Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
16 MARCH 2004
MR BILL
HUGHES AND
MR GERRY
LIDDELL
Q60 Mr Mitchell: How often have the police
been asked to support operations against illegal gangmasters and
those involved in gangmaster activity and I will take in two parts:
before Morecambe Bay and after Morecambe Bay and let us take two
years before?
Mr Hughes: The figures I have
show that we have had nine previous operations by regional forces
against illegal working. Some of those have been supported directly
by Reflex funding from our project. We have at the moment nine
operations in the National Crime Squad that involve illegal working,
but only two of those are in the food processing or packaging
industries but, for obvious reasons, I do not want to go into
the details of those.
Q61 Mr Mitchell: Has there been an increase
in activity since Morecambe Bay?
Mr Hughes: Yes because we are
becoming more aware of what is going on there. The link-in with
Operation Gangmaster is through the Immigration Service
and that is one of the multi-agency groups that we have working
with us and, as they escalate up through the intelligence gathering
into those levels about which I have spoken, that is Level 2 and
Level 3 type criminality, then, if it is Level 3 work, we will
get involved and, if it is Level 2, what we are doing through
Reflex is to encourage all police forces to become involved in
dealing with things at their local level. Of course, this was
an issue where the intelligence was lacking in the past because
it is a very closed covert piece of work that is going on there.
Now we are getting better at the intelligence and in obtaining
that intelligence, then forces are taking more and more of a role
in dealing with that at local level.
Q62 Chairman: Could you put a timescale
onto what you have said because you have said that things have
been improving but that, in the past, they were not too good.
At what point did things start improving?
Mr Hughes: In the last year or
so, we have focused in Reflex on making sure that local forces
play an active role as well. The focus beforehand on Reflex tended
to be outside the United Kingdom on those who were facilitating
moving people into the United Kingdom and dealing with those criminal
gangs. What we are concerned about it that, as the intelligence
picture has been developing over the last 12 months or so, it
indicates that those groups of people who are in the United Kingdom
already are now either at risk themselves at being exploited by
organised crime or are turning to crime themselves.
Q63 Chairman: But we do not get the wrong
end of the stick because obviously we have but a short time to
get into what is a very complex area. You are saying that because
the main focus of your activity is people movements into the United
Kingdom for the people you have described to exploit, as that
issue, if you like, has come up the political agenda, more resources
have come to you with your own review capacity and you have become
better at looking at what is going on and then you are feeding
that information back down to your Level 2 and Level 1 recipients
of that information to urge them to become involved.
Mr Hughes: I think you have just
added one slight matter to that with which I would not agree.
Q64 Chairman: Tell me where I have it
wrong.
Mr Hughes: Whatever the political
agenda is, that is not the issue that drives what we are doing.
It is around the intelligence picture that we are starting to
develop.
Q65 Chairman: If you are going to get
better at intelligence gathering, then, by definition, it must
have a resource implication.
Mr Hughes: Yes.
Q66 Chairman: And it is the Home Secretary
who provides those resources. We are assuming that an inference
from what you are saying is that more resources have been made
available which has enabled you to become better at your job.
Mr Hughes: Yes.
Q67 Chairman: The impression I am getting
is that that occurred in the last 12 months, which has enabled
you to wire together some of the acts of these criminal persons,
some of which touch on the subject which is at the heart of our
inquiry.
Mr Hughes: Yes.
Q68 Mr Mitchell: What guidance and instructions
do police forces get from the Home Office on dealing with this
issue?
Mr Hughes: It is primarily done
through Reflex, ourselves, and how they work with that. We are,
if you like, a source of expertise for them on how to deal with
those types of issues.
Q69 Mr Mitchell: There was no guidance
note either before or after Morecambe Bay saying how to deal with
this issue because it is going to come up locally rather than
down from you. Somebody is going to come along and say, "Why
are you not going to do something about this?"
Mr Hughes: There is not a specific
guidance, it is about dealing with criminality which is what police
forces are there to deal with. We give them advice and guidance.
Just to go back to the Chairman's issue just now, we made a bid
under SR2002 for funding and received funding of £20 million
a year for three years and we could use that to assist local forces
to move into new areas of work which include of course the aspects
of dealing with organised immigration crime.
