Cross-border Crime

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

It is a pleasure again to follow the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long), as in the previous debate. Again, much of what I say will find agreement with what she has said, and indeed with what some other hon. Members have said. I might need to take up some other points that were directed particularly at the SDLP.

I am glad to endorse the motion and commend my colleagues—right hon. and hon. Members from the DUP—for introducing it. It is important that we now harness every single effort that we possibly can to combat organised crime in all its forms and at all its levels, conscious of all its effects and impacts.

As other hon. Members have said, some people perhaps labour under a false impression that fuel laundering or smuggling is a victimless crime, but it is not. It robs revenue from hard-pressed public services. Such scams are not against big business and the taxman, but against neighbours, the community and consumers, as well as against public services and the revenue on which those services depend. In that sense, we are all victims of these crimes.

Nobody should have any fancy notions about the rackets and scams happening in this part of the 21st century being in any way connected with little family, folklore stories of people smuggling butter during the war years. They are nothing like that, and should not be seen in such a way. This is ruthless big business, and people are in it not just for their own mercenary motives, but with lethal menace. They go about their business in that way, and people who dare to interfere with them, are suspected of cutting across them or make a tip-off about their rip-offs face very serious consequences. That is why people who are conscious of, or surmise that, things are going on, first, find that it is very difficult to say anything, and secondly, find it hard to believe that more is not being done by the authorities who know about it, seem to know about it or should know about it.

Other hon. Members have mentioned cases in which action has been taken, but such action has been taken at a time or in a way that means people have removed themselves from a property and destroyed the evidence there before the authorities arrive. That raises all sorts of questions about how such situations arise.

There is a sense of scandal in many quarters about the fact that, as we moved on from the paramilitarism in all the forms we knew during the troubles, there was basically an acceptance that it was okay for some paramilitaries to privatise themselves into various criminal activities so long as someone within their broad political community could vouch for their staying on the right side of the argument over the peace process. The authorities were told to be careful about interfering with or coming down too heavily on some of those people because it might upset the balance of opinion or of favour within their republican base. That sense of scandal is one reason why the authorities need to be seen to be acting with full intelligence and full vigour, and why people want to see the courts follow through on prosecutions brought by policing authorities and HMRC, with convictions and credible, meaningful sentences. Rightly or wrongly, there is currently the sense that in that regard something does not add up or some connection is not being made.

Hon. Members have touched on the environmental impact of some of these crimes. Just as the criminal activity—the sourcing, processing and transfer for sale of the materials—is of a cross-border nature, so too have been the hazardous environmental impacts. Materials have been dumped into watercourses and have found their way into various counties and communities, as well as into waterways contributing to the public water supplies, on both sides of the border. That shows that the people committing these crimes are not just content with acting against the authorities or big businesses, but are prepared fundamentally to risk the health and well-being of neighbours and communities.

Hon. Members have mentioned the delegated legislation Committee that met in the House this week to discuss providing for the NCA to have full powers in Northern Ireland, and that is something I welcome and that we have worked for. When the legislation was first introduced in the Chamber in 2012, we made it clear that our concern was not opposition in principle to the role of the NCA, but a requirement that the NCA should meet the Patten threshold. We set those terms and they have been reached. I acknowledge the role of the Home Secretary and her ministerial colleagues in the Home Office, as well as that of the Minister of Justice in Northern Ireland, the NCA, its director, and the PSNI leadership, in helping to tease through those issues. The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee said that a circumstance has been arrived at that means Northern Ireland has a scheme of accountability and insight for the work of the NCA that he would like for parts of Great Britain as well. We have arrived at something stronger.

It must also be noted that the legislation does not only give the Policing Board Patten-style oversight and accountability in terms of the work of the NCA. It does not only vest particular responsibility in the Chief Constable, or only ensure that the ombudsman’s reach on issues arising with the NCA entirely matches the reach that it has for the PSNI. It also gives the Policing Board responsibility for encouraging public co-operation and support for the work of the NCA, which is hugely important. People need to understand what the work and role of the NCA will be so that they cannot misrepresent it in some sinister way, as some may try to do in the aftermath of the debate last month in the Assembly and the legislation passing through this House. That must be clearly understood, and I am sure that Members of all parties—certainly all those represented in this House—who are on the Policing Board will want it to discharge that role of assisting in full public co-operation with the NCA, as well as all the other vital roles that will fall to the Policing Board under these arrangements.

