(Morning)
[Dame Marion Roe in the Chair]
9.25 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Caroline Flint): I beg to move,
(1) during proceedings on the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill, in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday llth January, the Standing Committee shall meet at—
(a) 2.30 pm on Tuesday llth January, and
(b) 9.25 am and 2.30 pm on Thursday 13th January, Tuesday 18th January and Thursday 20th January;
(2) the Bill be considered in the following order, namely, Clause 1, Schedule 1, Clauses 2 to 50, Schedule 2, Clauses 51 and 52, Schedule 3, Clause 53, Schedule 4, new Clauses and new Schedules relating to Part 1, Clauses 54 to 74, Schedule 5, Clauses 75 to 90, Schedule 6, Clauses 91 to 100, new Clauses and new Schedules relating to Part 2, Clauses 101 and 102, Schedule 7, Clauses 103 to 113, Schedules 8 and 9, Clauses 114 and 115, new Clauses and new Schedules relating to Part 3, Clauses 120 to 122, Clauses 125 to 128, Clauses 134 to 136, Schedule 11, Clause 137, Schedule 12, Clause 138, Schedule 13, Clauses 139 and 140, Schedule 14, Clauses 141 to 147, Schedule 15, Clauses 116 to 119, Schedule 10, Clauses 123 and 124, Clauses 129 to 133, new Clauses and new Schedules relating to Parts 4 and 5, Clauses 148 to 150, Schedule 16, Clauses 151 to 155, remaining new Clauses and new Schedules, remaining proceedings on the Bill;
(3) proceedings on the Bill shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 6.55 pm on Thursday 20th January.
Welcome to the Chair, Dame Marion, and I congratulate you on your damehood. I enjoyed working with you on the Select Committee on Administration, and I am sure that you will bring the same directness and fairness to our proceedings here.
I thank the Opposition Front Bench team for their co-operation on programming the Committee's business. I understand their concern about the amount of time being made available. We think that, in large part, the Bill has the Opposition's support and that eight sittings will suffice, but we are prepared to work later and to consider requests for extensions. I hope that we will have success with the Bill.
I hope that the Committee will bear with me for not attending on 18 January, as I will be involved in the Second Reading of the Drugs Bill. I thank the Committee for its co-operation.
Mr. Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con): I join the Minister in welcoming you to the Chair, Dame Marion, and I welcome your co-Chairman, Mr. O'Brien.
We support the motion. The programme is tight, but I thank the usual channels for their extremely helpful negotiations on it. I am grateful to the Minister and the Government Whip for making it clear to the Committee that we have some flexibility on the times for which we sit each day and that, if we come to the buffers and have not yet reached the end of the Bill, we
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may have a little more time beyond that shown in the motion.
I hope that we can have a good length of time on Report, because the Bill raises a number of issues. It is not only about the Serious Organised Crime Agency; it deals with many other matters that are of concern across the House, and a decent time debating them on the Floor of the House would be extremely helpful.
It may help the Committee if I explain how the Opposition see the debates proceeding. We have a number of priorities. The Committee hopes to get through the whole of part 1 today. However, three debates on amendments to schedule 1 are of particular concern to the Opposition Front Bench. They are on amendments Nos. 64, 120 and 4, and the amendments grouped with them. They deal with the first of three big points about which we wish to probe the Minister.
The second big point comes in clauses 6, 9 and 10, which deal with the power of the Home Secretary and operational independence. The third big debate will be on clause 38, which deals with the terms and conditions of those who serve in SOCA and with the complaints procedure.
We then come to six much smaller points, on which we have a number of questions for the Minister. They are to be found in clause 3, on the duty to disseminate information to other agencies; in clause 5, which provides that criminal proceedings instituted under the Bill should take place only on serious crime; in clause 7, because we think it appropriate that Parliament should debate SOCA's annual report; in clause 23, which deals with what I would call hot pursuit in Scotland; in clause 27, which deals with equipment for SOCA; and in clause 48, which deals with the employment status of those who work for SOCA. Those are the points of concern for the main Opposition on part 1; we would like to get almost as far as that today.
There will then remain six sittings. We hope to cover disclosure notices and financial reporting orders on Thursday morning, and at the afternoon sitting we will deal with money laundering and probe the Government about why intercept evidence is not permitted. We aim to discuss issues relating to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and the powers of police community support officers next Tuesday morning. On the currently scheduled final day, Thursday week, we will deal with the vexed issue of animal rights, on which my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) has much to say and has done much work. Finally, we will address religious hatred, which is of particular interest to my hon. Friend the Shadow Attorney-General, the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve).
