Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
WEDNESDAY 21 MAY 2008
Mr Peter Storr and Mr Ben Judah
Q1 Chairman:
Mr Storr and Mr Judah, welcome. It is most kind of you to come.
You will understand that this is the first session that this Committee
has had with regard to our new inquiry into Europol. We expect
to carry on with evidence sessions and visits between now and
some period in July. We are hoping that we shall be able to report
to the House of Lords some time in the overspill, which will be
October or November, some time of that sort. It is helpful that
you should both be here for this first session. I think you have
seen the outline of the questions we wish to ask you. You know
you are on the record. Let us begin with me asking the first question.
Could you give the Committee a brief overview of the current UK
policy arrangements for combating international organised crime?
Could you clarify who holds the UK's responsibilities for developing
law enforcement co-operation policy in the European Union?
Mr Storr: I should start by saying that
the lead role in developing policy falls to the Serious Organised
Crime Agency (SOCA) which every year prepares an Organised Crime
Threat Assessment based on the analysis of information and intelligence
that it receives from a number of sources. From that Organised
Crime Threat Assessment, it develops a list of priorities for
action, identifying which are the key threats to UK interests,
both domestically and internationally.
Q2 Chairman:
You will be aware that we are having an evidence session with
SOCA on 4 June.
Mr Storr: Yes, and I am sure that the
Director of SOCA will be able to provide greater detail. From
the threat assessment, as I said, the priorities are identified,
and those priorities are agreed with ministers. The SOCA budget
is shaped around those priorities. A key part of SOCA activity
is fighting crime at the European Union level and more widely
internationally. We co-operate very closely in the Home Office
with SOCA in its international business. SOCA provides the UK
member on the Europol Management Board, which is the body that
controls the UK's Europol budget, so SOCA has a direct influence
over the budget in the overall direction of Europol as an organisation.
Home Office Ministers are represented at the Justice and Homes
Affairs Council, which is the senior European body to which the
final decision relating to Europol's budget, its overall direction,
as well as most recently the Council Decision to set up a new
constitutional arrangement for Europol, are referred to for ministerial
decision. That, broadly, is how things work. In addition, at the
more operational level, SOCA has a network of SOCA liaison officers
in the countries which have been identified as priorities for
UK action as well as in organisations such as Europol itself.
Q3 Lord Marlesford:
Which of the countries that have been prioritised for UK action?
Mr Storr: It varies quite a bit. There
are very good relations with most of our European partners, but,
broadly speaking, if you look at the issue of drug trafficking,
you will find that SOCA is particularly active in areas like the
Western Balkan countries, Afghanistan obviously. That is mostly
to do with heroin trafficking. As far as trafficking in cocaine
is concerned, SOCA is active in certain countries in South America,
which are either countries of origin of cocaine or countries of
transit.
Q4 Lord Harrison:
Could I ask if the liaison officers have language skills?
Mr Storr: Most of them do have language
skills. I think in fact probably when you see the Director of
SOCA he will be able to provide you with chapter and verse on
exactly what those language skills are.
Q5 Lord Marlesford:
Europol is an agency for co-operation on information and intelligence
matters. What is the policy for managing operational co-operation
within the EU and particularly how are operational decisions further
to information and intelligence received arrived at? If I could
expand a particular concern that I have, if I were running an
international organised crime syndicate, one of the things that
I would want to do is to know what the enemy, i.e. the forces
of law and order, were going to do about me. I would therefore
be seeking to penetrate through Europol that information, to obtain
that information. There would be certain countries, for example
Romania, I would think I had a jolly good chance of using. What
do you do to make sure that this whole Europol operation does
not leak like a sieve?
