Crime and Courts Bill [Lords]

Debate between Naomi Long and Paul Goggins

Wednesday 13th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Naomi Long]

I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman would agree that there is another important issue here, to which the Government might be able to respond. Where the NCA is operating in the reserved field in Northern Ireland, we will still have an input into the organised crime effort. The Home Secretary, however, has removed the statutory requirement to consult the Department of Justice and the Justice Minister in Northern Ireland on strategic priorities and in respect of the annual plan by the director-general. That leaves another deficit that could be filled if the Government acted now.

[Paul Goggins]

I compliment my hon. Friend on her ingenuity in seeing two pages ahead in my speaking notes; I will come on to her very important point in a few moments.

I was reflecting on the effectiveness of the Organised Crime Task Force and how SOCA has been able to work with all the other law-enforcement agencies. Last year alone—this is in the annual report—£13 million-worth of drugs were seized, 33 potential victims of human trafficking were rescued, £4.44 million-worth of criminal assets were seized, and the list goes on. That is the result of working together to combat organised crime. That is now being put at risk because of the breakdown in negotiations and the failure to get a legislative consent motion. As reported by the BBC today, a recent massive operation against the illegal fuel trade involved law enforcement north and south of the border, with 300 officers deployed. If we do not get that sort of co-operation continuing at the highest possible level and to the fullest extent, the impact of such operations will be greatly diminished.

I have four specific points to put to the Minister, some involving broader issues. The first has been alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long). I think it is a mistake to take the Northern Ireland Justice Minister out of the loop of consultation, as suggested by the Minister in new schedule 1. That Northern Ireland Minister will no longer be consulted on strategic priorities, on the annual plan or indeed in respect of the appointment of a director-general. We have an impasse here: taking the Northern Ireland Justice Minister out of the loop of consultation is, I think, the result of a failure to co-operate or to show the right spirit. We want to get this issue dealt with across the line, not to retreat from the line. My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East made an important point in her intervention. David Ford chairs the Organised Crime Task Force and is in a leading position in the fight against organised crime, so not to consult him on these key issues is a big mistake.

In that context, the Minister has described himself as a “collegiate” Minister—and who am I to argue with that description? I was rather hoping, in that spirit, that he would have come back with an amendment to schedule 6, paragraph 1(2), which deals with inspection. Provision is made there for inspections relating to the NCA in Scotland, but no mention is made—there is still no mention of it anywhere in the Bill—of Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland. It inspects the police there. It should be involved in any inspection of the NCA. In the spirit of trying to move this forward to get a meeting of minds, the Minister could, even at this late stage, make a commitment to involve Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland in the same way that he is involving the Scottish inspectors in Scotland.

Secondly, the Minister has to tell us more about how the negotiations will continue. Who is in the lead? Is he in the lead? Is it the Home Secretary or the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland? Is there a meeting this week? Is there a meeting next week? Are Ministers planning to meet the parties? How is it being done? Is there any real urgency in the negotiations that should be happening? Are Ministers just sitting back and waiting for Northern Ireland politicians to come forward? We really need to know whether something is happening. As I said, negotiation is hard work, but it is important for Ministers to get on with it.

Thirdly, let me deal with operational co-operation. I particularly want the Minister to address the issue of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. Frankly, many of our constituents think that CEOP, an excellent organisation, operates independently, but it is in fact part of SOCA and will be part of the National Crime Agency. The huge irony is that Jim Gamble, an excellent first chief executive, is from Northern Ireland and was a former officer with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. He did so much to put CEOP in the place it is as a world leader in this field.

What is going to happen in Northern Ireland? Will the Chief Constable have to establish a new team to deal with these issues? What happens if CEOP has intelligence and important information about paedophiles in Northern Ireland? What is going to be done? What are the practical arrangements that Ministers are overseeing and how will they ensure that they are in place to deal with such problems? It is important not just to have reassurance about the operational responsibilities but to ensure that the message goes out to people that, if they know of abuse or if they have been abused, they must come forward to report it. Goodness me, after all we are supposed to have learned from Savile, any message that says “Frankly, CEOP is closed in Northern Ireland” would be a dreadful message to send. It is essential that the Minister provides some reassurance about that.

