Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 239-259)

HM CUSTOMS & EXCISE

11 NOVEMBER 2003

  Q239  Alan Keen: Good morning. Can I first of all apologise for the Chairman not being here at the moment. He is tied up on a broadcast or a meeting over the telephone line, but he will be along fairly soon. Thank you very much for coming. Would you like to make an opening statement before we start putting questions.

  Mr Higgins: No statement. You are familiar with our particular roles, are you?

  Q240  Alan Keen: Yes, it would be helpful, I think, to explain that.

  Mr Higgins: I am Peter Higgins. I am Head of Law Enforcement Policy in Customs & Excise. As you may know, in law enforcement, Customs is divided into policy, our detection staff who are the people that you see at the ports and the airports, and the investigation and intelligence people. My side of the  house looks after some of the prohibitions and   restrictions, particularly drugs, particularly paedophiles and assets-recovery which impacts upon the detection staff in front-line operations.

  Mr Fuchter: My side of the house, as summarised in the short note, is that we deal with policy in respect of a long list of prohibitions and restrictions mostly on the regulatory side, one of which is cultural goods and others are firearms, things like Customs' new responsibilities in terms of illegal meat and things like that. If I may add, to summarise the memorandum we have given you, in essence, it is an attempt to update you on what has changed since 2000. Broadly, much has not changed, but we have endeavoured to answer the specific questions that you have asked us to inform you about and also to flag up where there are one or two changes in law.

  Q241  Mr Flook: Do you think that as an organisation you work closely with the police when it comes to cultural objects coming into the country?

  Mr Fuchter: Yes, I think we do. It is my particular team that liaises with the Art and Antiques Unit. The numbers are small, but we do work pretty closely. We probably work more closely with the Department.

  Q242  Mr Flook: With the Home Office?

  Mr Fuchter: No, DCMS.

  Q243  Mr Flook: In what ways?

  Mr Fuchter: In terms of most of the information we have had. I have tried to summarise in the paper some of the recent topical cases, if you like, that we have had and I think we are struck that much of that is coming through DCMS, but we do work very closely with the police. It tends to be back and forth what do we know about what is going on, particularly in respect of Iraq.

  Q244  Mr Flook: I get this impression that there are gentlemen and ladies sitting in Whitehall and chaps and ladies at the ports and there is a dislocating time between the two and the information you may get does not necessarily feed into what then happens at the ports. We have been told of an incident where some rather old artefacts came in from Iraq and your officers on the ground thought that they could have been receptacles for carrying drugs and, therefore, they were drilled into.

  Mr Fuchter: I am not aware of that case, I have to say. On the earlier point of timeliness and being joined up with where I work, which tends to be a head office approach, we pride ourselves on being very joined up. There is a very close relationship in my team between, on the one hand, advising the Minister and, on the other hand, advising operational staff through senior managers. We use things like our Intranet so that when the Iraqi antiquities issue broke of course, we were able to put a general alert on our Intranet that all staff, all front-line staff would have to be aware and vigilant about it. We sent a specific message, I mentioned this in the paper and it probably sounded a bit repetitive, but we sent a specific message through our suspect information system which goes direct to front-line staff, so we are quite happy in this respect that we can get the right sort of message out fairly quickly. It will always be improved by things like ever better information coming to us, clearer pictures, for example, of the goods. I must admit I am not aware of the case and it would be unfortunate if we had, although probably another manager would commend the officers for thoroughness in terms of looking for class A drugs.

  Q245  Mr Flook: But I still get the impression, and it is not your responsibility, that there are only a handful of Metropolitan policemen and not many others in other police forces and quite a number, although a decreasing number, of Customs & Excise who are more concerned about the importation of illegal drugs than they are about cultural objects or Britain being used as an entrepôt for the illegal passing of and money laundering in that way. How high up do you think your emphasis on cultural objects is since the last time you came to see us?

  Mr Higgins: I do not think there is any doubt because class A drugs are one of Customs & Excise's PSA targets that that is very high on our agenda with other things like fiscal products, tobacco, and our efforts to curtail the illegal market in that area. Having said that, we have about 3,500 Customs officers at our ports and airports, all of whom or virtually all of whom have responsibility not only for drugs and fiscal products, but for the wide range of prohibitions and restrictions for which we are responsible. When those officers are conducting any kind of search, they will be aware not only, and the example you gave was quite a good one perhaps, of looking for drugs, but also whether this is an item of cultural heritage that we would also have an interest in.

