Examination of Witnesses (Questions 44-59)
16 MARCH 2004
MR BILL
HUGHES AND
MR GERRY
LIDDELL
Q44 Chairman: We now move to the Association
of Chief Police Officers and we welcome Mr Bill Hughes, the Director
General of the National Crime Squad, and Mr Gerry Liddell who
has the most interesting title of Head of Reflex. Is this some
kind of gymnastic activity or just the way in which you respond
to things?
Mr Hughes: You can see from his
athletic build that it is obviously the former!
Q45 Chairman: He is the ultimate respondent
from the National Crime Squad. Could you just explain to us what
the Head of Reflex is.
Mr Liddell: It is actually the
Head of the Reflex Secretariat. Reflex is the Government's multi-agency
response to organised immigration crime and I head up a small
unit which coordinates that activity in the National Crime Squad.
So, it is not Head of Reflex per se.
Chairman: Thank you very much for coming
before the Committee and I would like to ask Alan Simpson if he
would be kind enough to start our questioning.
Q46 Alan Simpson: I just want to focus
in on what we know about the connections between gangmasters and
illegal crime and people trafficking. There is a reference in
the report that was undertaken by the National Criminal Intelligence
Service about organised crime in which they said, " . . .
employers are aware that they are employing illegal workers. While
most of these workers are willing accomplices, a minority is trafficked
for use as bonded labour." How much? What do we know about
that connection between gangmasters and illegal people trafficking
and crime?
Mr Hughes: Before responding to
that particular question, it might be useful just to give a background
about what we do in Reflex as that will help to fill out the gaps,
so that I can answer that question better. Reflex was formed about
four years ago now to deal with the issue around organised immigration
crime. There are two definitions of that that are used generally
by the United Nations, that of trafficking, which is where people
are moved whether they want to be or not, and smuggling which
is where there is some element of complicit acknowledgement and
agreement to it. What Reflex was formed to do is a multi-agency
approach which is chaired by the Director General of the National
Crime Squad which is me, and that has been my job for about three-and-a-half
years now. I took over from my predecessor who started it. We
have representatives from all agencies, from the Immigration Service
right through to other police forces, intelligence security services,
government departments, FCO, the Home Office etc. The purpose
is to deal with organised immigration crime but what is described
under the National Intelligence model at Level 3, that is the
serious national, international and trans-national, so we primarily
deal with issues such as those who are bringing people from countries
around the world towards the United Kingdom or to Europe and those
who are operating at the highest level, and we make no difference
between trafficking and smuggling because what we are dealing
with are the organised criminals who engage in both of those activities.
The National Criminal Intelligence Service is the intelligence
side, a sister agency if you like, to the Crime Squad who provide
the assessments of intelligence and they run a series of liaison
officers around the world. They are responsible for that liaison
officer network. That information is then fed in, so that we can
then start to form task and coordinating groups in order to attack
those particular criminal gangs that are operating.
Q47 Alan Simpson: I do not want to be
too disrespectful to you but this is a long preamble about the
structure and I think what the Committee wants to know is, what
do we know? In a sense, we can walk around the houses of that
structure nationally and internationally on another occasion.
I think that we need to be saying to you what we said to Operation
Gangmaster, which is, tell us what we know.
Mr Hughes: I am grateful for that.
I was just trying to make sure that you understood exactly the
context in which I was operating because we have no role in Operation
Gangmaster.
Q48 Alan Simpson: I am just saying, in
your own role, if we can focus on identifying what it is that
we currently know and where we are in the process of following
that through. There have been one or two prosecutions, but give
us some idea about how much we are able to identify on the issues
of this organised illegal movements of people, where it is bonded
labour, whether it is illegal migration.
Mr Hughes: I can tell you that
there are 32 operations that we are running under Reflex at the
present time against those who are involved in organised immigration
crime, of which nine involve elements of illegal working. That
obviously is only the picture of which we are aware based on the
intelligence that comes to us in order that we can operate against
it.
The Committee suspended from 3.51 pm to
4.06 pm for a division in the House
Q49 Chairman: Mr Hughes, you were rudely
interrupted by the bell.
