National Crime Agency

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hanson]

I shall try to answer the hon. Lady’s question and the question from my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) in a helpful way.

Since the Bill was published in the 2012 Queen’s Speech, we have had two and a half years of public negotiations. We had the initial debate, Second Reading and the Committee stage; it went through another place; it was implemented; and the NCA has now been in operation for one year. As was mentioned, we need to recognise that the NCA not operating in Northern Ireland is not just a matter for Northern Ireland; it is a matter for my constituents in north Wales and for constituents in Liverpool, Hertfordshire and everywhere. If there is a gap in our defences, asset recovery and coverage, it affects everybody, because criminals know they can operate from Northern Ireland with more chance of not being caught.

I am not the Minister, so it is not for me to decide, but there are serious questions about how we take forward these discussions with the Minister, the NIO and the political parties to reach a conclusion. As the Minister helpfully outlined, David Ford has, in this year of impasse, come up with proposals that could address some of the concerns of my hon. Friends and others. He said that the NCA, unlike its predecessor, did not have constabulary powers and that the authority and primacy of the PSNI needed to be maintained, so he proposed that the agreement of the Chief Constable be in place before the powers are used. In addition, he said that the director general of the NCA could be called to attend the Policing Board—more than we have with the police and crime commissioner in my patch in north Wales or elsewhere—and that there be consultation and consent for the implementation of the annual plan. He also proposed that the Police Ombudsman cover the NCA, which was welcome.

Those are all difficult areas touching on the reasons for devolving policing in the first place. Concerns about security were raised at the time and were addressed in government by me and my late good friend Paul Goggins. I hope, however, that the assurances from David Ford, which were negotiated and are now on the table, will be open to further discussion. Only last week, in a discussion with the modern slavery Minister about modern slavery issues, we heard how the NCA could not operate on issues as important as people trafficking.

I am trying to challenge the Government in a helpful and friendly way.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

First, I hope that my right hon. Friend will confirm that in the Modern Slavery Bill Committee some of us proposed amendments to make the situation in Northern Ireland much more joined-up with laws and practices here at different levels, but that the Government resisted those amendments. Secondly, may I assure him that the proposals from David Ford arose from negotiations with my party and that we are committed to pursuing them to a successful end?

[Mr Hanson]

I am grateful for the support my hon. Friend gave the Opposition in that Committee, and yes he acted in a way that said he wanted the Bill to operate in Northern Ireland as well.

It is important to remember that my hon. Friends the Members for South Down and for Foyle, as well as absent Sinn Fein Members, have signed up to policing matters in the past. The proposals from David Ford would extend effective policing to tackling serious and organised crime. What extra steps can the Minister and the political parties take to get the NCA operating in Northern Ireland? He told us what happened in the past, but he did not set out a clear road map that will get us from David Ford’s proposals to an agreement to sign up to the NCA; to a legislative consent motion in the Northern Ireland Assembly; and to implementation of the relevant NCA provisions already on the statute book.

What steps are the NIO and the Home Office taking to discuss David Ford’s proposals further with the political parties? As mentioned, might they set a deadline? Occasionally, deadlines do work. We set one for the reintroduction of the Northern Ireland Assembly in the St Andrews agreement. We reached it at about one minute to 12, but reach it we did. I mean no disrespect to Northern Ireland Members, but deadlines sometimes focus minds. So is the Minister prepared to consider a timescale and possible future steps? When will the next set of talks take place between the NIO, the Home Office, the political parties and Assembly representatives? Is David Ford convening such a meeting? Will the NIO and Home Office be present? What is the timescale for concluding the discussions?

In Committee, the then Policing Minister, the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), said that the Government were

“carefully considering the part 1 provisions to see how they can best be modified to give the NCA some functionality in Northern Ireland but in a way that does not require a legislative consent motion. We will aim to introduce any necessary amendments to the Bill on Report.”––[Official Report, Crime and Courts Public Bill Committee, 29 January 2013; c. 174.]

That was on 29 January 2013 but we are no closer to implementing the NCA. I say to the Minister that we need a plan—it need not necessarily involve a deadline, but it could—so that we can see what Ministers and the parties are going to do to take this matter forward.

