Criminal Justice (International Co-operation) Act 1990 (Amendment) Order 2026

Lord Davies of Gower Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2026 Lords Chamber

I hope, too, that the Minister can update us on the progress the Permanent Secretary has made with their investigations, and whether any further action is being taken. It may be that this is a purely isolated problem, but we need a real commitment from the department to learn all the lessons, and I hope that is what we will hear in due course from the Minister.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for setting out these two draft instruments, which together update the framework governing drug precursor chemicals. On these Benches, we support the objectives of these measures. Drug precursors play a critical role in the illicit manufacture of controlled substances, and it is right that the law keeps pace with international developments and the evolving methods of criminal networks. Strengthening controls and closing loopholes is therefore both necessary and welcome.

The draft statutory instruments will bring the UK into closer alignment with its obligations under the 1988 UN convention by updating the list of substances that it is a criminal offence to supply or manufacture where there is knowledge or suspicion of illicit use. They also seek to address deficiencies in the current regime by aligning the list of controlled substances with those subject to criminal sanctions.

While the substance of these changes is sensible and, as the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has observed, not in itself controversial, the context in which they arise warrants some reflection. The committee has pointed to delays in updating domestic legislation to reflect changes to international obligations and to the time taken to resolve discrepancies between Great Britain and Northern Ireland following the end of the implementation period. There are also concerns about the clarity of the statutory basis for certain authorisations and fees. Although these issues are now being addressed, they underline the importance of ensuring that regulatory frameworks remain up to date, coherent and legally robust. The House is entitled to expect that such matters are identified and acted upon in a timely and consistent way.

In conclusion, we support these instruments and the improvements they make to the enforcement framework. I am grateful to the Minister for bringing these draft instruments to the House today, and I look forward to his response.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful for the comments that have been made and I understand the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s concerns. I hope that the noble Baroness will forgive me if I say that the Government came into office in July 2024 and, as soon as we identified the challenges posed in terms of orders not having been implemented previously, we took action to try to bring this back into some sort of order. There have been, self-evidently, challenges in relation to a number of issues. I cannot ultimately comment on what happened under previous Governments, but I can confirm that we took action on this issue as soon as it was identified.

I can also confirm to the noble Baroness that officials have reviewed electronic records to seek to understand why the Act was not updated earlier. Those records did not indicate the reason for these omissions. That is a fault that we are looking to review. It may be that, since the UN controlled no DPCs between 2000 and 2014, awareness of the need to update the Act when it started doing so was lost within the department. To help mitigate against that in future, we have now created a log of drugs legislation to ensure this does not happen again. Through the order we are debating today, we are trying to put those omissions right.

As the Minister for Policing and Crime set out in her letter to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee on 23 March, the Government understand the committee’s concerns about record-keeping, which has likely contributed to the delay in including the 12 DPCs and the 16 other elements in the Criminal Justice (International Co-operation) Act 1990. As a result, as I have said, drugs legislation logs have been created. The Government consider that the gap in knowledge is unlikely to have had wider implications across the Home Office, but I can assure noble Lords that the Minister for Policing and Crime has raised this issue with the Permanent Secretary. She has asked him to ascertain what Home Office legislation is dependent on or affected by international obligations and how we monitor those international obligations to ensure that any changes are reflected in UK law.

In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, I know that charging and the authorisation of fees being paid was an important issue. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee looked at the issue of plans for fees which were previously charged. I am happy to confirm today that we will be offering refunds to those who have been affected. The total sum is only around £3,000, but it is still an important issue. We will be looking at how we can manage that in due course and I will certainly be examining that with my colleagues in future.

We are where we are. The Government have tried to make some changes with both these instruments brought forward today to ensure that there is a United Kingdom approach and those regulations are now in order. I commend both to the House.

Motion agreed.