Mr Hughes: The 32 operations that
I spoke about are simply National Crime Squad operations. We have
200 intelligence developments operating worldwide at the present
time looking at organised immigration crime. A small percentage
of those involve illegal employment issues, but I think that the
important thing to point out is that what we have identified over
the last three-and-a-half/four years is a better picture now of
what is happening in terms of organised immigration crime and
what we are trying to do with Reflex now is to get funding to
local forces in order that they can start to deal at a more local
level with the issues that we are identifying which primarily
revolve around the fact that there are now groups of people illegally
in the country and because they are therefore in some difficulty
in relating to the host community in some instances, they can
become insular and there therefore are opportunities to be exploited
by organised crime themselves or they may, in some instances,
turn to organised crime themselves in order to keep them going
and what we are looking to do is to try to develop better Level
1 and Level 2 operations at local force level in order that they
can start to deal with those issues.
Q50 Chairman: Can you describe for the
Committee's benefit what Level 1 and Level 2 is.
Mr Hughes: The National Intelligence
model has been set out as the model that all police forces and
law enforcement agencies use. Level 1 primarily revolves around
crime which is at a local level, the borough level, the basic
command unit level. Level 2 is that which crosses boundaries of
boroughs and forces and therefore involves an element of inter-force
working. Level 3 is the area which we operate at which is the
national, trans-national, international serious and organised
crime levels. So, it is more about geography than about the type
of criminality because a murder at a local level can be a Level
1 crime, so it is no indicator of seriousness, it is purely about
geography.
Alan Simpson: We were given a copy of
the media monitoring report interview that took place on Saturday
13 March on Farming Today about one particular case, one
of the biggest criminal cases of its kind, where six people were
found guilty of running a gangmaster racket that made £4
million out of supplying illegal migrant workers to farms and
packhouses. Obviously, a very high-profile case. The significant
thing for me about this is that what we got them on was dodging
income tax and national insurance contributions.
Mr Mitchell: Just like Al Capone.
Q51 Alan Simpson: Exactly, just like
Al Capone. It was not the extent to which they exploited people
but the extent to which they defrauded the Treasury. Can you just
clarify for the Committee, in terms of the remit that you have—and
you extended it from the illegal working into this much broader
picture about organised immigration crime—to what extent
is this cash driven? Are you expected, in terms of your performance
targets, to hit cash receipts for the country as opposed to putting
people in prison for the exploitation of human misery?
Mr Hughes: At the risk of giving
you another long answer, I will embark on it and you can tell
me when I have said too much. The issue that we have moved towards
is a culture within the Crime Squad—and this is now operating
comprehensively—to try and disrupt and dismantle organised
crime as quickly as possible because of the harm it causes to
communities. In the past, we have had operations that have lasted
four, five or even six years. What we have done is bring the average
length of our operations down from 24 months to eight months because
what we are seeking to do is to find any opportunity to get into
organised crime and disrupt and dismantle it as quickly as possible.
So, yes, on occasions we will use other offences that may, at
first appearance, seem odd, but that is a way of taking them out
of business because that is what we are empowered to do. We are
set objectives by the Home Secretary and targets around the amount
of effort we put into dealing with Class A drug trafficking and
organised human trafficking which are the two main planks of work
that we do. Seventy-five per cent of my resources must be allocated
towards that type of criminality. Within that of course, with
the Proceeds of Crime Act that is now in place, not only is that
an obvious opportunity for us to remove the assets that criminals
acquire, because that is a disruption and dismantlement tactic
in its own right, but it is also a very useful thing to do to
put that money back into areas where it can be then used better
than for the criminals' assets. So, to answer your question, no,
we do not have targets but how much we seize is certainly measured
and is of benefit because there are now moves towards incentivisation
which is where those moneys can be used to be put back into law
enforcement generally.
Q52 Alan Simpson: Do you have a view
in terms of our own inquiry—and I suppose that leaves out
the whole drugs issue—about the sort of industries that
are the locusts of those criminal gangs that are behind these
large-scale people movements?
Mr Hughes: One of the things we
have found in what we are doing is that we deal with serious and
organised criminals. We are a different agency in that regard.
We focus on the criminals rather than the criminality or the crime
they have committed. What that means is that we look to see what
it is they are doing in order to dismantle them. What we find
as well is that most of those criminals are, if you like, criminal
entrepreneurs. They engage in all types of criminal activity at
all levels. So, if we can obtain information and put them out
of business for whatever it is they are doing, then we will do
that. I am not saying that those that we are dealing with for
employing people illegally are involved in drug trafficking, but
often those we are dealing with will look at all areas of criminality
because that is how they operate, they are criminals and they
look to any opportunity to make money.
Q53 Alan Simpson: Effectively, I think
what you are saying to us is that we should not focus on the end
location because they will supply to whatever the market is, that
is the nature of their organising activities.