[Mr Hanson]

I thought I had been very clear that I want the National Crime Agency to operate in Northern Ireland, in Belfast and every community represented here today on the same basis as it operates in my constituency, and as soon as possible. I have argued for that. I want Sinn Fein, along with my hon. Friends, to sign up to it as quickly as possible. The assurances given by David Ford should be subject to a positive response on those issues. I say to the hon. Lady that I am not the Government. If I were the Government, what I would be doing is looking at how to convene a meeting with the relevant parties to see if there are genuine outstanding differences, to see if resolutions on those differences can be reached, to look at what we do with the David Ford proposals and, if necessary, to look at setting a deadline against which consideration of these matters would take place. That is what I want the Government to look at and respond to. The vital point is that the National Crime Agency needs to operate in Northern Ireland to protect people from crime in Northern Ireland, as it does in Wales, Scotland and England.

[Mark Durkan]

My right hon. Friend has said again that he wants the NCA to operate on the same basis in Northern Ireland as it does in his constituency. Clearly, the ongoing discussions and negotiations suggest that that is not so in terms of accountability, the level of engagement with the police or the level of its own automatic authority. Those are all significant improvements and concessions consistent with the Patten principles around policing. This is about making sure that whatever happens in any quarter of policing in Northern Ireland is consistent with those Patten principles.

[Mr Hanson]

I understand and accept that. The hon. Gentleman will know that during my two years in Northern Ireland, we had to deal with very difficult issues around the very point of trying to get policing devolved, along with a range of other measures, including the re-establishment of the Northern Ireland Assembly. I understand the sensitivities. I am simply making the point that the David Ford proposals provide the basis, I believe, for agreement on the operation of the NCA in Northern Ireland. It is incumbent on somebody—whether it be David Ford, the Northern Ireland Office, other Ministers or whatever—to try to convene a meeting to see if there are any outstanding issues and to provide some resolution as a matter of urgency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

When the legislation to set up the National Crime Agency went through this House, I was one of the Northern Ireland MPs who actually participated in those debates. Many of the others who have spoken today came nowhere near those debates. I made it clear then that the Bill’s provisions for the NCA would cause problems for Northern Ireland because they did not take account of the Patten architecture of policing. I also made it clear that we were not raising those points in order to try to prevent the NCA or anything else from coming into being. The basis of our argument was that more needed to be done to make sure that any new addition or change to policing architecture in Northern Ireland should be entirely compatible with the Patten prospectus. That was the point we made.

The issue before the House at that time related to references to the fact that the Minister of Justice in Northern Ireland had agreed various things and that they would have to be satisfied with various things. It centred entirely on the Minister of Justice—that is where the focus was—not on the Policing Board, the Chief Constable or anything else. That is not a criticism of the Minister of Justice for Northern Ireland, because, as I said at the time, he was caught in a situation whereby Whitehall, which dealt with the issue, was able to talk to him but he was not able to talk to the Policing Board or anyone else in advance of the legislation. Therefore, the first the Policing Board knew about the legislation—indeed, the first some senior people in the PSNI knew about the legislation—was when it emerged in this place.

There is a lesson there: such sensitive issues should not be conducted in that way in future. A devolved Minister should not find himself locked in like that. Since then, the Minister has, rightly and helpfully, engaged with a number of the concerns that we and others—not just we and Sinn Fein—have.

I should also point out that when the whole idea of the NCA was brought up, the Labour party had issues with whether it would properly and adequately replace SOCA. Those are valid concerns. It is not the case that people were stepping in the way to try to stop the NCA. Moreover, Jim Gamble, who has offered distinguished service as a police officer in Northern Ireland and to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, had serious reservations and misgivings about how the NCA’s work would be carried forward overall. He is on the record as agreeing on several of the issues raised by the SDLP on questions of accountability and—

[Naomi Long]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mark Durkan]

No, because I did not intervene on any Northern Ireland Members. I heard an awful lot about us on all sorts of questions, and I want to deal with those points and to set the issues in context.

