Serious Crime Bill [Lords]

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Monday 5th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

We support a series of measures where we think the Government should go further. We will table amendments in Committees and we will probe the detail of the Government’s legislation. I am happy to talk further to the hon. Gentleman about the details of those issues, as they are immensely important.

There are areas where we should do more to take back from criminals the assets that they have stolen from victims of crime right across the country. The aspects that we highlighted in the past related to preventing criminals from switching their assets to family and friends and getting away with it, and toughening sentences to deal with the problem of people serving only short sentences, even though they were continuing to squirrel away huge illegal gains. We support the measures to give more powers to the courts to tackle so-called designer divorces and third parties keeping hold of assets, and we support plans to require offenders to pay swiftly. The Government accept that more can still be done and we will probe this further in Committee.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

What has the shadow Home Secretary got to say about those people in Northern Ireland who make a packet out of smuggling fuel and counterfeit vodka, which was described in the Sunday Independent this week as a multi-million pound vodka moonshine operation by the IRA? People such as Mr Murphy and Mr Hughes, who operate in the border area, have never been put in jail and have never been prosecuted for such activity, yet they are at it at large. What can be done to put those people where they deserve to be?

[Yvette Cooper]

Wherever racketeering and exploitation take place, action should be taken to tackle those serious crimes. It is a problem that we highlighted from the beginning, when the legislation for the National Crime Agency was drawn up, but Northern Ireland is not covered by the work of the National Crime Agency. That continues to be a challenge and to cause problems.

If we can increase the resources taken from the proceeds of crime, that will help victims and also help to improve and support the criminal justice system. I welcome the Home Secretary’s comment today that she believes the Bill will raise additional resources and will save money, and that she will consider extending the relevant measure to those who owe less than the £10 million provided for in the Bill. That is the same policy that she claimed this morning would cost £19 million, and her own document claimed would not save any money at all because it assumed that no one would change their behaviour. So she said one thing at noon and something completely different at 5.30 in the afternoon, and undermined her claims from this morning.

Many other aspects of the Bill have been added as a result of strong campaigns and amendments put forward or supported by Labour in the Lords and by many Members across this House. We welcome, for example, the three new clauses and new schedules added in the Lords for stronger action against the appalling and barbaric crime of female genital mutilation that takes place against young girls. We have called for stronger prevention orders and are glad that they are included, as well as the measures on anonymity for victims and stronger responsibility. I pay tribute to some of the campaign groups which have worked so hard, as well as hon. Members who have pursued the issues. We will look further at the detail in Committee.

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[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Serious Crime Bill. My comments will reflect mainly on parts 1 and 3. I like this Bill. I hope that it puts down a marker that says very clearly that there is no hiding place for criminals involved in serious and organised crime, and that there is no hiding place for those who prey on the most vulnerable in our society. I hope that it also puts down a marker for those who abuse women and girls and that it states that very clearly. Indeed I wish the Bill good flight as it proceeds on to the statute book in the near future.

I agree that much more is required than just a marker for some crimes, especially for those serious and organised criminals. What is required is action. There are several areas where action could be taken and where action will speak louder than words. There are three actions that ultimately should come out of this. The implementation of the National Crime Agency in Northern Ireland is one action that is required but on which this Government have so far failed to act. Secondly, we need to put in place resources to tackle smuggling, particularly the smuggling and the profits derived from the illicit trade of fuel in our country. That is action that could be taken. We should make an example of those known criminals who are involved in this type of serious and organised crime by punishing them properly and by putting them behind bars.

Many who have spoken in this debate tonight boast that this Bill will prove that crime does not pay because assets will be seized and the criminals will be punished. I have a message for this House tonight: crime does pay. In my country, crime pays handsomely. We should stop kidding ourselves that crime does not pay. If we are to deal with these matters, we need to recognise that we must ensure that crime does not pay.

