Serious Crime Bill [Lords]

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 5th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. We are continually looking at that issue. Indeed, the Criminal Finances Board, under the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), has looked into it.

I want to talk about those parts of the Bill that will enable us better to access criminal assets, because that is an important part of what we do. As I said, organised criminals are primarily motivated by profit, and we need to be able to do all we can to strip them of their ill-gotten gains and send the message that crime does not pay. In part, this is about more effective enforcement, and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, who has responsibility for dealing with modern slavery and organised crime, is currently overseeing the implementation of our plan to improve the recovery of criminal assets. We must also ensure that organised criminals are not able to exploit loopholes in our legislation to frustrate asset recovery and avoid the reach of the law, which brings me to the proposals in the Bill.

Part 1 of the Bill makes a number of significant changes to the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. First, we are lowering the threshold for granting a restraint order—the means by which a defendant’s assets are frozen. It will now be easier to secure a restraint order immediately before effecting an arrest as the test for both will be aligned, thus removing the window of opportunity for a defendant to dissipate his or her assets. Secondly, we are halving the maximum amount of time that may be allowed by the court for payment once a confiscation order is made. That will mean that the victims of crime will receive recompense more quickly, and it will also further deprive criminals of the opportunity to live off or conceal their assets.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

rose—

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

rose—

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[Yvette Cooper]

Can the Home Secretary tell the House why, under the current legislation, the use of restraint orders to freeze assets has dropped by a third since 2010?

[Mrs May]

The whole point of what we have been doing, in aiming to improve our ability through the Bill to get at assets and the other work being done by the Minister with responsibility for dealing with modern slavery and organised crime, which I have described, is to ensure that every part of the legislation we have is being operated fully and properly. [Interruption.] Well, the number of orders for over a particular sum of money has in fact been about the same for the past couple of years. The shadow Home Secretary is raising a point about the legislation that the Labour party put in place—the 2002 Act. What I am saying to her is that we have looked at how these things operate to see whether we might operate them better, and I am describing to the House precisely how we are improving that.

[Yvette Cooper]

The point is to make sure that legislation is enforced; we all support improvements to legislation but we also want to know that it is being enforced. Can the Home Secretary explain why the number of restraint orders used to freeze assets dropped from 1,878 in 2010-11 to 1,368 in the most recent figures? Frankly, her commitment to tackling the problem of the proceeds of crime looks rather weak if all she is prepared to do is change laws but never actually enforce them.

[Mrs May]

The number has been dropping year on year but it is understood—the prosecution agencies believe that this is the most likely explanation—that that is due in part to the Court of Appeal judgment in the 2011 case of Windsor v. the Crown Prosecution Service. The Court ruled that suspicion that the defendant had benefited from criminal conduct was not sufficient grounds under existing legislation to grant a restraint order. That is a legal interpretation of the previous legislation—the 2002 Act—and how it was being operated by the courts. We are reducing the test from a “reasonable cause to believe” that the defendant has benefited from criminal conduct to a “reasonable suspicion”. We believe that will enable restraint orders to be applied at an earlier stage of the investigation. We have identified that a piece of legislation, as it has been operated by the courts, has had an impact that has led to a drop in the number of restraint orders, so we are addressing that in the legislation we are putting forward. I said that I would give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson), so I will now do so.

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[Mrs May]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for declaring that the provisions in the Bill are quite powerful. The whole point is to try to increase our ability to deal with these issues. Obviously, judgments have to be made about any of the issues with which we are dealing, but until now it has been possible for people to use third-party assets and timing loopholes to ensure that their assets cannot be accessed. They can put the finances that they have made as a result of their organised crime out of the reach of the authorities.





It is important that we tighten that and increase our ability to confiscate the assets of crime. Decisions will be made by courts as part of these processes and they will be properly considered in relation to the individuals concerned, but I am also concerned about the civil liberties of all those who are the victims of organised crime. I think that it is our job to try to ensure that we reduce organised crime as much as possible, and dealing with the assets and profits of organised crime is one way of sending a clear message to criminals and ensuring that they desist or that it becomes less attractive for them to undertake such activities.

[Yvette Cooper]

The Home Secretary said something interesting about default sentences a few minutes ago. She said that if, as the Government expect, the provision raises money, they will extend it to sentences for those who owe less than £10 million. She will be aware that her party has today produced a rather dodgy dossier claiming to cost a Labour proposal that assumes that changing default sentences does not raise any extra money at all. Does she therefore think that her own dodgy dossier is nonsense?

