Serious Crime Bill [HL]

Lord Henley Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley (Con)]

My Lords, I start by offering my thanks to my noble friend Lord Taylor for his useful introduction to the Bill and for the amount of information with which he has provided us in the run-up to this Second Reading; the meetings he has held with all parts of the House on a party basis and an all-party basis; and the various documents he has provided, including the Explanatory Notes and Explanatory Memorandum—even, dare I say it, the impact assessments, although I found them fairly obscure. I am trying to work out which of the five or six impact assessments relates to which part of the Bill, but that is somewhat difficult. No doubt my noble friend will assist us in that at some later stage.

Some years ago, when I sat where the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, is sitting now, dealing with both justice and home affairs in opposition, I criticised the Home Office and other departments on a number of occasions for this vast legislative steamroller that seemed to churn out Bill after Bill. The noble Baroness said that she had seen nine Bills come from the Home Office in the four years that she had been in this House. I simply cannot remember how many we had claimed we had seen between 1997 and 2010: certainly our figure never quite agreed with the figure of the Government of the day. However, we all had our own views that there were too many.

I then ended up in the Home Office and had to rather change my tune. However, it is important with any Bill—particularly as there is a great deal of all-party support for this Bill, as the noble Baroness made clear—that we look carefully at how much of this legislation is genuinely necessary and how much might just be what one might call legislation for legislation’s sake: making it look as though you are doing something even though there are perfectly adequate laws already in place dealing with this or that matter. This was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Richard; I will get to that when I come to that part of the Bill.

It is important that we in this House go through the Bill very carefully in Committee, to make sure that we know exactly what is there and why, and make sure that that degree of cross-party support does not prevent us from giving the Bill a genuinely critical look.

In my few opening remarks, I also thank my noble friend for providing us with a Keeling schedule. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, made clear, it is not an easy Bill to read, as it makes a whole series of amendments to other bits of legislation. I was therefore certainly grateful for that Keeling schedule, and am sure that other noble Lords will be as well.

I want to touch on Parts 1, 2 and 3 of the Bill: “Proceeds of Crime”, “Computer Misuse” and “Organised, Serious and Gang-related Crime”. I will touch upon them in light of the few opening remarks I made about the importance of scrutinising the Bill to ensure that it is not that legislative steamroller that churns out legislation merely for the sake of legislation.

We start with the amendments to POCA in Part 1. It is now 12 years since the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 was brought in by the previous Government. Despite the figures given by the noble Baroness, it has had some successes in recovering the proceeds of crime from criminals, albeit at some expense. It has continued to have further successes since 2010 under the Conservative coalition Government. My noble friend was quite right to say that, broadly speaking, it is the right framework within which to work. However, some improvements, which my noble friend set out, need to be made to it. Further powers also need to be taken to make sure that we can pursue criminals and that they cannot hide their money—for example with spouses, or abroad—and to make it harder for them to use it. I think we would like to know what estimates my noble friend and his colleagues in the Home Office have made so far about just what the improvements will do: how much more is it likely to bring in, what further sums are we likely to see, and have any estimates been made of what sort of success it will have?

Secondly, I will say a word or two about Part 2, on “Computer Misuse”, which covers Sections 37 to—I forget where it goes to. Starting with Section 37, how much of that is new legislation? How much of the various offences that are enunciated in new Section 3ZA are already covered by existing legislation? I would have thought that many of them would be, but again, I would welcome assurances from my noble friend that those could be covered; some of them, for example, could be covered quite simply by the Theft Act. I would welcome comments from my noble friend on that section. Having said that, I am grateful that in Section 39 he seeks to extend the territoriality of the Bill to make sure that we can get people who are abroad. That is a good measure, and I am sure that the House will welcome it.

The third section I will touch on is Part 3: “Organised, Serious and Gang-related Crime”. Again, I listened very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Richard, said about using existing laws relating to conspiracy. My noble friend responded to that and explained exactly why that was needed. That was questioned by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, but was then defended by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead—and I very much welcome what he said. However, the noble and learned Lord went on to suggest that it could bring in some innocent professionals. I agree with him that we need to look very carefully at that matter in Committee, and we will need some carefully drafted probing amendments on it to allow my noble friend to respond when we get to that stage.

As I implied, I was going to be very brief in my response and wanted to deal only with those three sections. The rest of the Bill is equally important, and I am sure that the House will give proper and adequate coverage to it. I am very grateful for the assurances I was given in private on that, but again, I would be grateful if my noble friend could repeat them when he comes to wind up. I am grateful that he thought that we would need at least four days in Committee to deal with the Bill. It is a big Bill that needs proper scrutiny, and the mere fact that we have a degree of cross-party support should not prevent us giving it that cross-party support. Having said that, I offer my support to my noble friend, but I hope that he will allow us to be constructively critical on some occasions.