Northern Ireland has become the soft underbelly for serious and organised crime gangs on these islands who operate across jurisdictions and who do not care about the harm that they do to individuals. A blind eye has been turned to that fact. Just this week, we have seen the extent to which these criminal gangs operate. Indeed their ambitions are great. Just a couple of days ago, Donna Maguire and Leonard Hardy were both arrested in Spain for operating a £10 million crime empire. They hoped to buy properties in Lanzarote and across the Mediterranean with money derived from the smuggling of cigarettes across Ireland into Britain and from the smuggling of laundered fuel. Those two individuals were involved in the attempt to murder people in 1985 in the Osnabruck attack in Germany, so they are not the nicest or most pleasant of people. They are not Sunday school teachers at the weekend. They are serious gangsters and I am glad that they have been arrested, but I hope that this time they will end up in jail and that our authorities can co-operate with the Spanish authorities to see them put behind bars for very long time.

Northern Ireland has become the base for such people operating the smuggling not just of counterfeit property but of people, fuel, alcohol, cigarettes, counterfeit goods and, most recently, foodstuffs. All those issues adversely affect the economies of all the British Isles—not just those of Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom and Great Britain, but that of the Republic of Ireland. Just this week, 400,000 counterfeit vodka labels were recovered in a police operation. For more than two decades, that multi-million pound moonshine crime occurred across Ireland, setting up an industry that robbed the credible and lawful drinks industry, robbed Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs of its lawful duty and robbed the revenue authorities in the Republic of Ireland of tens of millions of pounds of lawful duty.

Each year, millions of cigarettes are smuggled across Ireland, north and south, and then across the Irish sea, yet no one is ever prosecuted or put behind bars for these crimes. To those who say tonight that crime will not pay, I say that I will measure that by those who are made to pay rather than by those who are making a very nice living out of such crimes. We can partly blame the loss on the fact that the National Crime Agency is not operational in Northern Ireland, but that is not the only issue. It is very easy for the Opposition to point the finger at the Government and say that they are not doing enough, but, frankly, this crime has been going on for two decades or more and so neither side of the House can say that it is blameless. Both sides have an awesome responsibility to pick up on the issue and to lead on it.

I want to comment on fuel smuggling, which I mentioned in my maiden speech in this House. As we come to the last term of this Parliament, it is important to have a progress report on this important issue. Fuel smuggling and fuel-related crimes are among the most significant crimes occurring across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The A1, the main artery that runs between Newry and Belfast, is called “smugglers’ highway”. There are no HMRC patrols on that road, despite the fact that it is estimated that 50% of all fuel sold in Northern Ireland has been tampered with, stretched or smuggled or has had its marker removed. This happens across Northern Ireland. It is not a border crime and it affects every single part of the Province. My constituency, which could not be further away from the Newry border, has at least three illicit crime petrol stations in it that regularly change their names to avoid being closed down and regularly steal money from the Exchequer, and that money goes back into the hands of the most vile criminals that have operated across Northern Ireland and who are well known—some of whom I have named in this House this evening.

An HMRC officer met the Chair of the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs and me in camera last year and recounted to us a serious allegation that a blind eye is turned to the crime of fuel laundering by, in his words, a senior HMRC official. Far worse than that, some officials were allegedly engaged in helping the criminals. He recounted how he was on duty one day and swapped his patrol duties with another officer. While he was on duty he stopped a vehicle that he suspected of smuggling fuel, and the known criminal driving the vehicle addressed him by name and told him that he was not supposed to be on duty that day on that road. That information could only have come from one place and one person, yet it reached that criminal.

Another three officers, two of whom our Committee met in private, left their jobs because they did not feel that they could continue in their employment with HMRC because of bullying by a senior officer who they said was engaged in aiding and abetting this fuel crime. Indeed, the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee was so alarmed by the extent of the crime that we spoke with the police in Northern Ireland. I understand that they are investigating that senior officer and his involvement in these crimes.

That should be a wake-up call to this House about how serious these people are, how far they will go and how far they can reach into officialdom to get help. I have absolutely no doubt that officials are scared stiff of the threat, because they know that the people involved in serious organised crime were involved yesterday in murder and mayhem. It is the same people and this House has a duty to help to stop them.

