Drug Trafficking: County Lines

Ronnie Cowan Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman acknowledged that we cannot arrest our way out of this problem, but I am a little worried that he wants to bring train guards into this war on drugs. Has he considered the option of regulating and controlling this marketplace, which would take all the power away from criminal gangs?

[John Woodcock]

The hon. Gentleman is a long-time advocate of the legalisation of drugs, but I do not think that that is the route to go down, given the horror that drug use causes, never mind the criminal activity around it. That would not get much support in Barrow.

Properly training public transport staff in what to look for can be a positive thing. I hope that the Home Office will consider investing in training, intervening to stop guards being taken off trains and, importantly, offering rewards to people who are prepared to speak up, tip off the police and stop this trade along the major public transport arteries on which it relies.

Secondly, the Government need to do more to crack down on landlords and property owners who effectively turn a blind eye to this trade, and who get rich off drug money by not asking questions and not looking too closely at what is happening in their property. At the moment, a long-standing provision in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 makes it an offence for someone to allow their property to be used in that way, but there has to be absolute proof that they had specific knowledge. That allows too many landlords and, potentially, owners of holiday lets, hotels and caravan parks not to ask questions and to make money by allowing these people into our communities to do incredible damage.

Will the Minister consider changing the burden of proof so that a landlord is required to act, and can be prosecuted if they do not act, where there is reasonable suspicion that their property is being used for cuckooing, with drug dealers coming in to deal from the property temporarily? That is another huge part of the problem, and the vast majority of police forces say that it is happening in their area.

I will leave it there because my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan) wants to speak, and I am happy for her to do so. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Wallace]

I know that the hon. Gentleman has called for that. The national county lines co-ordination centre is about trying to fill that space. It is not just a couple of desks; it is more than 40 officers and staff, centred, pulling together not only the intelligence, but some of the investigations and response. They are making sure the investigations are in the right place, so that where we pick up someone who is low-level, we can trace across to an organised crime group that is already under investigation by the Met, for example. That is one of the main aims of this co-ordinated approach—the county lines co-ordination centre. I have arranged for some hon. Members to get a briefing by the National Crime Agency on that, and I am happy to facilitate that for the hon. Gentleman if he would like.

Time is tight, so I will not be able to deal with all the points, but I will write to the hon. Gentleman about some of the figures. We recognise the figures that he used. We assess around 1,500 lines in service as of July. The improvements from the national county lines co-ordination centre’s work with the National Crime Agency and the National Police Chiefs Council has started to have an impact already. Last week, the centre co-ordinated the first in a series of regular intensifications of activity targeting county lines. In one week alone, there were more than 200 arrests; 58 vulnerable people, including a number of children, were identified and safeguarded; deadly weapons, including hunting knives, a firearm with ammunition, an axe, a meat cleaver and a samurai sword, were seized; tens of thousands of pounds of suspected criminal cash were seized; and significant quantities of heroin, crack cocaine and other illegal drugs were seized. That is in one week, which shows the benefit of that co-ordination. Whether it is a single force or, I would venture, a co-ordination centre, that shows what can be done when we focus and bring our efforts to bear.

We need to be clever about how we prosecute these individuals. In some cases, we prosecute them under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 for in effect trafficking the children up and down the country. On 4 October, Zakaria Mohammed was sentenced to 14 years for human trafficking offences, but he was leading a county lines drug cartel operation. That was an important way to deal with it.

[Ronnie Cowan]

The Minister is outlining success stories—big arrests, big sentences and big drug seizures—yet the problems continue to get worse. Is it not perhaps time to consider other tactics?

[Mr Wallace]

The problems are getting worse, and this business model is a fantastic business model, as the right hon. Member for Enfield North said, partly because of the turbo boost that communications give these people. Secure communication and end-to-end encryption mean that people can order with total impunity, because it is very hard for us to get into the telephones to see what they are doing. They can use modern technology to resupply and communicate, and to launder the money at the same time. I do not agree that the approach should be to legalise drugs. In my experience, criminals are interested in the margins, not the product. If we legalise one drug, they will push fentanyl tomorrow; if we legalise fentanyl, it will be another. They want the margin: in my experience, it is the money that drives them, which is why we have to do more work.