Hon. Members have suggested that the SDLP has wilfully set out to stop the NCA and is still somehow vetoing it. We pointed out issues that needed to be addressed and could have been addressed when we considered the legislation. Many people then dismissed those issues, saying, “It’s impossible. You can’t have the National Crime Agency make anything available to the Policing Board. You can’t have it working with the Chief Constable in such a way. They can’t operate differently in Northern Ireland from how they operate anywhere else.” Lo and behold, we now have proposals for those things to happen, but those who wasted time in dismissing our concerns—saying that they could not be met, but were impossible and specious—now accuse us of having a vacuous position. The fact is that if our views had then been properly pursued and followed by others, we might not now be in the impasse that we have been in for too long.

I want to make a point about child protection. Hon. Members have referred to the recent Assembly legislation on human trafficking. When I sat on the Public Bill Committee on the Modern Slavery Bill, I was at pains to make sure that the legislation in this House was in a better state so that it was properly compatible with the Northern Ireland legislation and there were no jurisdictional or other gaps. That included ensuring that the new anti-slavery commissioner—a UK appointment; potentially a British appointment—could, under the legislation in this House, review and make recommendations on matters in devolved areas if the devolved Administrations opted any of their services into the scope of the anti-slavery commissioner’s work. It is not therefore the case that the SDLP has said that nothing at British or UK level can be applied or that we will have no part of it.

It has been suggested that the SDLP is somehow reluctant to do things on policing that Sinn Fein does not do. Let us be very clear: we committed to Patten. We went on the Policing Board, and we drove the delivery of Patten when Sinn Fein refused to do so and attacked us for our position on policing in council chambers and at every political level. We did not need Sinn Fein then. Even before that, we supported the creation of the Assets Recovery Agency, which Sinn Fein completely opposed, and we supported its work when it was attacked and demonised by Sinn Fein. When SOCA was created, we had concerns that it might not carry forward the good work being done in Northern Ireland by the Assets Recovery Agency, and some hon. Members from other parties shared those concerns. They were not opposed to the existence of SOCA; like us, they had concerns about whether the work would be properly carried forward. People can raise concerns about agencies such as the NCA without being opposed to good law enforcement.

There is no question of our needing to know where Sinn Fein is going before we take a position on the NCA or on anything else. Equally, we differed from Sinn Fein on another aspect of policing. Annex E of the St Andrew’s agreement covered the provisions that basically allowed MI5 to get around the accountability mechanisms provided in Patten. It ensured that what happened with the Mount Vernon gang report by the previous police ombudsman could not happen again, and that no question that touched on or took in aspects of national security and the performance of MI5 could be examined by the police ombudsman. We opposed annex E at the time, and we were the ones who were isolated. We therefore have no problem in differing with Sinn Fein on policing issues. We have done it regularly. We have, however, been absolutely consistent in opposing—

[Bob Stewart]

rose—

[Mark Durkan]

I will not give way, because I want to answer several questions and challenges.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) mentioned issues of statute earlier. It is true that commitments have been given that certain provisions will be set in statute, but we need to see the statutory provisions. Any Member of the House would say that the commitment to put something in statute is not enough and that they want to see it. There was exactly that character of exchange recently in the Modern Slavery Public Bill Committee. The Government have committed to table amendments in new areas. We welcome that, but we will judge the amendments when we see them.

Similarly in this matter, we are not telling people, “No, do not draft any statutory provisions or show us what they might look like.” We were told that the statutory provisions will ensure that the ombudsman can look at things. We want that to be properly framed in statute, because we do not want the role that has been promised for the ombudsman to be got around by something in the style of annex E of the St Andrews agreement, which allowed the Government to get around the issue of MI5.

On the issue of MI5, I have asked questions of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in this House about how MI5 could conduct operations in Northern Ireland in ways that seem to abuse the role of SOCA. I have spoken to her privately, outside the Chamber, about the cases of people who have supposedly been put under pressure using SOCA powers, on the basis that, “That will go away if you turn for us, work for MI5 and join dissident organisations to be our agent.”