I believe that the Home Secretary will agree that this is a terrible turn of events and must be taken in hand. It is estimated that such groups defraud HMRC and the revenue authorities in the south of Ireland of hundreds of millions of pounds a year—hundreds of millions of pounds. We are not talking about a small crime involving a few million quid but about £600 million being stolen from our Exchequer in the last year. That is how much money our Government in Northern Ireland is about to borrow from this Government to help run their economy. That is how serious the crime is, yet it is done with ease. It is easy pickings. We must wake up to it and so must the Government.

Not one person was arrested or jailed for these crimes in the past eight years. They are multi-million pound crimes occurring on our doorstep and not one person has been arrested or jailed. We have heard fine words tonight and have a very fine Bill, but we require dedicated action in the weeks, months and years ahead. We need a marker in our fuel that works and I welcome the work done by the Chancellor and his team on this, as I believe that they are trying to address this problem.

I have spoken to the Chancellor and his team in the Treasury and I believe that they are doing their darnedest to make that happen. I wish them Godspeed in that, but I fear that others, particularly in the Northern Ireland Office, might have another agenda: to let former terrorists keep their crime business and not to get involved in stopping this crime. People might say that that is preposterous, that no Government would engage in that, and that a secret deal would have to be done, but we had a secret deal done on the on-the-runs. I have absolutely no doubt that if it has to come out, evidence will emerge that will show that the previous Government, under Mr Blair, were involved in ensuring that criminals could continue in this business of fuel fraud. The Government should stop it; they have the power to stop it and know how they should stop it. I have spoken to the Chancellor directly about it and I hope that actions will now be taken to address it as we come into the last weeks of this Parliament. I hope it is not the case that those crimes go so deep, but I fear that it is. In the next few days, we will be able to judge how serious the Government are.

Not content with dealing with fuel as something to smuggle and the subject of criminality, the same gangsters are now attacking another important sector, having turned their attention to undermining our food security. We have good, clean, traceable food in Northern Ireland—indeed, it is the mainstay of industry and business in all our constituencies. Without agriculture and agri-food products, most of our people would be unemployed, so it is an essential industry, yet crime gangs—the very people who are also involved in smuggling fuel, tobacco and people—have now turned their attention to how they can make illicit gain from our food industry. Those involved in the horsemeat scandal that emerged just a year and a half ago operated out of Newry—the same people as have been identified operating fuel fraud in our Province. Not only are the same people involved in committing those crimes, but the same benefactors are behind them. Once again, action by this Government is needed.

I welcome what the shadow Secretary of State said about the National Crime Agency; she was robust and firm, and rightly so. I sat on that Committee with the late Paul Goggins, and I admired his action and the points he made on that very issue. I believe—I have said this in previous debates—that the current Government should legislate over the head of the Northern Ireland Assembly and introduce legislation for an operational National Crime Agency in Northern Ireland. Ministers have previously said that they would not do that. That is their position; I disagree with them.

I have a challenge for the Opposition tonight. In May, they hope to form the Government of this country. Will they now make it clear that they intend to legislate to implement the National Crime Agency in Northern Ireland? That is an important question for the Opposition. It could be a deciding factor in whether they have support from those on these Benches in the years ahead. They should tread carefully and make sure that they are prepared to implement the National Crime Agency in Northern Ireland, because the fine words we have heard from the Opposition are indeed fine, and I admire them, but I challenge them to say now whether, after May, when—if—they form a Government, they will take that action. There is little point lecturing—indeed, at times berating—the Home Secretary on weakness if the Opposition support the same weakness by their own inaction.

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[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Serious and organised crime poses a severe and growing threat to those in our country. It poses a threat to the pensioner who is vulnerable to online financial scams. The hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) spoke of “the little people”: one vulnerable pensioner in his constituency was ripped off by £27,000. It poses a threat to the child who is vulnerable to those who prey on children, and to child sex exploitation. That obscenity, which has existed for many years and exists to this day in our society, was brought to life today by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), my hon. Friends the Members for Stockport (Ann Coffey) and for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), and the hon. Member for Mole Valley. It also poses a threat to our economy, which is vulnerable to cyber-attack and, in particular, to the impact that it might have on our finance and our infrastructure. That was brought to life by the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond). It was right that the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) said that there should be no hiding place, and it is also right for the House to act.

