Crime and Courts Bill [Lords]

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

I join other hon. Members in welcoming clause 38 as a sensible, proportionate adjustment with regard to public order. Clause 29, which the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has touched on, would remove the offence of scandalising the judiciary in England and Wales. However, the change is being made because a Member of this House found themselves cited on exactly that charge in the courts of Northern Ireland, so the issue is not being addressed where the problem arose. Will the Minister clarify whether, when and if the Northern Ireland Assembly gets around to having a legislative consent motion, that consent could allow the Bill to be further amended so that the removal of the offence of scandalising the judiciary in Northern Ireland could be accommodated?

Other aspects of the Bill also relate to Northern Ireland. The right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) has just come back into the Chamber at the wrong time, because he will hear from me the familiar refrain that he used to hear when he was security Minister for Northern Ireland. I think that, in his book, I and my party colleagues are Patten pedants. We are insistent on keeping to the precise architecture, thrust and spirit of the Patten policing reforms and to protecting the Patten dispensation. The previous Government did some injury to that as a result of moves to put national security policing in Northern Ireland in the hands of MI5. Those activities were moved beyond the purview of the accountable policing structures in Northern Ireland, such as the scrutiny undertaken by the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland for the Northern Ireland Policing Board, which is where the ombudsman had been sensibly and deliberately placed.

The establishment of the National Crime Agency adds a further complication, because the Bill will create an additional police force and constables. Indeed, special constables will be created again in Northern Ireland. Having many years ago, courtesy of the civil rights movement, seen off the B Specials, we now face the potential appointment of NCA specials by the director general of the National Crime Agency. If we look at the Bill’s schedules, we will see that some people can be both NCA specials and Police Service of Northern Ireland officers, but that anything they do in one capacity cannot be cited in relation to anything they do in the other. The Bill provides that they can hold, coterminously, those two sets of constable powers, which will have serious implications for the Policing Board with regard to its key oversight role on policing. It will also create potential difficulties down the road for the police ombudsman in dealing with any complaints, and it means, presumably, that officers who are both NCA specials and PSNI officers will be subject to two separate complaint authorities.

[Paul Goggins]

My hon. Friend is making some important points that the Committee will need to consider in detail when the Bill is scrutinised line by line. Does he not agree that the most important thing is that, when a Serious Organised Crime Agency officer and, in future, an NCA officer acts with the powers of a constable in Northern Ireland, they should be as accountable to the police ombudsman as they would be if they were a police officer of Northern Ireland?

[Mark Durkan]

That is one of the things that has to be tested and clarified. If we look at some of the ousters that seem to be built into the schedules, we see that it appears that somebody cannot be cited in one capacity for something they do in another. That needs to be tested in Committee.

The Bill provides for a compulsion to be issued to the Northern Ireland Policing Board. There is obviously provision for there to be co-operation and engagement between the NCA and the Police Service of Northern Ireland, but there is also provision for directed assistance, which allows the Department of Justice to direct the Policing Board to provide particular assistance, whether or not the Policing Board wants to make that provision. It seems to me that the director of the National Crime Agency will be in a position almost to require the Department of Justice to, in turn, impose a requirement on the PSNI via the Policing Board. The Policing Board was given specific, deliberately assembled and properly protected powers in the Patten dispensation. It seems to me that those are being casually injured in these provisions.

Many people in Northern Ireland will judge the performance of the National Crime Agency on whether it improves on the work that has been undertaken by SOCA and the Organised Crime Task Force, which is linked in to HMRC, SOCA, the PSNI and the Garda Siochana and deals not least with the issues of fuel smuggling, drugs and waste trafficking. People will ask about the difference between the NCA and SOCA. We know that the NCA will have four command areas and a bigger brief. I suppose that it is like the old advert for Baxters soup: “The difference is in the thickness.” People will want to know whether the difference is in the effectiveness of the way in which the agency works. In Northern Ireland, many of us are also concerned about the effectiveness of its partnership and engagement with others, such as the PSNI and the oversight mechanisms. It seems to me that not enough sensitivity has been shown so far to the interests of the Northern Ireland Assembly or the Policing Board.

This is an example of a Bill that could have particular implications in Northern Ireland. Yet again, the Government tell us that there will be a legislative consent motion from the Assembly, but no legislative consent motion has been put. This is another example of there not being joined-up scrutiny between legislators in this Chamber and in the devolved Assembly. With the Welfare Reform Act 2012, we had a different device. That legislation has passed through Parliament and it is just assumed that a karaoke Bill will be taken through the Assembly, with people able to change very little. They can sing it in their own accent, but no significant details can be changed, and yet it appears on paper as though it is a Bill. The legislative consent motion from the Assembly for this Bill will probably come after it is done and dusted. There needs to be better, more joined-up scrutiny on such matters.

Finally, I join other hon. Members in expressing concern about clauses 34 and 36 in relation to immigration and visas.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—