  Q246  Mr Flook: On that particular point, the Met organise the occasional symposium to try to educate people who would not know otherwise sometimes what is a cultural object. Do you have a decent enough budget to put people on that course and do you release front-line staff to go on it as often as you think should be done, particularly since the whole reason for us doing this is that it has gone up the scale of priorities, looking at antiques from the Middle East? Do you think you have allocated enough resources and picked the right people to go on those courses?

  Mr Fuchter: I am not aware, I will be honest, whether we have sent anyone on that particular course, but what we do, and in fact this is going on anyway and it was not generated by the particular interest in Iraq, is to conduct seminars. They are quarterly, but they are in different parts of the UK. We go around the UK constantly keeping awareness topped up about export controls generally, and cultural goods form part of that seminar. In terms of the front-line detection staff in the context of imports, it is back to more the immediate alerts on the Intranet which we know is a means of communication that people will use, but I was not personally aware of this training and I think we would be happy to consider it. There is always an issue that we would probably not train 3,500 staff and it would be a case of targeting as I find in other similar areas of responsibility.

  Mr Flook: Perhaps we can ask the Clerk to forward the details to Mr Fuchter.

  Chairman: I apologise for not being here at the start of the meeting and thank Alan for taking the Chair.

  Q247  Derek Wyatt: Can you just explain again the import side. Say, a DHL bag comes in from Oman or Dubai which might have something like computer parts in it, but you are nervous. What actually happens if you think it is not computer parts? Where does the package go?

  Mr Higgins: Well, it depends why we are nervous. If it is from a regulatory point of view, then the business services people will pick that up as being a mis-described entry either because it is mis-described for valuation or whatever. If we are nervous because it is being smuggled in the sense of cultural goods, our detection staff will ask the airport authorities to present that particular package for examination and to open it to verify whether or not it is the correct description or whether it is something which is being smuggled and liable to forfeiture.

  Q248  Derek Wyatt: So approximately how many of those cases have there been since the Iraqi War? How many have been opened?

  Mr Fuchter: Can I just clarify that we can only act in terms of imports in the context of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483 in the context of Iraq. We do not have any details of exact numbers of parcels that we might have opened. We know about commercial consignments where we have set what we call a profile, which is like a flagging mechanism, on our import control system and that has identified cargoes. They tend to be larger commercial cargoes and we know that we have intercepted those and satisfied ourselves that they did not contain Iraqi antiquities, but I cannot comment in respect of a particular package coming through DHL, I am afraid, as we do not have that sort of level of detail.

  Q249  Derek Wyatt: We are told that packages do come in from Oman and Dubai and are in a bonded warehouse somewhere at Heathrow or near Heathrow and then somehow make their way across to America. How does that work? You send it to London and then somebody comes in, changes the address and it goes on to New York without anyone intercepting it?

  Mr Fuchter: I would speculate, and it is speculating, that it is quite possibly originally addressed as enroute to New York, but because of the way the freight companies operate sort of a hub system, if you like, then that parcel could well transit through Heathrow. I understand that is what happened in the case of the Golden Guns where there was never any intention for that parcel to come into the UK, but it was what we call in transit to the USA. In essence, Customs in terms of cultural goods, we are in some difficulty there. Parcels coming through somewhere like Heathrow will not touch down in the UK for very long and our staff are aware that they have to move very quickly if they want to examine anything in transit.

  Q250  Derek Wyatt: Let's assume it comes into Britain rather than being en route to America. Do you have X-ray facilities so that you do not necessarily have to undo things and you can actually X-ray to see? Is that common?

  Mr Higgins: There are certainly X-ray facilities at Heathrow, not at all airports.

  Mr Fuchter: And we do have them at the main postal depots, yes.

  Q251  Derek Wyatt: And how many real experts do you have on Iraqi antiques in Customs & Excise? You said you send stuff out, but where are the experts then?

  Mr Fuchter: I am not aware that we would have any particular experts and it is not our approach to employ experts in Iraqi antiquities directly. We would go for expertise to the British Museum or some similar authority if there were to be a suspect detection. I think really it is impractical for us to engage in it. When something like the Iraqi antiquities issue comes up, it is more about refocusing those people out there who are good at looking for things, understanding risks and are well trained to search for things, look for space and things like that rather than quickly teaching them about Iraqi antiquities, so it is raising awareness rather than skills transfer, if you like.