The Bill contains some welcome moves. We will support the Bill, but we will seek to strengthen it during its passage through Parliament, because this Bill lacks the ambition necessary to respond to the scale and seriousness of serious and organised crime. It contains some significant omissions, and the Government have failed to recognise the argument put forward by a number of Members today: that legislation is crucial, but so is enforcement, in the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe). As the shadow Home Secretary said earlier, we now have a situation where reported rape is up, but prosecutions are down, and violent crime is up, but prosecutions and convictions are down, because there is a justice gap—a simple failure to enforce the law. Indeed, the Chair of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), was right to refer to the fact that there have been two convictions for FGM.

I have to say that in addition to the failure to enforce the law, this is the worst possible time for the Government to impose the biggest cuts to policing in any country in Europe. With the mounting challenges of serious and organised crime, that is having a significant impact, in particular in areas such as tackling child sex exploitation. I have met the Association of Chief Police Officers leadership dealing with Operation Notarise and, as the shadow Home Secretary said earlier on, 20,000 people have been identified but 700 have been acted against at this stage. At the heart of that is the fact that the police service, with the immense pressures on it, simply cannot cope, and therefore those who pose a significant risk and whose identity is known have yet to be acted against. That cannot be right.

I will now turn briefly to the six sections of the Bill. The Proceeds of Crime Act was introduced by a Labour Government in 2002. At the heart of the action now being taken is two damning reports produced in the last 18 months, the first by the National Audit Office and the other by the Public Accounts Committee. There were some 673,000 convictions in the courts in 2012-13, but there were 6,392 confiscation orders, and only £26 in every £100 is recovered and, to add insult to injury, it tends to be the Costa del Sol bank robber who gets away with it most. That is why I think there are serious flaws in the legislation—the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) was right in relation to the incentive scheme and how it works—and that is why we have pressed for action on a number of fronts, and we welcome the fact that some progress is now being made on designer divorces, default sentences, the requirement to bring forward the determination of third-party interests from the enforcement stage, and reducing the time given to offenders to pay confiscation orders. However, we need to go further to ensure that crime does not pay and we will be tabling amendments in Committee, including for the burden to fall more heavily on the criminal to prove they do not have the assets that should be seized.

On computer misuse, cyber-crime is a growing area of concern in the UK. As we live in an increasingly digitised world, the nature of crime is changing. Credit card fraud, identity theft, phishing, child exploitation and industrial espionage are all perils of technological advancements. The hon. Member for Wimbledon was right to talk about the immense damage that can be done, including to our economy. As on the European arrest warrant, the Government are right on this front also to recognise the benefits of European collaboration, by implementing the EU directive on attacks against information systems. We therefore support the legislation the Government are bringing forward which creates a new offence of hacking that causes serious damage and makes it clear to UK citizens that they will be committing a crime whether it is in the UK or not.

However, an Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary report released last year found that, despite the growing risks, only three police forces had sufficient plans in place to deal with a large-scale cyber-attack. Furthermore, it revealed that only 2% of police staff across 37 forces had been trained in investigating cyber-crime. Resources are therefore key, and so too is a serious strategy to combat cyber-crime. We will argue, therefore, for police forces to provide annually details of their cyber-crime strategy and their progress to date, and also for the targeted recruitment of cyber-crime and financial experts and for the private sector to rise to the challenge. To this end, we want to see many more examples of what I have seen in the City of London police’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau—namely, the use of seconded experts from banks and insurance companies. Such institutions need to do much more to tackle those practices that damage their customers as well as their reputation.

On organised serious and gang-related crime, many criminal gangs involve corrupt and complicit professionals who support and benefit from organised crime. The gangs use their expertise and skills to help them to evade the law; those people are the professional enablers of crime. The Government have been right to act on this practice; they have also been right to shift on this matter during the debates in the House of Lords in order to get the balance right. The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd was also right to say that it is important to ensure that those who are innocent and inadvertently caught up in illegal activity are protected.