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Lady will have to try harder. We have indeed issued a document today that shows that the Labour party has committed to £20.7 billion of extra spending in one year alone, 2015-16. That means extra borrowing and extra debt for the future. It is no good her trying to rubbish the figures in that document. They are very clear, they have been tested and they have gone through the proper processes. The only dodgy figures come when Labour Front Benchers make all sorts of claims without funding their spending commitments.

In part 2 of the Bill we are strengthening the provisions of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 to ensure that we have robust legislation in place to tackle cybercrime. In particular, the part creates a new offence so that the most serious cyber-attacks are appropriately punished—for example, those on essential systems controlling power supplies, communications or fuel supplies. Such cyber-attacks are already an offence under section 3 of the 1990 Act and attract a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment. We do not believe that that adequately reflects the harm that can be caused and the new offence therefore provides for a maximum sentence of life imprisonment when a cyber-attack leads to loss of life, serious illness or injury, or serious damage to national security. When the attack results in serious economic or environmental damage or social disruption, a maximum sentence of 14 years’ imprisonment would apply.

Targeting and convicting those involved in the wider organised crime group, such as corrupt and complicit professionals, can prove difficult under current legislation. Part 3 seeks to address that. It creates a new offence of participating in the activities of an organised crime group. Such activities may include services such as transporting persons or goods and providing storage facilities or, indeed, professional legal or accountancy services. Those who do that might know or at least reasonably suspect that their services are contributing to the activities of an organised crime group but choose to turn a blind eye and prefer to pretend that the business is entirely legitimate, asking no questions while taking their share of the rewards in the criminal enterprise. We must use all possible means to disrupt and dismantle organised criminal groups. The threat of prosecution and a sentence of up to five years will discourage complicit professionals and others who help such groups to function.

Offenders must be brought to justice, but wherever possible we must prevent people from being drawn into serious and organised crime and deter them from re-engaging in criminality. Civil preventive orders have proved effective in preventing, restricting or disrupting a person’s involvement in serious crime. To support such interventions, part 3 strengthens the framework governing serious crime prevention orders and gang injunctions. Extending serious crime prevention orders to Scotland will bring the benefits of a unified regime across the whole UK. Updating the criteria for the granting of gang injunctions, which currently can be used to address only gang-related violence, will support early interventions to tackle gangs involved in the drugs market. That will allow gang injunctions to be used more widely to break down gang culture and help gang members to exit those destructive groups.

Part 4 deals with an aspect of the illegal drugs market wherein organised crime groups substantially increase their profits from the supply of illegal drugs, particularly cocaine, by adulterating the raw product with cutting agents. Typically, drug gangs use lawfully available substances, such as benzocaine, which mimic some attributes of the illegal drugs, but there are currently no bespoke powers available to law enforcement agencies to seize, detain and destroy such cutting agents. Part 4 addresses this gap. The process will be subject to appropriate judicial oversight to ensure that the interests of any legitimate owners of suspected cutting agents are properly protected.

Part 5 takes us into different territory. Here, we seek to strengthen the protection of children and vulnerable women. Crimes against children, especially very young children, are particularly heinous, and all the more so when they are perpetrated by the very people—their parents or carers—who are supposed to protect, nurture and love them. There has been a bespoke offence of child cruelty since 1868. It is now enshrined in section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, but the language of the offence is, in places, clearly antiquated. The Bill therefore updates section 1, in particular to make it explicit that the offence covers cruelty that causes psychological, as well as physical, suffering or harm.

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[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

We welcome many of the measures in the Bill and we will support it tonight, but as a policy to tackle serious crime in Britain, it is still too weak. Rightly, it has been improved in the other place as a result of strong campaigning for amendments to be added, but more still needs to be done. As a final Bill for this Parliament, it is not ambitious enough to deal with the serious crime challenges that face Britain today.

Crime is changing and the criminal justice system is still not keeping up. The challenge from serious crime is increasing, not falling, and more needs to be done. Violent crime is increasing, yet fewer violent crimes are being prosecuted or convicted. More sexual offences are being reported, but fewer are reaching conviction. Reported rapes and domestic violence are increasing, yet fewer are reaching conviction. Far fewer drugs are being seized on their way into this country, and online crime is escalating exponentially and the police are not equipped to keep up. The problem is getting worse, not better, and the criminal justice system under the Home Secretary is not keeping up.

