Draft Drug Dealing Telecommunications Restriction Orders Regulations 2017

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2017 General Committees

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Wilson. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I also welcome the new Minister to her place. If the reaction she had yesterday was anything to go by, she is a very popular choice to succeed the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton).

I make clear the Opposition’s support for the regulations and reassure Committee members that I will not detain them for long. I am pleased by the urgency outlined in the explanatory memorandum and encouraged to read that the regulations will come into force almost immediately.

I have met dozens of chief constables and police and crime commissioners since taking up my position in July. As well as mentioning resources, they all raised with me the issue of keeping pace with the increasing sophistication of serious organised crime. The evolution of the powers available to the police is a substantial part of that. As the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham have outlined, county lines is one of the most serious, exploitative crimes facing our police service. We know that organised crime gangs exploit vulnerable children and engage them in trafficking, forcing them away from home to sell drugs. The practice is growing in both the capacity of existing gangs and the number of gangs themselves, and it is therefore absolutely right that we give the police all the powers they need to disrupt this abhorrent crime.

I will raise a couple of operational points with the Minister. I appreciate the reasons that a consultation and a more thorough public analysis were not possible in this instance; she may wish to write to me about that, which I would welcome. The success of the entire system will be incumbent on the speed at which the restriction orders can be implemented. That will be critical in two ways. First, the use of the relay system to make illicit transactions means that it will be crucial for the police to simultaneously disrupt the entire network, or else the organised gangs may easily subvert the disconnected phone. Secondly, the low cost and ease with which criminals can buy a new phone and re-establish the network may require a fairly constant war of attrition between the police and organised gangs. For those reasons, it is critical that an order can be obtained with speed.

Given that the orders will be heard by county courts, which were recently subject to a punishing round of closures, can we have confidence that they will be issued and implemented with that necessary speed? The explanatory memorandum refers to resources being made available to Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service and to the police. Can the Minister be a bit more specific? Given that the Government’s own impact assessment states that it is impossible to know how many orders will be made, what measures do the Government have in place to ensure that the courts are not put under considerable pressure, particularly during the first year after the order is passed?

The impact assessment also makes reference to the courts benefiting from increased court fees. However, as county courts are under considerable pressure and currently subject to long delays, what assessment has been made of the impacts on courts beyond monetary gain? As I said, I am happy for the Minister to write to me with her responses, and I reiterate the Opposition’s support for the regulations.