As the Minister knows, we support much of the Bill, but in the case of the Serious Organised Crime Agency the devil is in the detail. As I said on Second Reading, and as many experts have said outside the House, if we get the structure of SOCA wrong, it will not contribute to the battle against organised crime, which we all support. Indeed, we could make matters worse. The Bill can be improved. We have a series of excellent amendments with which to tempt the Minister, and we
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are grateful to the wide range of outside bodies that have been so helpful in framing the amendments, some of which, as the Minister will have noticed, are multiple choice. We hope that they will find favour with her.
In general, we support both the central issues in the Bill and the things that have been bolted on to it. That support is not, of course, to be confused with our substantial criticism of the Government's record on law and order and the attempt to conceal the rise in recorded crime that has taken place across Britain. The following cannot be described as organised or serious, but at 2 o'clock this morning, as I was preparing for this sitting, an attempt to steal my bicycle from outside my house in London was thwarted only by the prompt action of Mrs. Mitchell, who chased off the three yobs who tried to do it.
On behalf of the Opposition, I support the motion.
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD): It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Marion. Those of us who deal with Home Office legislation sometimes feel that we belong to a sort of repertory company—the dramatis personae appearing in this Room have been almost constantly engaged in Committee work during the last year or so. I know that you will conduct our affairs with great fairness and aplomb, and I welcome that.
I do not wish to detain the Committee long, but merely to state my serious reservations about the time made available for a substantial Bill that has 155 clauses and 16 schedules before we introduce a single amendment or new clause. We will need a great deal of self-discipline if we are properly to scrutinise a Bill of that size in the time available, and I regret the fact that this Committee was unable to meet before Christmas; our work would now have been well under way had it done so. Had the Bill simply dealt with the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, we would have had long enough, but that is not the case. I described it on Second Reading, in what was then a seasonal metaphor, as a Christmas tree on which too many baubles had been hung. I am told that I can no longer use that phrase, so perhaps I should say that it is the sort of hotchpotch that so often comes in the aftermath of the Christmas dinner, in which too many ingredients have been used—a salmagundi in which some of the ingredients are extremely tasty, others can be made palatable with sufficient dressing and some are, frankly, rather malodorous and would be best dispatched to the waste bin.
We must judge which are which during the course of our deliberations, and I look forward to testing the Minister on a number of issues. I very much welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris), who will take a particular interest in the provisions on incitement to religious hatred and on harassment in the context of animal rights extremism, on which he has consistently taken a brave stand over many years.
The Committee will not be best served by spending a more time on opening remarks, and I look forward to getting into the meat of the proposals.
Question put and agreed to.
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Ordered,
(1) during proceedings on the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill, in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday llth January, the Standing Committee shall meet at—
(a) 2.30 pm on Tuesday llth January, and
(b) 9.25 am and 2.30 pm on Thursday 13th January, Tuesday 18th January and Thursday 20th January;
(2) the Bill be considered in the following order, namely, Clause 1, Schedule 1, Clauses 2 to 50, Schedule 2, Clauses 51 and 52, Schedule 3, Clause 53, Schedule 4, new Clauses and new Schedules relating to Part 1, Clauses 54 to 74, Schedule 5, Clauses 75 to 90, Schedule 6, Clauses 91 to 100, new Clauses and new Schedules relating to Part 2, Clauses 101 and 102, Schedule 7, Clauses 103 to 113, Schedules 8 and 9, Clauses 114 and 115, new Clauses and new Schedules relating to Part 3, Clauses 120 to 122, Clauses 125 to 128, Clauses 134 to 136, Schedule 11, Clause 137, Schedule 12, Clause 138, Schedule 13, Clauses 139 and 140, Schedule 14, Clauses 141 to 147, Schedule 15, Clauses 116 to 119, Schedule 10, Clauses 123 and 124, Clauses 129 to 133, new Clauses and new Schedules relating to Parts 4 and 5, Clauses 148 to 150, Schedule 16, Clauses 151 to 155, remaining new Clauses and new Schedules, remaining proceedings on the Bill;
(3) proceedings on the Bill shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 6.55 pm on Thursday 20th January.
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