Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Condon]

My Lords, I would not seek to challenge the architecture in the Bill for control and accountability, but it is not a question of all or nothing—there can remain clear direction and control by the director-general and clear accountability to the Home Secretary and onwards to Parliament. Nevertheless, I hope that the Minister will find ways to reassure your Lordships’ House and the wider public that in this day and age notions of good governance demand that there should be something more than just that naked architecture of the DG in control and the Home Secretary being accountable. It would be good to have reassurance around the notion of a management board, a supervisory board, an advisory board or some board mechanism that allows both stakeholder interest and independent voices to contribute to the health and well-being in the future of the NCA so that issues such as value for money, good governance, priorities and so on could somehow be part of a wider debate within that family than just between the DG and the Home Secretary. I understand that the Bill and this agency will deal with some of the most challenging criminal matters facing the country. Should terrorism subsequently also be transferred as a responsibility to the NCA, I understand that there must be very clear direction, control and accountability, but a committee-type model does not fit well with those demands. Nevertheless, there is ample scope for reassurance around the notion of a management board that involves stakeholders from the police service, the emerging police and crime commissioners, the wider local authority family and the business community. I hope that the Minister, today or subsequently, will be able to give us some reassurance that the Bill will be able to move us in that direction.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I certainly do not want to fall into the trap of automatically accepting the Government’s architecture for these proposals. However, the amendment put forward by my noble friend does not necessarily undermine that architecture. The key point of this part of the proposed legislation is the creation of a new National Crime Agency. That is the key concept, and in this group of amendments we are dealing with some of the accountability mechanisms and the arrangements that will be put around the agency to ensure that its governance is of an appropriate and effective standard.

Let us be clear why this is important. The National Crime Agency, as proposed, will be a tremendously significant organisation. It will be responsible for ensuring that as a country we deal effectively with the most serious types of crime. In due course, it may be responsible for dealing with terrorism. This is not some minor government body; it is an extremely important part of the arrangements that we put in place to ensure that our citizens are properly protected against serious crime.

The other fundamental part of the architecture of the Bill, if you are wedded to that architecture, as no doubt the Minister is—no doubt we will come onto this in due course—are the provisions within the legislation that enable the director-general to require from police services around the country various things to happen. There is a potential power of direction—and certainly the expectation in terms of individual operations—that local police forces will work with the National Crime Agency to ensure that certain operations proceed. The relationship between the director-general and individual chief officers of police will be a fundamental one. That is precisely why, when we look at the governance structures and the arrangements that will be put around the director-general, we need to ensure that there are appropriate mechanisms for chief officers of police and those responsible for their governance, in terms of police and crime commissions, to be adequately represented within them.

The Government have to put forward a clear justification as to why this very lean approach to governance has been included in the Bill. As a number of your Lordships have already indicated in Committee, there is a virtue in having a proper governance structure, a group of non-executives and a group of individuals to whom the director-general must report or explain or expand on his or her proposals on how the agency goes forward. That is not to decry the direct accountability to the Home Secretary because it will be the Home Secretary who will, whatever is written into the Bill, have to answer to Parliament as to whether this new structure works. It supports that function and gives the Home Secretary reassurance that all the processes and procedures that any sensible Home Secretary would expect to be around the director-general are in place.

I am not suggesting that the Home Secretary is incapable of providing adequate supervision of the agency. I am simply saying that it is not necessarily the most effective or efficient way of doing it and that some board structure supporting that process is better and more likely to be successful. I have looked for precedents for this sort of one-to-one relationship between the Home Secretary and significant agencies. For 175 years the Home Secretary was the police authority for London and at the end of those 175 years the Metropolitan Police was so well governed, despite the excellent leadership at that stage provided by the noble Lord, Lord Condon, that it did not have a system in place—it was a £2 billion business at the time—for telling whether it had paid a bill more than once. I rather suspect that had the Home Office—I absolve previous Home Secretaries from day-to-day responsibility for this—been doing its job properly proper accountancy systems would have been installed within the organisation. However, the supervision of the Home Office and the Home Secretary was quite properly on the main policing issues, which would have been advised by the noble Lord, Lord Condon, and his predecessors as Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. This was not about the way in which the organisation was run, administered or governed. That is the natural tendency. Home Secretaries are busy people. They have broad responsibilities. They are not going to be involved in day-to-day issues about the robustness or otherwise of governance structures. The history of the Metropolitan Police is not a sound precedent.

More recently we have the precedent of the border agency. Here, the opposite problem seems to have occurred. You seem to have a Home Secretary—perhaps successive Home Office Ministers would be a fairer way of putting it—who wanted certain things to happen and applied pressure on the border agency to do so. You then end up in arguments about what was said to whom by whom because of that one-to-one relationship. In all the fuss that there was a few months ago about whether certain expectations were being bypassed to let people into the country and remove queues, would it not have been better for there to have been a supervisory board between the Home Secretary and the chief executive of the border agency where there would have been a record, minutes, and perhaps an opportunity for dissent to be expressed? All that would be missing in the arrangements for the National Crime Agency, which raises the question of whether we are not in danger of creating a structure where the Home Secretary has too much of a role in respect of a policing body.