We believe that we have reached the right place on that particular issue, but we want to explore in Committee the question of serious crime prevention orders. We shall also table amendments to the proposals for gang injunctions, not least because we have heard worrying reports from front-line professionals about the operational effectiveness of such injunctions and the impact of the abolition of antisocial behaviour orders. We will press those matters further during the passage of the Bill in Committee.

Part 4 of the Bill covers the seizure and forfeiture of drug-cutting agents. Certain chemical substances can mimic and resemble drugs and can therefore be used as cutting agents for bulking illegal drugs to maximise criminal profit margins. Those substances also pose a threat to drug users, some of whom pay with their lives. We support the Government’s proposal to allow law enforcement agencies to seize any substances reasonably suspected to be intended for use as a cutting agent. However, this part of the Bill feels very much like an empty promise, not least because the latest Home Office figures on drug seizures show a dramatic decrease in the volume of drugs seized by police forces over the past year. Indeed, with mounting pressure on resources, the number of heroin seizures between 2009-10 and 2012-13 fell by more than 50% despite the fact that there was only a marginal decrease in its consumption rate.

Part 5 covers the crucial matter of the protection of children. There is now a great national will to tackle the exploitation of children by evil adults who prey on their vulnerability. That has been reflected in the debate here today. We have heard excellent contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Stockport and for Rotherham and the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams). It is welcome that the Government have acted in the Bill, but it is surprising that they did not initially go far enough. For example, following a campaign by the NSPCC and Lord Harris of Haringey, the Government have now moved to include in the Bill an offence of sending sexual messages to a child, which is welcome. Similarly, following a campaign by the charity Action for Children, the Government changed their position on child neglect by updating the offence to include emotional neglect and psychological harm.

We have heard powerful testimony here today of the need for the Bill to go further, and for us to stop demonising the victims of child sexual abuse—for example, by branding them as prostitutes. We have heard of the need for a fundamental culture change. Crucially, however, this is about what we do, which is why we intend to propose a measure to make it a mandatory duty to report such abuse. This would make it clear that cultural change must take place in every institution. Anyone who knows something must report it, and not be tempted to think that such matters can be solved quietly and privately by brushing them under the carpet. A clear message needs to be sent that people should not put institutional reputation before protecting children.

In Committee, we will also press for further action on female genital mutilation, which is recognised internationally as a violation of the human rights of girls and women. We have heard powerful examples today of the need to strengthen the Bill in this regard, but time does not permit me to go into further detail. However, we will seek to strengthen what are welcome steps in the right direction. The Government have moved, but they need to move further in the next stages of the Bill.

Let me refer briefly to part 6. We support the proposed new offences on extra-territorial jurisdiction for offences committed under the Terrorism Act 2006 and on possession of a knife in prison, and the proposals on mobile operators being obliged to disconnect those in prison.

In conclusion, this has been a well-informed debate on the scale and growing danger of serious and organised crime, with support from across the House—

[Ian Paisley]

The hon. Gentleman will know that during my contribution I asked the Labour Front Benchers whether, in tackling serious and organised crime in Northern Ireland, they would commit any future Labour Government after May to legislate to ensure that the National Crime Agency is operational in Ulster.

[Jack Dromey]

We understand the concern expressed by the hon. Gentleman, and the Government should have sorted this issue a long time ago. We will talk to all parties in Northern Ireland about making progress at the next stages. We see the strength of the argument being deployed and are sympathetic to it, but this is about how then we might go forward and that is necessarily done in dialogue with the parties in Northern Ireland.

This well-informed debate has drawn on the experience of many Members of this House, and there has been much common ground. We want to ensure that the Bill becomes a strong Act, with strong action then taken to ensure the will of this House is acted upon. As we have seen time and again in today’s debate, times may change and the nature of crime may change, but we need to send an unmistakable message to those engaged in serious and organised crime: there will be no hiding place.