[Naomi Long]

I hope I can reassure my right hon. Friend slightly. The Justice Minister is aware of that particular risk and is working to try to put in place mechanisms to ensure that such a gap does not exist and that alternative arrangements are available for co-operation and the trading of information if we fail to get to the desirable point where the whole of the NCA is operating properly in Northern Ireland.

[Paul Goggins]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that assurance. It is timely to pay tribute to David Ford, the Justice Minister in Northern Ireland, who has done a superb job since devolution and who is, even now, looking at and trying to deal with the risks that may occur if consent is not given to these provisions. It does not come as a surprise to me at all to know that he is trying to plug the gaps in these provisions. The Minister, however, is the Minister responsible for the NCA and for CEOP, so that Minister has to offer us some reassurances.

My last point is about the relationship between the NCA and the Northern Ireland Policing Board. The hon. Member for East Antrim made the point that when he was a member of the Policing Board it was important to establish what the relationship was between a UK-wide body and the Northern Ireland Policing Board. I remember going, as the Minister responsible for policing in Northern Ireland, to the Policing Board—I did that once a year—for a formal session on organised crime. I would take with me senior SOCA officers, so that the Policing Board could ask them questions and get to the bottom of certain issues. We were as open as we possibly could be, even though there was no formal requirement for accountability. That was the spirit in which we operated. What will happen now? If the NCA is to have no formal relationship in Northern Ireland, the danger is that such discussions, formal and informal, will cease to happen. Yet the NCA will still have responsibilities for customs and immigration in Northern Ireland. There will be a loss of communication and dialogue about those and other important issues.

There is a huge agenda here. I hope that the Minister will be able to offer us some reassurance about the urgency with which he is dealing with these matters and the negotiations that need to take place, and that he will respond in detail to the points that I, and others, have raised. There are continuing and serious differences of opinion in Northern Ireland, which must be respected and worked through in a democratic way, but surely there should be absolute unanimity when it comes to the need to combat organised crime and the awful evil that it brings. That, at least, should be a matter of absolute consensus between the politicians of Northern Ireland.

Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Debate between Naomi Long and Paul Goggins

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Goggins]

My hon. Friend has well-known views on this issue and has expressed them frequently in the Chamber from both the Government and Opposition sides over the years. He forms his own conclusions but my conclusions about such individuals is that they are a small group of people for whom it is necessary to have some form of control outside the normal judicial process because of the risks that they pose. My hon. Friend has put forward his point of view on this before and he has strong views—I respect that.

[Naomi Long]

The right hon. Gentleman’s experience in Northern Ireland will also colour his view on these issues. One of the experiences that we had is that the use of unusual measures can often act as a rallying point for radicalising other young people, rallying them behind the cause, because people are seen as being persecuted rather than being tried under the law. Does he agree that such experiences show that these measures should be seen as unusual and that, for this reason, their ratification each year in Parliament is an important part of reinforcing that?

[Paul Goggins]

The hon. Lady speaks with great authority on this issue and I agree with every word she says. These powers—whether the control order powers that have been in place up to now or the new powers that the Home Secretary is bringing forward—should be used absolutely exceptionally and we should always bear in mind the risk that the hon. Lady mentions that their use can become a rallying point and can assist in the radicalisation of people whom we are trying desperately to keep in the mainstream of society. That should always be kept in mind. These powers should not be used generally; they are very specific powers to be used in very specific circumstances.

Let me deal with the circumstances in which the powers should be used. We are talking about a small group of individuals who are suspected of involvement in terrorist activities and who are either foreign nationals who cannot be deported because of a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights or they are individuals who cannot be prosecuted successfully because, as I said earlier, the compelling information about them is secret intelligence that could not alone sustain a successful prosecution. Over the past six years, control orders have been the best—some have used the expression “least worst”—set of powers to deal with that group of people.

As I have said before, we should always seek to gain consensus in the House on the important issue of counter-terrorism. The formation of the new Government last year gave us all an opportunity to reflect on the previous decade and see whether changes were required that would bring greater consensus and get an even better balance between individual liberty and collective security. I have changed my mind about pre-charge detention, having previously voted for 28 days and, indeed, for 42 days. I agree that the normal maximum should now be 14 days, provided that in exceptional circumstances it can be extended to 28 days. I am currently serving on the Joint Committee that is considering the emergency legislation that the Government have brought forward on this, and I have changed my mind on this issue.