Mr Hughes: Yes. The danger all
the time is focusing on the commodity or the end product and I
am not demeaning people by saying that because that is how they
treat them, as a commodity. We should be looking at those who
commit the criminality in the first place and that is why we make
no distinction between trafficking and smuggling. Unlike many
of our international colleagues who do not deal with smuggling
because they say there is an element of compliance, we deal with
the serious organised criminals involved in all of it.
Q54 Mr Mitchell: How far are you concerned
with this? It is basically an immigration labour issue apart from
its connection with organised crime. Is crime your real entrée
to this issue?
Mr Hughes: Yes. As I say, our
remit is to deal with serious and organised criminals and those
entrepreneurs will move wherever they see a commodity. The danger
we have now is that, with human beings, to an extent they have
come across what you could describe almost as the Holy Grail of
criminality: a bottomless pit of a commodity for which there is
an end market. What we have sought to do in Reflex is to go right
back to the countries of origin and work with our colleagues in
law enforcement there to try and reduce the flow in the first
place. The other aspect as well is that people enter into the
UK often as a staging post to somewhere else or they are on their
way to other parts of Europe, but the issue around how they get
here is a very confused picture on occasions and what they will
end up doing is crossing the world quite literally backwards and
forwards finding a nexus point where they can be got together
ready for the next shipment. It is a very inhuman and degrading
trade.
Q55 Mr Mitchell: To repeat an earlier
question, is there a connection between the people who are bringing
illegal immigrants, let us say asylum seekers, in illegally and
the people who are employing them illegally? Are they same people
or is there a kind of franchising operation or what?
Mr Hughes: On some occasions it
is. There are those who bring people into the country who have
been tricked; they think they are paying to get into the UK. They
are then exploited: there are kidnaps, extortion of the family
back in the country from which they come, and they are employed
in illegal enterprises, in sweatshop enterprises in order that
they can make more money. This is particularly the case where
we are dealing with women and children brought into the country
for the purposes of sexual exploitation and prostitution where
often they are treated as virtual slaves.
Q56 Mr Mitchell: I notice in the threat
assessment from the National Criminal Intelligence Service that
it says that the immigrants, people also involved in organised
crime I take it, are especially from Central and Eastern Europe.
Within just a few months, they will be able to come here legally
anyway. So, is the threat then removed? What happens?
Mr Hughes: That is an interesting
statement.
Q57 Mr Mitchell: It was a question!
Mr Hughes: Okay, an interesting
question. Whether I make an answer of course is another matter
because we have done a lot of work dealing with our colleagues
particularly in places like Romania, Poland and Budapest to deal
with the issue around those who are entering into their country
on the way to making it into the EU and into the UK and wherever
else. That excludes a number of people who come in from China
and South East Asia. Our concern is to make sure that we close
off nexus points, so that people cannot enter into Europe and
into the UK. Obviously, when we are dealing with people in those
circumstances who are in the EU, then that is another matter altogether.
Those are not people with whom we would be involved.
Q58 Mr Mitchell: You have not much power
with those countries which will be EU members.
Mr Hughes: It is difficult when
they are already in the EU of course, but that means that we have
to look at how we can stop people further afield. It is a different
type of approach to dealing with drug trafficking, if you let
me run with this just for a second or two. With drugs, we want
to see where the network goes in order that we can take the network
out that is bringing it to the end user. With illegal immigration,
we want to stop people starting on the journey in the first place.
As you will appreciate, the closer you get to the home, the easier
and better it is to build up the intelligence picture. The way
in which we are operating means that we have to do intelligence
gathering in a totally different way to the way in which we have
operated before and it is extremely difficult. You have examples
like Kent police who have invested a lot in dealing with those
who are victimised and brought in and trying to gain intelligence
from those individuals in often very difficult circumstances.
They are not sure they are dealing with the police; there may
not be the same rapport with the Police in the country from which
they come. They are also aware that their families may be at risk
from those people who originally started them off. So, it is a
very delicate operation, not helped of course by the language
difficulties. There are huge problems around that. Much of the
Reflex money goes on providing translation in order that we can
actually talk to the people to whom we need to talk.
Q59 Mr Mitchell: Mr Liddell, I saw a
reaction from the reaction unit.
Mr Liddell: I was just going to
add some clarification. If we accept that most of the organised
crime groups we are looking at are driven by profit, then if their
profit is removed by the fact that the nationals with whom they
are dealing become part of the EU, then they will look to other
sources to make their profit. That might mean moving into different
commodities but it may also mean targeting different areas of
the world and, as Mr Hughes has already said, it is a fairly inexhaustible
supply because it is driven, as I said, by money and they will
seek the profit elsewhere.
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