In this country, we have always expressed real concern about politicians having direct operational control of policing. That is part of the reason why there was a little bit of debate about the creation of police and crime commissioners, but that debate has moved on and we are now well into the process with the Labour Party having today announced a selection of candidates for those positions that includes my noble friend Lord Prescott. The Labour Party will clearly have an excellent set of candidates and we wait to see whether the Conservative list will be quite as exciting or interesting. The reason that there was some concern about that and there is even more concern about a national agency directly under the control of a single politician is the danger that that power is abused. I am certainly not accusing the present Home Secretary of having any desire to abuse that power. I am simply saying that we are creating a structure where such an abuse is possible and that it might happen in future.

Imagine occasions when there is a considerable threat from some organised crime group or a terrorist organisation, if that is the direction that the new agency goes in, and it is the responsibility of the Home Secretary to direct what the agency should do. The guarantees in the Bill for operational independence do not amount to very much in those circumstances. There is no place for control freakery here. This has to be about a proper system of governance. In a few years’ time, I would not want people to be making all sorts of sinister connections between policing operations that happen under the auspices of the National Crime Agency and saying that there are sinister implications that they have been personally directed or required by the Home Secretary, but that is the danger of the governance model that the Government have created.

My final point returns to what I mentioned in passing earlier. A critical part of this new agency will be the ability of the National Crime Agency to say that it wants local police forces to carry out or collaborate on particular operations. The danger of having a National Crime Agency that is divorced from the rest of the police structure is very real. I recall the discussions that took place over several years to try to get a system that worked on counterterrorism with primacy for one force and the ability to make operations happen across the country. It was not an easy process. The Government are making it more difficult for the director-general of the National Crime Agency if there are not police and crime commissioners or chief officers of police playing an active part in the governance of this new organisation. If they are there, if they are around the table and able to say, “This is a better way of doing that”, or to encourage the director-general to do things in a way that ensures their collaboration, that is surely going to mean that it is more likely that this new agency will succeed.

My noble friend’s amendments, which address precisely those points, are very welcome. There is a slight drafting error in that they make no reference to London, but I am sure that could be adjusted when we return to this at a later stage. The key issue that the Minister has to explain today is why this particular governance model has been put forward and why it is genuinely an improvement on a supervisory board which involves, for example, chief officers of police and police and crime commissioners.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, I hope that in due course I will be able to answer those points, in particular those final questions from the noble Lord, Lord Harris. I begin, though, with two points. First, my noble friend Lady Hamwee referred to “architecture”. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Condon, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, also used that word. My noble friend did not particularly like the term and I agree with her. I find it inelegant, but as a form of shorthand, it is quite useful on this occasion. Therefore, I suspect that architecture is something that might be referred to. Secondly, I make a brief apology to my noble friend about the website.

I was discussing the Home Office website with the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, earlier during the Division that took place. We have had some problems with the Home Office website. This is true of other government departments, all of which have been targeted. I hope to write to the noble Baroness in due course and I am more than happy to copy my letter about the problems we are having with the website to my noble friend Lady Hamwee. It can be difficult for all noble Lords if, in trying to discover what the Home Office is doing—or any other department for that matter—they cannot get into our website. Obviously, that is the means on every occasion by which we learn what is going on. There have been problems and we hope to address them. Perhaps for the first of many times, I give way to the noble Lord.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, since the Minister raises the issue of the website, I believe that the Home Office’s explanation of why booklets will not be issued about the election of police and crime commissioners is that people will be able to access the information about candidates from the website. When the Minister writes to my noble friend, what reassurances will he give that the elections will not be interfered with by the same sort of malign intervention on his website?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, before the noble Baroness tells the House what she proposes to do with her amendment, perhaps I may raise with the Minister the way in which references to the framework document are set out in Schedule 2. We are told that the document will deal with ways in which the NCA is to operate, including how it,

“is to be administered (including governance and finances)”.

No doubt the Minister and his officials will consider further the points that have been made today—I am by no means certain what should happen after this stage on this issue—and at least they will consider whether the term “administered” covers the issues of governance which noble Lords have raised. To me, governance is not something which is included in administration; it is an issue on its own. To include it within administration downgrades its importance.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

Before my noble friend responds to the debate, perhaps the Minister will also tell us precisely when we are likely to have this framework document. Clearly, he is saying, “Don’t worry your heads about the governance arrangements because when you see the framework document you will be entirely satisfied and it will all be all right. Therefore, this amendment is unnecessary.”. We are in Committee and have not yet seen the framework document. The Government announced their intention to create a national crime agency nearly two years ago, so it is quite extraordinary that this fundamental piece of the jigsaw is not available to us. It would be very helpful to have it.