The measures are welcome, but they do not address the scale of the problem that we face. Let me deal with the measures in turn and highlight the areas in which the Government need to go further. The Government must stop the clock turning backwards. We have supported from the start the extension of extraterritorial jurisdiction for the two offences under the Terrorism Act 2006, preparation of terrorist acts and training for terrorism. We argued from the start, however, that the Home Secretary would need to go further, restore the relocation powers that she abolished in terrorism prevention and investigation measures, and strengthen Prevent. We will discuss those further measures later this week in the context of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, in which she has had to do exactly that.

We support the measures on accessing child pornography but believe that much more needs to be done to tackle this growing crime. I will come on to that in a moment. We support the measures to tighten the law on hacking and to address the international challenge that online crime poses. We welcome in particular more action to stop criminals benefiting from the proceeds of their crimes—something for which we have been calling for some time. Members in all parts of the House will agree, I think, that we should recover the proceeds of crime. Ill-gotten gains should not furnish the lifestyle of a criminal, in some cases long after their sentence has concluded. Wherever possible, there should be recompense to victims of crime, who have often lost so much.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady clarify whether the Opposition would support in Committee or on Report measures relating to the disclosure of beneficial ownership of UK property owned by offshore companies, which is one of the ways that assets are held, and unexplained wealth orders, along the lines of those used in Guernsey, to allow law enforcement officers more time than they currently have? Those two measures are excluded from the Bill.

[Yvette Cooper]

We support a series of measures where we think the Government should go further. We will table amendments in Committees and we will probe the detail of the Government’s legislation. I am happy to talk further to the hon. Gentleman about the details of those issues, as they are immensely important.

There are areas where we should do more to take back from criminals the assets that they have stolen from victims of crime right across the country. The aspects that we highlighted in the past related to preventing criminals from switching their assets to family and friends and getting away with it, and toughening sentences to deal with the problem of people serving only short sentences, even though they were continuing to squirrel away huge illegal gains. We support the measures to give more powers to the courts to tackle so-called designer divorces and third parties keeping hold of assets, and we support plans to require offenders to pay swiftly. The Government accept that more can still be done and we will probe this further in Committee.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

What has the shadow Home Secretary got to say about those people in Northern Ireland who make a packet out of smuggling fuel and counterfeit vodka, which was described in the Sunday Independent this week as a multi-million pound vodka moonshine operation by the IRA? People such as Mr Murphy and Mr Hughes, who operate in the border area, have never been put in jail and have never been prosecuted for such activity, yet they are at it at large. What can be done to put those people where they deserve to be?

[Yvette Cooper]

Wherever racketeering and exploitation take place, action should be taken to tackle those serious crimes. It is a problem that we highlighted from the beginning, when the legislation for the National Crime Agency was drawn up, but Northern Ireland is not covered by the work of the National Crime Agency. That continues to be a challenge and to cause problems.

If we can increase the resources taken from the proceeds of crime, that will help victims and also help to improve and support the criminal justice system. I welcome the Home Secretary’s comment today that she believes the Bill will raise additional resources and will save money, and that she will consider extending the relevant measure to those who owe less than the £10 million provided for in the Bill. That is the same policy that she claimed this morning would cost £19 million, and her own document claimed would not save any money at all because it assumed that no one would change their behaviour. So she said one thing at noon and something completely different at 5.30 in the afternoon, and undermined her claims from this morning.

Many other aspects of the Bill have been added as a result of strong campaigns and amendments put forward or supported by Labour in the Lords and by many Members across this House. We welcome, for example, the three new clauses and new schedules added in the Lords for stronger action against the appalling and barbaric crime of female genital mutilation that takes place against young girls. We have called for stronger prevention orders and are glad that they are included, as well as the measures on anonymity for victims and stronger responsibility. I pay tribute to some of the campaign groups which have worked so hard, as well as hon. Members who have pursued the issues. We will look further at the detail in Committee.

[Keith Vaz]

There is all-party support for the actions taken by the Government. Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that despite the legislation and the political willingness to get something done on FGM, there have been only two prosecutions in relation to FGM? This needs to change. The prosecution authorities need to understand the seriousness of the issue.

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. It is a matter not just of the legal framework, but of making sure that the law is enforced. We must ensure that the law is strong enough and that prosecution authorities, the police and authorities at every level, including schools and other organisations, are properly aware of the seriousness of the crime and of the risks to young girls in this country, and are prepared and ready to take action to tackle this awful crime.