Mr Liddell: There is specific
guidance on different aspects but not perhaps on the aspect about
which you are talking which is dealing with gangmasters and that
side of it. There is specific guidance on, for example, how to
identify victims of trafficking and deal with trafficking which
has been disseminated down to not only a police force but other
agencies that might encounter those individuals.
Q70 Mr Mitchell: It is not simply a question
of criminal intelligence because it is a question of labour legislation
and immigration legislation on which you need the co-operation
of other departments. The impression I am getting, particularly
from the MP from Morecambe, is that that cooperation is not readily
or quickly enough forthcoming. Would that be a fair picture?
Mr Hughes: It is a little difficult
for me to say because, in my position, I am not actually in a
local force, so I do not know what is happening at local force
level in that regard. The issue is of course that it is one of
those areas where, if you are not looking for this particular
type of criminality, you may not necessarily find it. What we
have been trying to do is raise the awareness level at local force
and their intelligence gathering capabilities to try and build
up a picture themselves and that will involve them talking with
other agencies as well and pulling a picture together from them.
I am not going to name the specific force but one particular force
started to notice that there were issues around Vietnamese illegal
immigrants into the country and that there seemed also to be a
heavy involvement of Vietnamese in the growing of hydroponic cultivation
of cannabis. So, they now have more awareness of a problem they
did not know existed beforehand.
Q71 Mr Breed: Much of this afternoon's
discussion has been revolving around the whole complexity of the
multi-agency, inter-departmental and everything else. At a previous
investigation of this Committee when we looked into illegal imports,
principally illegal meat imports, we made recommendations about
the way in which we felt that the agencies operating at the ports
and such ought to be actually combined into a single unit because
we had the Immigration Department, we had Customs & Excise,
we had the Port Health Authority and we had Trading Standards,
all reporting in different lines etc. To a certain extent, do
you believe that, even with this problem, there is a need for
a much more coordinated approach perhaps forged into some more
single unit to try and look at all these immigration and illegal
imports whether it is people or goods or whatever as a way of
actually maximising the resources which are actually being made
available to tackle these growing problems?
Mr Hughes: You will be aware that
there will be a new Serious Organised Crime Agency being formed
in the next two years—it was announced by the Prime Minister
on 9 February—and that will absorb the National Crime Squad,
the National Criminal Intelligence Service, elements of Customs
& Excise dealing with drug trafficking law enforcement and
parts of the Immigration Service dealing with the type of criminality
that we were talking about here, organised immigration crime.
As part of the Cabinet Office review that looked at that, they
did consider a border guard, an agency specifically to deal with
that to pull together some of the elements of the agencies about
which you spoke. As I understand it, that has been rejected. We
did supply evidence ourselves from the National Crime Squad and
I know that ACPO put a view in to the Cabinet Office review around
that. There is a view that some form of border agency may be beneficial
in some way but, as I understand it, I think that is a matter
that at the moment is not being proceeded with. I do not know
why.
Q72 Mr Breed: Do you believe it could
happen?
Mr Hughes: It could happen. It
is whether it should happen of course that is the issue. It is
certainly the case in other countries with which we deal and certainly
the French and Germans, with whom we operate, have that type of
approach. To an extent, it is a little out of my remit in the
National Crime Squad, but I can see that it would be beneficial
in some ways.
Q73 Mr Lazarowicz: The characterisation
of the problem that we have had from you today is very much that
this is a problem of immigrant workers, people trafficking and
issues of that nature but, as Austin Mitchell was highlighting
earlier on, there will be many people who are currently illegal
workers who will most likely not be illegal workers after 1 May
because of the accession of the EU. The case to which he referred
was a case were most of the workers were Latvian and they will,
on the face of it, not be illegal workers after 1 May. Will it
be still a priority for yourselves to tackle this kind of issue
in respect of those workers after 1 May? There may be issues of
VAT, national insurance and not complying with licensing for gangmasters
but there will not be the same issue of illegal migrant labour.
Who will be tackling that issue? Will it be yourselves or will
you be giving more of a priority to the Customs & Excise,
the Revenue or whatever?