Incidentally, while the noble Lord was speaking, I checked on the Food Standards Agency. As far as I can see, it has a fully functioning board; I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is its chair rather than the head of the agency, but that is a mere detail.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McColl, for introducing the subject of child trafficking into the Committee today. One reason why it is so important that we look at what should or should not be written into the Bill about child trafficking, human trafficking, child exploitation and so on is the concern that there will be, from those who are concerned with these issues, that somehow these matters will get lost in the new National Crime Agency. I recall the concern expressed when SOCA was set up about what was to happen to the high-tech crime unit. It appeared to disappear completely. Because that unit had disappeared into the new agency, it was not apparent to those who had been working with it whether those activities were still continuing as time went on. There is a very real concern that some of these issues about child exploitation, human trafficking and so on may disappear or not be given the same priority.

Part of that comes back to what I suspect may not be included in this much vaunted framework document, which is: what governance and external-facing relationships is the National Crime Agency going to have? CEOP, for example, has a highly regarded partnership structure that relates to other organisations which are active in the field. It relates to those technology companies and to all sorts of organisations which need to work with it to help deal with child online exploitation. The danger is that unless we are told explicitly that these activities will carry on and that those relationships with external agencies will continue, some of them will disappear. There is a real fear about some of these activities and relationships as far as CEOP is concerned, which is why we are seeing amendments such as the one before us that are trying to pin down what the responsibilities will be on issues such as trafficking and child exploitation. I hope that the Minister can give us some reassurance that these issues will be dealt with explicitly in the framework document, so that we can be reassured that the National Crime Agency will continue to have robust external relationships on this range of issues.

[Lord Rosser]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord McColl of Dulwich, has long championed the issue of child victims of human trafficking, having had, I believe, a Private Member’s Bill in the last Session and an amendment to the Protection of Freedoms Bill to introduce a system of guardians for child victims who enter the system. His amendments today, however, relate to including in the NCA’s statutory functions a duty to fulfil the requirements of the EU directive on human trafficking. They also provide that the functions of the National Crime Agency would include the functions of the UK Human Trafficking Centre and of CEOP. We support this group of amendments as a means of strengthening the requirement on the Government to implement the directive fully and of providing clear roles and responsibilities for the NCA on trafficking, including child trafficking, since there is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, as the noble Lord and others have said.

The Home Office has itself acknowledged that some 32% of child victims went missing from care between 2005 and 2009, with many being abducted back by their traffickers. The guardians system, which was the subject of the amendment tabled to the Protection of Freedoms Bill, is advocated by UNICEF and leading children’s charities as a means of ensuring continuity of care and continuous oversight of trafficked children who have been taken into care by the state. At the Report stage of the Protection of Freedoms Bill, as I recollect it, the noble Lord, Lord McColl, did not move his amendment, which would have placed a duty on the Secretary of State to introduce the guardians system for child victims of human trafficking, because of assurances that the noble Lord, Lord Henley, gave that the Government would commission a report by the Children’s Commissioner into ways to improve retention of child victims in care.

As has been said, this is a particularly topical issue as the Children’s Minister has accepted that the system is failing in preventing children in care going missing, as revealed in the report published today by the All-Party Group on Runaway and Missing Children and Adults, to which the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has already referred. Its report stated that vulnerable young people are being systematically let down. The Children’s Minister has, I believe, promised urgent action to address the problems that have been identified. It seems that there are big discrepancies between police and Department for Education figures, as has already been said. The DfE last year said that 930 children went missing, whereas the police estimate that 10,000 children in care went missing. We need accurate and reliable figures, since going missing is regarded as a key indicator that children are open to the risk of abuse. Indeed, one of the main reasons that the all-party group felt led to children running away was that 46% of children in children’s homes were placed away from their home town.

Considering today’s report by the all-party group and statement by the Children’s Minister that children are being “systematically let down” by the care system in failing to prevent them going missing, are the Government going to introduce a system of guardians or legal advocates for child victims of human trafficking, who are among the most vulnerable children in our care? The Government declined to accept the amendment to introduce guardians for child victims of human trafficking at Report on the Protection of Freedoms Bill, which is now of course an Act. Instead, they said that they would commission a report from the Children’s Commissioner to investigate measures to mitigate the number of trafficked children who go missing from care. When will the Children’s Commissioner actually report, and what steps are the Government intending to take in the mean time to protect these children and reduce the substantial number who go missing from care?

There is also the question of how this Bill and its provisions will help to address the situation that many of your Lordships have so eloquently identified already in this debate. Under this Bill, the National Crime Agency absorbs the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. Can the Minister spell out how the Government believe that this will improve the situation? How will CEOP retain its own identity and operational independence and what assurances can the Government give that its integration into the National Crime Agency will not adversely affect its ability to protect children or to continue its multiagency approach, which might be put at risk if the National Crime Agency were seen as primarily a policing organisation? Which areas will CEOP continue to lead on in future in relation to trafficked and missing children and will there, as has already been asked, be any split of related functions in this area within the National Crime Agency that might lead to some cases falling between two stools, or rather between two agencies or organisations?

I repeat that we support these amendments and I very much hope that in his reply the Minister will be able to address the many points that have been raised.