We do not want the NCA to be used and abused in that way under the new arrangements. We want clarity on that. That is one reason why we want to ensure that the role of the Police Ombudsman is absolutely clear. When people come to us with those sorts of problems, there must be a proper channel through which they can take their case and their evidence. And evidence they have. I gave the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland the phone numbers of those who were ringing people up and pressing them. They were stopping people in other parts of the world and taking them into custody in hotels. That is the sort of thing that is going on currently using the MI5 position and the SOCA role. We want to ensure that none of that will apply to the NCA. Those good and proper standards for our constituents are not a lot to ask.

We have engaged with the Minister of Justice in Northern Ireland. In the past, I have acknowledged that he has done good work in this area and has taken some of these issues forward. I also credited his special adviser, even though politicians are not meant to acknowledge special advisers, for his good work and engagement on these issues. We need to take this matter forward. We want there to be no hiding place in relation to any aspects of crime.

Let us be clear that it is not just people in the SDLP who have questioned whether SOCA and all the other agencies to date have been as active and assiduous in relation to whole areas of organised and commercial crime in Northern Ireland as they should have been. The NCA has powers in non-devolved areas such as customs, and there are a lot of things that it could be doing.

When the Crime and Courts Bill was going through the House and we were identifying the problems, some of us said that provision could be made for the PSNI to access and use the resources and insight of the NCA. Other people said, “No, it is only constabulary powers that will work. It cannot work in any other way.” We also made it clear at that time that we were worried that there might be discontinuity in the pursuit and recovery of assets because of the difficulties that had been created. We made it clear that we did not want to see that and that we did not share any of the objections or anxieties that appeared to be coming from Sinn Fein in relation to the pursuit and recovery of assets. It was other people who made those choices. We made it clear that we did not have any issue with that and did not want to stop it in any way. We wanted to ensure that the provisions would be proper and robust.

I refute the insinuation that the SDLP is wilfully blocking the good work that the NCA should be doing. On the Modern Slavery Public Bill Committee, I have argued for future-proofing the provisions to anticipate that the NCA will have a role. That proves that this is not a case of wilful and persistent obstinacy for the sake of it, but a matter of principle. Our principles can be put into good practice. Other people have disputed that, but they now tell us that they have the last word and documentation on how to do it. I think that that so-called last word needs a little more work, and that we will get there.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karen Bradley]

No. I am sorry, I need to make progress. My right hon. Friend, a former Minister for Northern Ireland—there should be a collective noun for former Ministers of Northern Ireland, because we have many in the room today—explained clearly the importance of the issues in the light of his great experience. My hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) pointed out that, in a way, he has a land border with another member state—the only such non-Northern Ireland Member in the room—and expressed clearly the need for the NCA to operate throughout the whole of the United Kingdom.

A number of Members, including the hon. Members for Upper Bann (David Simpson) and for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who chairs the Home Affairs Committee, and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham, talked about the need for proceeds of crime measures to be extended to Northern Ireland. I very much agree with those points. Depriving organised criminals of their assets makes it harder for them to return to crime and perhaps acts for many as a bigger deterrent than jail. I refer Members to the changes we are putting through in the other place through the Serious Crime Bill, which will assist us in dealing with asset recovery. Clearly, extending those provisions to Northern Ireland would be very important in improving that recovery rate.

The hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) talked about the oversight mechanisms, and usefully clarified her party’s concerns about accountability. It is probably useful if I make some points now about the accountability proposals. There are no statutory mechanisms, about which she asked, providing for NCA accountability in Northern Ireland at the moment, but David Ford’s proposals provide that the NCA director general will attend meetings of the Policing Board on request—including urgent meetings, with reasonable notice—and this will be in statute. NCA officers will need the agreement of the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland to exercise policing powers in relation to an offence, and the PSNI will then produce a community impact assessment.

On covert techniques, in all cases the NCA will obtain the agreement of the PSNI prior to their use, save for where the request is related to a case of police corruption. That would be enshrined in a memorandum of understanding, made under schedule 24 to the Crime and Courts Act 2013. The human rights adviser of the Northern Ireland Policing Board will have access to the surveillance commissioner’s report on the NCA, in a non-redacted form, in connection with the NCA work associated with criminality in Northern Ireland.

[Mark Durkan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Karen Bradley]

I cannot, I am afraid; I have been given strict warnings by the Deputy Speaker. The—