  Q252  Derek Wyatt: What successes have you had then on Iraqi antiques?

  Mr Fuchter: We have not made any detections of Iraqi antiques being attempted to be smuggled into the UK.

  Q253  Derek Wyatt: So is it that you think that it is just hype that people are saying that hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of small items are coming through? We are being told that they are coming through at some alarming rate, but you do not think they are?

  Mr Fuchter: We have not received any intelligence saying, "This is the sort of profile of what is happening". We have been looking and we have looked in both commercial consignments and we have stopped passengers, but we have not found anything. When it started to emerge that a lot of the antiques may actually still be in Iraq, we were careful to ensure that we did not all switch off and I think we introduced a hastener to our Intranet alerts to all staff, but the bottom line is that we have not found anything in the course of our activities.

  Q254  Derek Wyatt: Has the UNESCO Convention, now we have signed up, had implications for staffing for you?

  Mr Fuchter: No.

  Q255  Derek Wyatt: And you do the imports as well as the exports now?

  Mr Fuchter: We will not act against all imports until the new Act is in place at the end of the year.

  Q256  Ms Shipley: I recently, very recently, in the last week or so, had the opportunity to spend a few hours with Customs & Excise at one of our ports and actually it was very impressive. It was very, very interesting and very, very impressive and I can see very clearly how people have focused on people-trafficking, which is hugely important and probably the most important, and drugs, hugely important, lots and lots and lots and lots of talk about cigarettes, and I know there is a revenue issue there, but compared to drugs and people, I would not put it that high on the focus, but lots and lots and lots of talk about cigarettes, cigarettes and more cigarettes and that was it really. There was not a peep about what we are discussing today. Not one single person raised anything about it, not when I was looking at the X-rays that can be done, not when I was talking directly one to one, not when they were talking about the intelligence coming in, and it was an excellent presentation, truly outstanding work, and I would suggest that this is below zero on the priority list, possibly with good reason. Could I have your opinion on that?

  Mr Higgins: Could I just make one comment which is that Customs of course is not responsible for the people element. That is for the Immigration Service, although we do find them.

  Q257  Ms Shipley: Interestingly, Customs & Excise took the time to talk to me about how they could find people, how they could X-ray people, how their equipment could find people, but they never once, and you are making my point really, talked about cultural objects, which they are responsible for. Now, I would suggest that actually the people-smuggling is hugely more important and serious than the art ones and I am glad that they did talk about it and it is to their credit that they did, but, and here is the but, how high in the priorities is what we are discussing today?

  Mr Higgins: I am not surprised they talked about people because I suspect you were at a port in the south-east somewhere where our people do pick up people in the backs of lorries, et cetera, through the checks that we do for our own assigned matters. In terms of tobacco, in terms of drugs, in a sense I am not surprised that they focused on that because that is where our main PSA targets are and that is what they find most of all, but we have a long list of other items which we are responsible for administering in terms of primarily import prohibition and restrictions and whereas they may not have mentioned that to you, I have no doubt at all that they will have been very aware that in their searches for drugs, tobacco or whatever, those items are of interest and will be a matter which, if found, need to be taken forward for possible forfeiture and seizure.

  Q258  Ms Shipley: What would you say your working relationship with the police, the specific specialised police, is?

  Mr Fuchter: As far as I know, it is good. As I said in response to the earlier question, the Art and Antiques Unit liaise with my team and we disseminate what they give us and vice versa, I understand, so we regard that as effective.

  Q259  Ms Shipley: Given that there is always room for improvement in everything, how would you improve things?

  Mr Fuchter: I think we are interested in the database of stolen and what ultimately, I suppose, will be tainted objects as well. We would certainly be interested in that. It is difficult to say. I suppose a flow of intelligence probably both ways, but to go back to the earlier point about the presentation, Customs officers are intelligence-driven and if the presentation very much focused on imports, then I would not expect them to say much about cultural goods because, perhaps aside from the response to the Iraqi antiquities which has tended to be at certain key ports because they get certain traffic from the high-risk countries, I would not expect that you would hear much about it as it would be part of our export responsibilities.


 
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