Mr Hughes: In dealing with the
criminality we would only deal with those who are involved in
organised immigration crime. If people are legally in the United
Kingdom, that is not an issue that will figure for us. In terms
of the issues that you have referred to there specifically like
the evasion of tax etcetera, that is not a matter the police would
normally be coming forward with except in support to another agency
perhaps, but it would not be a priority role. As Gerry has already
said, what we are seeing more and more is that the entrepreneurs
we deal with are casting their net wider and wider and bringing
in people from all over the world as well. We have had several
operations involving Chinese illegal immigration into the United
Kingdom and certainly with people from Sri Lanka, so there are
people coming in from all over the world. We are also dealing
with Afghanis, with Kurds etcetera, we are not limited to the
EU. In terms of assisting other agencies, one of the capabilities
that we possess in the Crime Squad is a capability to do very
covert surveillance and to use intrusive technology in order to
do that. We are used as a resource by quite a few agencies in
order to assist them in the type of work they do and that includes
the Serious Fraud Office, we work with colleagues in Customs a
lot and with our Immigration Service colleagues also. So it may
be that we are called upon to assist in that regard. Our priority
will be those involved in organised immigration crime and that
would mean illegal immigration.
Q74 Mr Lazarowicz: In the case of the
Latvians, that will not be a priority for you after 1 May, will
it? A case which involved migrant workers from the new EU states,
even if there was some indication of problems because of working
without a licence and problems over VAT, that will not be a priority
for you after 1 May, will it?
Mr Hughes: There would be no criminality
as such per se in what was going on there. I referred in
an earlier answer to 75% of the activity of the Crime Squad going
on drug and illegal dug trafficking. The other 25% includes a
host of other very serious crimes like counterfeit currency, contract
killings and all those type of affairs, but that also means that
we assist local forces particularly with kidnap and extortion
cases which is one area that we provide a specialist resource
on. If a local agency was having difficulties around very serious
breaches of criminal law or very serious breaches of other law
which required police assistance then we would be available to
be tasked on that.
Mr Liddell: There is one narrow
area where it may still impact. If they do not have to enter the
UK illegally because they are part of the wider EU that does not
preclude them from being trafficked and being forced to come to
a different part of the EU to be exploited thereafter and controlled
in a kind of slave labour type way. That is a very small minority
of the problem but it is still an issue for those who are inside
the EU.
Q75 Chairman: Can I just try to wire
together some of the things that you have been saying because
I am a little bit confused. That is not a criticism of your explanation
or responses to the questions. Let us start with a simple question.
Is there a group within ACPO that deals specifically with gangmaster
issues?
Mr Hughes: No, not as such.
Q76 Chairman: You said at the beginning
that you were liaising with other agencies and then you went on
to outline your priorities in looking at those who had opportunities
for pretty high level nasty criminality. Does the National Crime
Squad have any role to play in the process of trying to join together
the many departments of government and other agencies who are
specifically looking at these gangmaster-type issues because gangmasters
as such could not exist unless they had people to exploit? When
people are exploited in the gangmasters' activities then we see
lots of different parts of government starting to wake up. Is
the National Crime Squad involved at all in any kind of high level
discussion with departments and agencies who are taking an overview
of this type of problem?
Mr Hughes: The simple answer to
that question is no. The more detailed clarification is that as
part of the National Crime Squad role we lead on Reflex which
is the multi-agency approach. Within Reflex there are representatives
from other government departments, primarily Home Office, FCO
etcetera.
Q77 Chairman: Which departments?
Mr Hughes: The Home Office, the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office and we have people from the MoD
but no one specifically at all from DWP. We also have people from
the Passport Agency, the Immigration Service and the Intelligence
and Security Services.
Q78 Chairman: So in the case of the area
that we are talking about there is nobody from Defra and nobody
from DTI?
Mr Hughes: No.
Q79 Chairman: In other words, some of
the key players who are involved in dealing with this issue who
might possibly benefit from an overview from your knowledge are
not there to receive it?
Mr Hughes: No, but there is the
linkage because the Immigration Service are represented in both
of those areas.
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