[Sir William Cash]

Is the right hon. Lady aware that one of the problems has been that front-line workers are uncertain when they may report matters? That is the objective with which I will deal in my remarks later. Will she give a sympathetic hearing to that approach?

[Yvette Cooper]

We will certainly do so. I am happy to talk further to the hon. Gentleman about the matter. We, too, have spoken about the issues surrounding mandatory reporting not only of female genital mutilation, but of child abuse more widely. There is a strong case for making sure that professionals across the board are aware of the serious damage being done to young people as a result of these awful crimes.

We welcome the proposals to strengthen the law on domestic abuse. I pay tribute to Women’s Aid and Paladin, which have campaigned for the strengthening of the law so that it recognises the cumulative impact of different forms of psychological abuse, as well as physical abuse, and the way that that can trap women in particular and men in abusive relationships, causing huge harm to them, their families and the children. We look forward to discussing the clauses in detail.

On protection for children, I pay tribute to Action for Children for its campaign to strengthen the law on child cruelty, and to the campaign by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and by Lord Harris, who argued, with our support in the other place, that the Bill should include a new offence of sending a sexual message to a child.

As an overall response to the scale of serious crime, however, the Bill does not yet go far enough, because crime is changing and serious crime is a grave and growing problem. Over the decades there has been a welcome fall in the number of high-volume crimes, including most theft offences, domestic burglaries and car crimes, but the number of many of the most serious crimes is going up. Reported rapes continue to rise at about 30%, yet new figures show that the number of arrests has gone down by 8%. Arrests as a proportion of recorded rapes have dropped from 90% to 63% in the past few years. That is completely unacceptable. Violent crime is also increasing, but prosecutions and convictions are falling.

On sexual offences, the Home Secretary sometimes refers to a Yewtree effect and historical offences, but that is not the case, because the latest figures show that the majority of the increase in reported sexual offences has occurred in the previous 12 months. Reported child sex offences are perhaps one of the most troubling areas of all.

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

Does not the right hon. Lady accept—I hope she does—that people are reporting because suddenly they have an opportunity to do so and are going to be taken seriously? That was not the case before, and the issue was discussed when the Sexual Offences Act 2003 was put through by a Labour Government.

[Yvette Cooper]

The honest truth is that we do not know what is happening to underlying prevalence, but we do know that reporting has increased. I have been very careful to talk about the reporting of rape: reports of rapes and sexual offences have increased. We want more people to come forward and report crimes because we know that many of them have been underreported. However, the serious problem is that, although more cases are being reported, fewer cases are being prosecuted and reaching conviction. I am not talking about a simple proportion of crimes: these are absolute numbers. Fewer rape arrests are taking place even though more rapes have been reported to the criminal justice system. That is a serious weakness and I am concerned about what is happening in the criminal justice system and policing under this Government.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

The right hon. Lady ought to look at the Committee stage of the 2003 Act, where a Labour Government, with assistance from the then Opposition, considered that very point and the extreme difficulty involved. Before she tables any amendments, I ask her please to read that Hansard report. The issue was faced then.

[Yvette Cooper]

I think the hon. Gentleman would agree that we want more rapes to be reported, because we know they are underreported at the moment. It is significant that, over many years under a Labour Government, we saw an increase in arrests, prosecutions and convictions, both for serious sexual offences and for domestic violence. Over the past few years we have seen a drop in the proportion of domestic violence offences reaching conviction and a drop in the number of rape arrests and prosecutions for the most serious sexual offences. That is a serious problem. Those numbers are not falling because the number of crimes is falling. The situation is quite the reverse: they are falling because the criminal justice system and policing under this Government are not able to deal with the scale of the problem and are not conducting sufficient investigations or taking sufficient action.

For example, the number of child abuse prosecutions has fallen from 9,235 in 2010-11 to 7,998 in 2013-14, at a time when more child sex offences have been reported to the police. The number of prosecutions has fallen and there are 800 fewer convictions as a result. That means that more abusers and dangerous criminals are getting away with it. That is a serious concern.

