601 million-worth of work. A number of family case judgments have recently caused a lot of interest. In two of them in particular I am glad to say civil legal aid was awarded after full information was obtained. In another case, there were particular difficulties with the application of the threshold test in an application to discharge an adoption order. I know those matters are concerning the Ministry of Justice, and I am sure my colleagues in that Department will be able to deal with the issues as they arise.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

The firms and individuals who engage in pro bono work are to be commended, but we in the UK are not alone among continental neighbours in being behind the curve in terms of our pro bono offer at the same time as legal aid has of course been cut. Does the Minister, as pro bono champion, anticipate that pro bono will now fill the gaps left by the withdrawal of legal aid?

[The Solicitor-General]

Pro bono work is never a substitute for legal aid. It is an adjunct to legal work, but not a substitute. That has applied throughout the development of pro bono work, and at various times we have seen previous Labour Governments make changes to legal aid. I think it would be wrong to correlate the two.

Autism

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Robert Buckland

Tuesday 20th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Buckland]

I want to ensure that today’s debate takes place in that cross-party spirit. Members from all parts of the House warmly supported the provisions of the 2009 Act. I appreciate that Governments have conflicting priorities and pressures on their time. It was through the support of all parts of the House that that private Member’s Bill became law. There is a common purpose in the Chamber today, in relation to both the progress that has been made and our aspirations for our constituents who have autism and their families.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and others for securing this debate. Will he note that in Wales, the levels of employment among people with autism are worse, with 7% of those with autism being in full-time employment and a further 6% being in part-time employment? This House should join together in congratulating the Welsh Assembly Government, who have recently appointed an autism employment ambassador to champion the cause of those with autism in employment. That might be something that this Government would like to consider as well.

[Mr Buckland]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. It is concerning to hear that the figures in Wales are dramatically lower than those in England. Clearly, the Welsh Assembly Government have to take their own course. Anything that is designed to promote the interests of young adults and adults with autism and their route into work has to be welcomed. It is early days and I very much hope that we will see a dramatic improvement in those concerning statistics.