Mr Storr: Could I start by describing
how information or intelligence might be turned into operational
action? If we go back to the way in which SOCA operates on the
basis of intelligence received, it will then identify a number
of threats and other intelligence will enable it to identify particular
criminal activities that are planned. If that intelligence suggests
that there is a European dimension, which in many cases it does,
involving activities of criminal organisations or people in a
number of Member States, then SOCA will take a decision as to
whether it either involves the SOCA liaison officer network, for
example, or the SOCA liaison officers based at Europol, or whether,
if it is a particularly serious case, it wants to involve Europol's
full facilities, which include analytical capacity and ability
in particular operations to open an analytical work file. Structurally,
that is how the decision is taken, but it is largely controlled
by the Member State, in our case it would be SOCA, which originates
the intelligence and brings the particular problem to the Europol
table. The question of how you stop information falling into the
wrong hands is one that traditionally troubles law enforcement,
whether it is in the UK or elsewhere. Within the UK, SOCA has
very carefully developed handling procedures designed to ensure
that information relating to UK activities does not fall into
the wrong hands. There is no denying that the standards that apply
in the UK are not met universally in other countries, and so in
that particular case SOCA officers will decide whether there is
a need to know the information, for example. At the Europol level,
I am assured by the SOCA experts that there are handling arrangements
for information held on Europol's s systems that are actually
robust and which allow the Member State providing the information
to impose certain qualifications and restrictions on who might
have access to that information.
Chairman: I think that because of the
long history of leakages from EU organisations over the years,
Lord Teverson will wish to return to this later in our session.
He wants to come in now.
Q6 Lord Teverson:
I want to come in on the general section, my Lord Chairman. Is
Europol a significant point of discussion in G6 meetings?
Mr Storr: I am just trying to remember
whether it has come up. Certainly the organised crime issue has
come up at the G6, which I am sure you are familiar with, where
ministers of the six largest European countries get together to
discuss common interests. There have been discussions mostly aimed
at trying to identify which are the key problems for those countries
and for Europe more widely and how we deal with them. I can remember
at recent meetings there have been discussions on how we might
best get together to decide the arrangements for tackling drug
trafficking through the Mediterranean. While that would not directly
involve Europol, Europol would no doubt have an interest in it,
but there have been no discussions to my recollection which have
directly impinged on Europol's direction, future or key priorities.
Q7 Lord Teverson:
Do you think there is a temptation that that could become the
case in that the G6 meeting could become a kitchen cabinet of
European decision-making on Europol after it becomes an institution?
Mr Storr: It is a question which you
might want to pose to our Minister Tony McNulty if the Committee
wants him to give evidence. I am very happy to give you my view,
which is that we have regarded the G6 group of countries not as
being a kitchen cabinet, not as being the driving engine for the
wider 27, but simply as being an opportunity for the ministers
who deal frequently with each other on, for example, terrorism,
which affects many of those countries very deeply, just to exchange
information, to exchange best practice.
Q8 Lord Mawson:
I understand there was an article recently in The Times
which suggested that SOCA was quite a bureaucratic organisation
and that there were real questions about what it was really delivering.
I would be interested in having your comments on that just to
get a feel for it.
Mr Storr: My overview of SOCA is primarily
concentrated on its international work, rather than its national
work. What I can say at the international level, particularly
within the EU, is that SOCA is highly regarded. It is highly regarded
for its professionalism; it is highly regarded for the way in
which it co-operates with other law-enforcement bodies within
the European Union; and it is highly regarded for the competence
and professionalism of its officers. It can point to a number
of successes working with European partners and working more widely
with other partners. So from my perspective, SOCA is well regarded.
I do not think it is perceived within Europe as being overly bureaucratic
and, as I have said, it has a number of successes to which it
can point.
Q9 Lord Dear:
I would like to ask a couple of questions around the business
of intelligence. Those who have watched policing over the last
15 or 18 years have seen intelligence move from something which
was isolated to something that sits between an art and a science
and certainly it has been developed in this country, or has it
tried to be developed in this country, in a meaningful way. I
wonder, first of all, if you could help us with the Home Office
view on intelligence-led policing in the context of Europol and
the interface with the UK and whether you are satisfied that in
Europe what we have seen as something that we have led policing
thinking about is in fact a reality or have we in fact been following
on the best practice elsewhere?
Mr Storr: I think the intelligence-led
policing concept is one which the United Kingdom pioneered, and
certainly within Europe there was intense interest in exactly
those developments to which you have referred in the last 15 or
so years.
Q10 Lord Dear:
That would be the National Intelligence Model within this country.
