Q
91Ms
Keeble: I think it is really dangerous to minimise the
risks. I have certainly seen “women get in free” offers,
and we have one coming up that is 89p for any drink. We have had
“18 quid and drink as much as you want for an entire
evening” offers. They have been spectacularly
appalling. Rob
Hayward: I am not minimising anything; it was
Councillor White who said “few and far
between”.
The
Chairman: This will have to be the last question. I remind
all colleagues that I have no leeway at 5.30 pm, when I will have to
end proceedings. I know that Mr. Craik wants to come in as
well, but first, Mr.
Hayward. Rob
Hayward: All I wanted to say is that I am absolutely
determined—I repeat what I have said on a number of
occasions—that bad premises, as shown under due diligence,
should be closed. There is no question about that. It was Councillor
White who said, in response to this question, in terms of individual
premises, that problem premises were few and far
between. Mike
Craik: May I make a couple of quick points? First,
KPMG gave a snapshot. I have been dealing with this issue for almost
nine years, and we have had lots of discussions about promising
initiatives all over the place, and about partnership, and we are still
having them. This needs a kick-start: it needs those starting
conditions to be set, and it needs mandatory
direction.
The
Chairman: The sensible thing would probably be to draw the
line at this stage. On behalf of all members of the Committee, I thank
you, witnesses, for your written statements and for coming along to
present your views to us today. This has been extremely helpful, and
will no doubt be referred to during the Committee’s proceedings
in the days and weeks ahead. Thank you all very much
indeed. 5.30
pm
The
Chairman: If you are sitting comfortably, we will begin.
This second part of the evidence session will look at proceeds of crime
and related questions in the Bill. May I ask the witnesses to introduce
themselves and their
organisations? Tristram
Hicks: I am Detective Chief Inspector Tristram Hicks
from the Metropolitan
police. Murray
Duffin: I am DCI Murray Duffin from the Metropolitan
police and I am responsible for the extradition
unit. Allan
Gibson: I am Commander Allan Gibson from the
Metropolitan police and I have responsibility for extradition and
proceeds of crime. The two gentlemen to my right are my experts as
well. Paul
Evans: My name is Paul Evans. I am one of the
executive directors of the Serious Organised Crime Agency and
responsible, among other things, for SOCA’s work on the recovery
of the proceeds of crime. I am
also responsible for SOCA’s international network and am head of
the SOCA, Interpol and Europol liaison bureau. With deep irony, as I
have difficulty with computers, I record myself as being in charge of
the SOCA e-crime unit. I am responsible for SOCA’s
offender-management programme and liaison with the private
sector. Mick
Creedon: I am Mick Creedon, the Chief Constable of
Derbyshire, and I am the ACPO lead for the country for asset recovery
and the proceeds of
crime.
Q
92James
Brokenshire: I start with a question to Mr.
Evans. SOCA last year assumed the responsibilities of the Assets
Recovery Agency which had a slightly difficult history. Can you give us
an update on how the merger has followed through, as that is essential
to one of the key agencies using the powers in this
Bill? Paul
Evans: I believe that you and I have been involved in
extensive correspondence on this matter. The merger is a people-thing
and the people have merged pretty well into a larger organisation which
gives them a better opportunity for a better career path.
If you are
asking about numbers, I am afraid I will have to ask you to wait until
May when, as statute dictates, we will be publishing our annual report
to the House via Ministers. If you are asking for a general indication,
I would say that intelligence that we receive on a daily basis
indicates that criminals have noticed that the civil recovery powers
are powerful and bite at the one thing that motivates them to engage in
organised crime, which is the compilation and acquisition of wealth. I
think they also notice that we are rather more aggressively settling
cases before they come to fruition in the High Court—a
necessarily expensive but full process. Perhaps I should say no more,
as I am bound by convention not to release the figures until we reach
the end of the financial
year.