As we have heard, this debate is not just about fuel crime because there is also the issue of counterfeit goods. Again, criminals are using significant networks to make real profit for themselves at the expense of consumers. Those consumers are not buying quality or reliable products; they are buying products that are not only substandard but can be dangerous and risky in many ways. All of a sudden the House supports the added profile coming from organisations such as the Trading Standards Institute, again to help make people aware of the situation. It is important that some of these messages do not always appear to come from traditional law enforcement mechanisms but come from other civil purpose agencies as well, so that perhaps people will listen to them differently and hear—or at least credit—a warning that they do not hear from somebody else. We need to see that issue cracked, and action against it.

There is also significant waste crime in Northern Ireland and, of course, in the island of Ireland. Some of that waste crime has been cross-border in character, but not all of it. There have been debates about the NCA, and whether delays in passing legislation on that issue mean that all the work of the Serious Organised Crime Agency and other policing responsibilities that still fell to the police during that period will stop. One point that has been made is on waste dumps. One significant illegal waste dump was found in recent years in my constituency. It clearly represented an illegal business on the scale of millions of pounds. It emerged because of a random activity by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency. It was not known to anybody in policing, anybody in HMRC or anybody in SOCA. Nobody knew it. Everybody knows that it was essentially sourced and directed not from my constituency but from South Armagh. It seems strange that the Northern Ireland Environment Agency happened to stumble on it. It was not because of a tip-off or anything else—it was pursuing another matter and it came to its notice. Given the provenance and the scale of the business, it is hard to believe that nobody knew it was going on.

That brings us back to the concern that other hon. Members have reflected. There is a sense that a blind eye is being turned, and that there is some sort of set-aside deal going on, where people are saying, “You can have those rackets up to that point so long as you don’t transgress in other matters.” The hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) mentioned the 2p in the pound. I would certainly refer to deals done between SOCA and people it was meant to be pursuing in respect of criminal assets. Those deals were for pennies in the pound. The story is that such deals were brought before the High Court. What choice would the High Court have but to say, “Here is an agreement between SOCA and somebody it is pursuing”? Of course the High Court would accept that agreement. Word has it that that sort of agreement not only applies to the individual in that case, but has the status of a group deal—it becomes the going rate for offers to join in on those terms.

That is one of the issues that the Social Democratic and Labour party was at pains to ensure could be addressed in future. We want oversight and accountability mechanisms that apply to the NCA. Many of the questions asked in the debate could be framed, raised and properly addressed in the Policing Board’s engagement with the Chief Constable, and with the director of the NCA, whenever they hear NCA reports and plans, and whenever they monitor the effectiveness of the NCA’s work. That all goes to the Policing Board under the arrangements. It would be right and proper to pursue that.

Another experience of SOCA that I hope will not be repeated under the NCA arrangements is that we had evidence, which I took to the Secretary of State and others, that MI5 was promising that, if people turned and joined dissident organisations and essentially became MI5 agents, it could remove a working SOCA interest in them. We presented evidence that showed that SOCA seemed to be pursuing people not so much for SOCA’s purposes, but to help frame operations that had MI5 at their heart. We must ensure that none of that happens in future. We must ensure that the NCA’s work and the work it carries out in Northern Ireland with the PSNI under the approval of the Chief Constable has none of that about it. If it does, it brings the NCA into disrepute, and compromises the Policing Board’s important role in ensuring the fullest support for, and engagement with, the NCA’s future work.

Revenue and Customs needs to be more active in these areas. On many of the cases referred to by other hon. Members, it has been less than authoritatively convincing in its silence. More assurance is needed.

We need to encourage fully the significant cross-border work that takes place under the Organised Crime Task Force. I recognise that that extends not just to the areas of crime that many of us have touched on today, but to other areas of crime—this was touched on by the hon. Member for Belfast East—relating to human trafficking. It was heartening that one of the first engagements of the new UK Anti-Slavery Commissioner was a meeting with the Minister of Justice in Northern Ireland and his southern counterpart to address this issue. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), will recall that this was one of the issues on which I tabled amendments during the Committee stage of the Modern Slavery Bill, to ensure that all aspects of the Bill would either apply to Northern Ireland or be compatible with legislation that was then going through the Northern Ireland Assembly. In particular, I wanted to ensure that the new commissioner would be able to consider issues in Northern Ireland, and the performance of enforcement agencies not just in Northern Ireland but as they operated and liaised and engaged with their counterparts in the south as well.

I am very glad that we have legislation not just in respect of the NCA, but modern slavery provisions. That puts us in a stronger position to address different aspects of serious crime as they happen in Northern Ireland and across the border.