Mr Storr: The National Intelligence Model
was the outcome of that thinking. When we took over the Presidency
of the European Union in 2005, it was one of our key objectives
to do two things; one, to try to establish intelligence-led policing
as a concept within Europe; and, two, to ensure that intelligence
and the analysis of that intelligence led to a very good quality
threat assessment. In that context, we achieved two things: one
was the adoption of a new revised and better Organised Crime Threat
Assessment; and the other was the adoption of a European Criminal
Intelligence Model, a sort of business model for intelligence-led
policing. We managed, in the six months that we held the Presidency
of the European Union, to get that adopted. I think it is fair
to say that in many European Union Member States the idea of intelligence-led
policing was, and probably still is, slightly counter-cultural.
The investigative model in some Member States involves a reported
crime, which is then investigated under the jurisdiction of an
investigating magistrate, and a lot of Member States still think
of crime simply in those terms, that once it is committed, it
will be investigated thoroughly. The idea of actually using intelligence
to identify and spot crime trends and to uncover operations of
criminal activity in progress and to take necessary pre-emptive
action were all interesting changes which we had to work hard
to convince some European partners that it was worth doing, but
we managed to get it adopted. My own view is that at the moment
both the Organised Crime Threat Assessment compiled by Europol
and the concept of intelligence-led policing are established but
very much work in progress. I think it is certainly a priority
for us to keep emphasising the importance of this because I suspect
there will always be a tendency to go back to arrangements with
which some Member States are rather more familiar and comfortable.
So we will keep pushing the intelligence-led policing concept.
I think we are reasonably satisfied that since the new threat
assessment process was introduced within Europol there has been
a gradual increase in the quality of the assessment. We think
what you are now seeing is a link between the analytical process
through the Organised Crime Threat Assessment and a more proactive
approach to policing those threats.
Q11 Lord Dear:
Is this the migration from NIM, the National Intelligence Model
we understand in this country, into what is known as the European
Criminal Intelligence Model (ECIM)?
Mr Storr: That is it.
Q12 Lord Dear:
In other words, they have taken one model and hopefully upgraded
and improved it. Do you think there has been an upgrade and an
improvement in that migration?
Mr Storr: It is broadly the same concept.
I think the improvement will come when all Member States are convinced
that it is in their interests to provide really good quality information
and intelligence to Europol to allow them to produce the sort
of threat assessment that I was talking about, and once the concept
of intelligence-led policing is established. As I said, I think
there is still some way to go, but progress is being made.
Q13 Lord Dear:
Indeed, the problem with intelligence or information as it used
to be called is that he who holds the information as got the power
and does not want to give the information because if you give
it out, you lose the power base. I am over-stating it to make
the point, as I am sure you understand. At an operational level
it is very difficult but essential to get people to divest themselves
of information that they know into some sort of central point,
a database perhaps, where others can share it and others can analyse
it. That is a problem at an operational level with individuals.
Of course it becomes a bigger problem between agencies and countries,
agencies within one country and then country to country. We will
probably touch upon this when colleagues talk later on about databases
and how they are handled. Have you a view at all about how one
begins to solve that rather basic problem of getting people, organisations
or countries, to share the information, and whether that is moving
along at a pace and in a direction that you would applaud?
Mr Storr: It is certainly improving,
and in many cases I think SOCA when it gives evidence will be
able to point specifically to operations where intelligence has
been shared between its own officers and other countries, either
bilaterally or through SOCA liaison officers at Europol, but there
is a number of factors that will influence any officer in sharing
information. One is the point which was raised earlier about the
processes under which information and intelligence are held and
made available. The other is simply a question of working with
colleagues who can be trusted. Others include things like the
language issue, which was mentioned earlier. I have seen a trend
over the last 10 years or so very much towards trusting and sharing.
Once an operation is established and successful with a particular
country or group of countries, then that, as it were, sets the
tone for future co-operation along those lines. There is more
work to be done, as with many aspects of public policy. I think
this is moving very much in the right direction.
Q14 Lord Dear:
In short, priorities are rising rather falling on that point?