Q
93James
Brokenshire: In that context, before we start to look at
what is in the Bill, could you and your colleagues flesh out what you
see as the principal impediment or limitation that is inhibiting you
being able to enforce effectively the powers you already have, as well
as the shortcomings that have been identified to necessitate the
legislative change that we have before us in the
Bill? Paul
Evans: Largely, the changes proposed in the Bill, in
my view, are of a technical nature backed up by evidence of experience
of operation of the law since 2002. If you were to ask me what the
major impediments are, I would say that there are none except
ourselves. That is a question that I could perhaps direct to Mick
Creedon, who heads the ACPO league nationally for really embedding as a
mainstream tool these incredibly powerful, useful and efficacious law
enforcement
tools. Mick
Creedon: Moving away from your question about ARA
going into SOCA, because that is a specific issue around that agency
and the civil side of it, the feel for the question I took was almost
one of why things are not working as they should. I would take issue
with that. I think the Act, as a relatively recent Act, has been a
fantastic success. The huge increase in performance in terms of the
volume and value of assets recovered and so on, shows that. Across
policing it is being embraced more and more. I agree with Paul
absolutely. The impediments to this are our ability to understand it
and use it at every level of criminality.
The issues
raised in these clauses are exactly as Paul described. This is us,
working with partners and the Home Office, recognising that some fine
tuning is necessary. That is not that surprising because we are trying
to use this widely. I do not think that the measures proposed are
particularly radical. They do not change the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002
particularly. I do not think that there is necessarily a failing in the
legislation. It is a recognition of how hard it is to mainstream this
across 250,000 police officers and police
staff.
Q
94James
Brokenshire: Obviously the reason for asking the question
was not necessarily to be critical. It was to understand the background
or the triggers here so that we, as the people scrutinising this, can
better understand why, for example, some of the powers have been taken.
As you recognise, there has been some criticism from the Bar Council
about the human rights impact of some of the provisions. Therefore, as
a starting point I am seeking to understand the background and the
basis on which these new powers are being sought. From what you are
saying, your experience of the application of the legislation before
the courts or otherwise suggests that there is some justification for
seeking to push certain elements, if I can use that
terminology. Mick
Creedon: You are right. To a certain extent what we
have seen over the past few years, and in some cases bitter experience,
shows how difficult it is to enforce some of the confiscation orders
and how easy it is for assets to be hidden and moved away. Even though
an asset might be restrained, it does not necessarily mean that it will
be easy to get to the confiscation. So when issues are raised here
about our ability to seize and retain property in the light of a
pending confiscation order, they seem perfectly sensible, provided that
the safeguards are in place, which I believe they are.
There are
things we have learnt about the most organised criminals and their
ability to dissipate and move assets, and there are measures here that
will hopefully stop that. I am not sure how well known it is, but we
talk of a pipeline in asset recovery with a huge amount of cash,
confiscation orders and civil actions going in. It takes a long time to
go through that pipeline. It is very crooked and it has gaps and holes
in it. This is an attempt to make sure that we do not lose things
during that pipeline of a
case. Allan
Gibson: If I may add a view from the Metropolitan
police on some of the issues that have been mentioned so far and some
of the challenges. One of the most challenging things is to mainstream
the use of POCA by our officers. We are having to raise consciousness.
We are having to make them aware of how this is not just a bolt-on to
an investigation. It can be a mainstream approach. It can be the first
and most appropriate approach to tackling criminality. That is one
issue. The second has been building up the skills and experience to do
this. That has been a major investment programme for us. There have
been advantages through incentivisation to do that, but it costs us
more than we get back. We have to find resources to put into this. We
believe in it as the benefits are more than just financial, there are
benefits to the community and to the higher principles of criminal
justice. This
most definitely is a success story. The Metropolitan police is on
target to hit its main value target for confiscation of £42
million. We were at £35 million as of
December. We have seized over £4 million in cash already this
year and there will be much more by the end of it. On the timeline of
performance, since POCA, our performance has gone up 700 per cent. That
is a fast take-off and it is a success
story. Paul
Evans: May I add one point of clarification?
