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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