Where in this Bill are the national standards we need and the commissioner to tackle violence against women and girls? Where is the policy for mandatory reporting of child abuse and for compulsory sex and relationship education to prevent abuse in the next generation? Where is the policy to ban the use of community resolutions for domestic violence so that cases are not diverted to inappropriate apologies rather than taken through the courts? Where is the policy to stop people with a history of domestic violence owning a gun? The Government could introduce so many more policies, but they are not included in the Bill.

Where is the action to enforce the existing law? It is a serious concern that the child abuse inquiry, which has already been stopped twice by chaos over the chairs, is still not established on a firm footing and it is taking the Home Secretary months to work out how to give it the full powers it needs. This is extremely important and it is incomprehensible why it is taking her so long to get it established on a proper footing.

Where, too, is the action to tackle some of the most serious offences of all? I am particularly concerned about the rapidly escalating problem of online child abuse. The Bill includes some measures, which we welcome, but I have pressed the Home Secretary repeatedly to do more and to level with Parliament about the scale of the problem and the challenges that the police and agencies face in addressing it, and so far she has repeatedly refused to do so. She knows that the National Crime Agency has details of between 20,000 and 30,000 cases of online child abuse through Operation Notarise alone, yet she has refused to confirm that figure and so too—I presume under her instruction—has the NCA. Why is that? Surely we have a right to know the scale both of that crime and of the information given to the NCA, so that we can debate the Bill’s measures and whether they are sufficient. Evidence from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre shows that a significant proportion of those who engage in online abuse go on to commit contact abuse.

The number of arrests under Operation Notarise so far totals just over 700 out of more than 20,000. How many of those 19,300 cases could be involved in contact abuse? When will those cases be investigated? The police and the NCA have briefed the media that not all of them will or can be investigated, but is that true? The Home Secretary ought to tell the House as part of the debate on this Bill. Even if they are eventually investigated, how long would it take?

There have already been unacceptable delays in Project Spade, an international operation that caught more than 2,300 people purchasing online child abuse imagery. Their information was passed to CEOP by Toronto police in July 2012, but it was not disseminated to police forces until November 2013. That intelligence included information on Myles Bradbury, who was arrested in December 2013 on the basis of Project Spade but who had abused children in the period when no intelligence was being passed on. There can be no repeat of the Myles Bradbury case, yet the long delays in investigating cases under Operation Notarise risk exactly that. I urge the Home Secretary to tell us what the figures are, how long the delays are, how many of the cases have not yet been investigated and how many children could potentially be at risk by the failure to do so.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I am sure my right hon. Friend and the Home Secretary are aware that one of the reasons for the delays is that the search engines are charging between £50 and £80 for the information and the police simply do not have the resources for that.

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[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. If there are such obstacles and delays, Parliament needs to address them. We should be taking action to make sure that the police and the NCA can take the necessary action to protect children and investigate these extremely serious crimes. However, it is very difficult for us to do that if we do not have the full facts about the scale of the problems, the extent of the delays and the problems that may be building up for the future. It is simply not fair on those who may be vulnerable victims of these crimes for us not to act when we know that the information is there and we could be pursuing it.

Finally, the wider issue of cybercrime is another area where the Government need to be more ambitious in their strategy. Adrian Leppard, the commissioner of the City of London police, has said that

“this nature of crime is rising exponentially.”

It is estimated that more than 12.5 million people have fallen victim to cybercrime in a 12-month period in the United Kingdom, yet the commissioner of the City of London police told the Home Affairs Committee that a quarter of the 800 specialist internet crime officers could be axed as spending is cut. Already there are too few people in the police who have the expertise to pursue these rapidly escalating crimes. We do not want the clock being turned backwards on the expertise we have—quite the opposite: we need to make sure we get greater expertise in the police. We will table amendments on that, including to ask the Sentencing Council to review sentencing guidelines for e-crimes. For example, Anonymous hackers who cost PayPal more than £3.5 million were given sentences of between seven and 18 months, considerably less than they would have been given if they had committed a physical crime to the same value.

This Bill and the action taken by the Government are not strong enough. The Government are not yet doing enough to tackle the rise of serious crimes—cybercrime, violent crime, domestic violence, rape, child sex offences—or to protect victims. The Home Secretary has been far too complacent about the drops in volume crimes. We all welcome such falls, but the rise in serious crimes is too often ignored. She needs to do far more to act against the rise in serious crimes, particularly in relation to the protection of children, which is her responsibility.

The Bill has been improved during its passage through Parliament, but it has not yet been improved enough. As it passes through this House, we must improve and strengthen it if victims are not to be let down.