I have been doing this sort of job for more years than I care to
remember, and one self-evident truth strikes me at the end of that
experience. Criminals are engaged in serious and organised crime for
one reason alone: the acquisition of criminal property and assets. They
need those for three reasons. The first is the lifestyle that it
creates, or the bling factor. The second is the retirement fund. They
do not think in the same way as the people in this room. They believe
that they will never face capture and that they are invincible. They
therefore need money to buy the villa in Spain. The third reason, which
is the most important element in the acquisitiveness of organised
crime, is the feeling of significance and status that the acquisition
of wealth gives
criminals. That
is why many criminals have spent significant resource, effort and
ingenuity in trying to defeat the purposes for which the 2002 Act was
placed on the statute book. For that reason, this Bill proposes
significant but small technical changes to some of the ways in which
the 2002 Act has operated, enabling us to re-level the playing field.
That is how I feel about the
matter.
Q
95James
Brokenshire: On a couple of specifics, there are certain
changes to confiscation orders, but how often have magistrates refused
confiscation orders in practice? Do you have any experience of that?
There is some suggestion that there have been problems, but it would be
useful to get a feel for the nature of
them. Mick
Creedon: I have no data. Perhaps Tristram from the
Metropolitan police has examples as a
practitioner. Tristram
Hicks: Refusing confiscation orders is relatively
unusual. The issue is getting evidence of assets being seized to the
magistrates so that they can make the orders. I think that refusal is
the
exception.
Q
96James
Brokenshire: To broaden the point slightly, there was some
debate and consideration at the time of the Assets Recovery Agency of
the interrelationship between some of the powers granted to it and the
application of human rights. That was used as mitigation for some of
the problems in advancing and enforcing claims. Is that still a
relevant consideration or has the case law sorted itself out? Is this
what you were seeking to remedy in these
provisions? Paul
Evans: The human rights aspects that were tested in a
variety of cases, including the case of Walsh, have been settled.
However, nothing is ever really settled. That issue is not causing us
delay or trouble regarding the challenges made on these grounds in
litigation that is before court or about to go to court. Therefore, it
is not addressed in these clauses. However, the complexity that we face
with civil litigation based on criminal lifestyle can often create a
burden in a case that takes significant time and effort to resolve. If
we are to be fair in trying to produce this litigation—civil
recovery is essentially litigation, not accusation—we need to be
thorough and fair. For that reason, some of these cases are enormously
complex with vast amounts of documented material. It is that, rather
than anything in the Human Rights Act 1998, that sometimes causes delay
and leads to complexity.
Q
97James
Brokenshire: Has that been your experience as well,
Mr. Hicks, in the context of the Metropolitan
police’s use and application? What have been the challenges
before the courts? Are those legislative or have they been to do with
intelligence and the
evidence? Tristram
Hicks: The problem with confiscation orders being
enforced is primarily the absence of assets that are available for
confiscation at the point of enforcement. Successful confiscation
enforcement is a product of cash and assets being seized or restrained
at the very earliest part of the process, because as soon as a criminal
is alerted to the risk of their assets being taken away, they can
quickly dissipate those assets and move cash and property. Some of the
difficulties that we have had over the years have been to do with our
inability to seize and restrain effectively at the beginning of the
process. Part of that is about skills and experience, but a lot of it
is to do with our inability to seize and retain assets for the purposes
of confiscation
enforcement.
Q
98Mr.
Ruffley: A question on civil recovery for you,
Mr. Evans. I understand that a cash forfeiture order
has to be granted by a magistrate, whether it is contested or not, and
that SOCA believes that to be quite bureaucratic and time consuming. In
what proportion of cases in which there is a cash forfeiture order in
play will the alleged offender get lawyered up and waste time? Is it a
high proportion? Is if half of
them? Paul
Evans: I do not have the exact
figure.
Mr.
Ruffley: In rough
terms. Paul
Evans: The problem is a slightly different one. Many
cases—for the police service, rather than for SOCA, for
different reasons to do with the nature of the casework—proceed
to uncontested forfeiture. In those cases, we believe that if the
respondent is put on notice that we intend to proceed with a forfeiture
hearing and does not respond, there should be no need for a hearing
about the criminal nature of the cash. The experience of colleagues is
significant. A significant amount of court time is taken up with cases
that do not end up with an argument, and that is the point that we are
trying to address in the
Bill.
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