The right hon. Member for Enfield North correctly talked about prevention. We need to harden the environment. The hon. Member for Barrow and Furness is always full of good ideas, and he will have seen in our latest counter-terrorism Bill that I have absorbed some of them. I think that is a polite way to say that I have nicked them. I certainly believe that he is right about somehow making sure that people take responsibility. We cannot arrest our way out of this problem, so we have to burden-share. We have to educate the public. We have to educate taxi drivers in Barrow. Both modern slavery and county lines often hide in plain sight. It is amazing how many people in effect work in slavery on our high streets and no one does anything about it or thinks about it. Someone might have had their nails done but never said to themselves that most of the women working in the nail bar were probably—more often than not—victims of human trafficking. That is why we have to try to encourage part of the wider community—the hon. Gentleman may say we should legislate—because they have a role to play.

When I saw a Merseyside county lines group get taken apart, it was brilliant to see the way the Merseyside local authority worked alongside the local police. When it came to dismantling the group, the people who needed care got care and the people who needed to be prosecuted—some of them were young; they are not all vulnerable—were prosecuted. One challenge we have is that not all the 15 or 16-year-olds are exploited; some of them are pretty hard and dangerous. At the same time, we took some assets, and in the end the Merseyside police, in public, pulled down the gates of the organised crime group’s house, to show that permissive society was not going to tolerate that behaviour. That group’s operations went all the way into Lancashire, so it was a good success.

I absolutely hear what the right hon. Member for Enfield North said about the need for better prevention, community provision and diversion for these young people. I have a list as long as my arm that I think I sent to some Members in the context of the previous debate on this subject. We have the anti-knife crime community fund. The Home Secretary has announced a £22 million early intervention youth fund and a £200 million youth endowment fund. There is an £11 million modern slavery innovation fund, which is all about trying to deal with that in the communities and how we can wrap around it.

We also support and fund local authorities that are engaged in mapping county lines. I definitely urge hon. Members to encourage their local authority to seek to do that, and the Home Office and the police will support them in delivering such action—with our funding rather than theirs. In that way, local authorities can get an understanding of what is going on in their very community. It is a phenomenon. Although I understand the pressure on the police—I am not deaf to the challenges around that and to the fact that more will need to be done—the biggest single contribution from what I have observed has been mobile communications, encryption and money laundering in a way that is so different from the past. Those lines can be run from the very top of an organised crime group in Colombia. The group can order, resupply and get delivery so that drugs arrive on the doorsteps of our communities.

We all have a role to play—a really strong role—to make sure that schools do not go down the exclusion route, because that puts many of those young people out on the streets to be preyed upon. We have to do a lot of work around the permissive society. What we find is that there are a few areas—they are significant and solid—where these crime routes are coming. There are communities that are permitting the organised crime routes to become strong enough to send people into our communities. Work on permissive societies is something that we all have to address.

Organised crime might involve someone buying an illegal pack of cigarettes behind a bar. They might say that it does not really matter—a bit of a knock-off at the local bar—but people do not realise that that pack of cigarettes is moved by people who move women on a Monday and children on a Tuesday, and flog drugs on a Thursday. Someone might say, “Wink, wink, I got this a bit cheap down the local bar,” but that person is fuelling and helping organised crime. We all have a role to play. We must tackle permissive societies, harden the environment, get everyone knowledgeable about what is out there to stop young people being exploited and help our local authorities to deal with those cases. It will be a growing issue. Co-ordination, planning and investment will be key. I from my end and the organised crime end will help to support such action through the serious organised crime strategy, which is due to be launched very soon, and I know that the Minister responsible for crime reduction is keen to tackle this from the bottom up. We will make sure that we work across the Government and across parties to try to achieve that.

Question put and agreed to.