Mr Storr: Yes. I think there is a tendency
and a trend in favour of sharing more information within law enforcement
communities across the European Union, matched indeed by some
parallel experience amongst policy makers or, under the Swedish
initiative in recent years, the principle of availability, the
idea that unless there are good reasons not do, the bias should
be in favour of sharing your information with Member States, obviously
subject to handling conditions.
Q15 Chairman:
Can I just follow that up? You said you thought that the development
of ECIM would speed up when more Member Stases became convinced
of the value. Can I ask you whether it is the relatively slow
speed of take-up has been caused by Member States not fully understanding
it or positively obstructing it?
Mr Storr: I do not think there has been
positive obstruction.
Q16 Chairman:
Or resistance, if you like, which is not quite such a strong word.
Mr Storr: I think there is a need to
overcome the tendency to keep information within national structures
in some Member States. If you look at the history of some Member
States, the culture has not been one of sharing information all
that widely within the Member State, let alone outside the Member
State. In some cases you are starting from an understanding of
the value of information and the value of sharing information
that is rather different from that within the United Kingdom.
I think it is actually a task for Europol, its Management Board
and indeed for officials and ministers to push constantly the
need for countries to populate the Europol database to provide
quality information to it and to use Europol's facilities. I think
what I am saying is that there is still some way to go in advertising
to Member States the services which Europol can provide.
Q17 Lord Mawson:
You say it is different to what happens in the United Kingdom.
It does not sound very different to what my experience of large
parts of the public sector in this country has been about. They
are perhaps not very good at communicating outside their silos
and something else has to happen to enable that to happen. We
talk a great deal about partnership but in reality it does not
happen to a very great degree. I just wondered what investment
has been made in terms of building relationships and the types
of partnerships and trust between these various bodies where communication
and partnership working can begin to develop to a level that makes
it real. I think it is a very difficult thing to do, even in this
country.
Mr Storr: I think it is rather different,
and again I am sure the experts from SOCA will be able to give
you a much better answer than I can, but my impression, having
worked closely with law enforcement over a number of years, is
that you do find that when there is a particular task in mind
or a particular operational activity—investigating a murder
with implications in a number of countries, or tackling terrorism
with cells in a number of countries, or indeed international drug
trafficking—where those Member States' law enforcement authorities
working together can identify a common interest and a common purpose,
barriers tend to come down and silos tend to be broken down. As
far as wider partnerships are concerned, we are fully behind Europol's
efforts to establish working relationships with third countries
outside the European Union, with European and other bodies involved
in law enforcement. We think that partnership approach is very
much the way to go.
Q18 Baroness Henig:
I want to follow up on the Chairman's point. Clearly across Europe
both the model of policing and the role the police play within
countries domestically is very different and it varies a lot.
I was trying to get a handle on whether the difficulties to which
you were alluding earlier arise from the differences in the way
policing actually operates or whether it is more about cultural
issues.
Mr Storr: There are some difficulties
caused by the different nature of the way in which police and
law-enforcement is established in various Member States and some
that are cultural. That leads you down a number of possible paths.
In recent years, we have moved away, certainly the UK has moved
away, from the idea of harmonising everything. In my view it would
be unproductive if we were to try to establish any sort of harmonised
system of policing or any sort of harmonised system of legislation
because attempts to do so in the past have really got nowhere.
I think the better route is mutual legal assistance and mutual
recognition of the differences in each other's structures and
laws. I think as Europol establishes itself and its systems start
working and it shows what value it can add to the work of individual
Member States, those barriers to co-operation, whether they be
legal, constitutional, police arrangements or cultural, will gradually
be overcome. I think I am fairly positive that we are moving in
the right direction in overcoming them.
Q19 Lord Young of Norwood Green:
I was looking at your report on threat assessment on page 3. Notwithstanding
all the complexities and the difficulties, it seems quite an optimistic
assessment really. One can detect the green shoots of progress
because you say that the annual Organised Crime Threat Assessment
is becoming, in your words, a vital Europol product. That seems
to me an example of good progress. Then over the page you talk
about the EU Terrorism Situation and the Trend Report, which gives
an overview, as another very useful product, both of those combining
to encourage development of intelligence-gathering and sharing
of information in the Member States. Do you stand by that? When
I read that I thought that that seems to me a positive assessment
of what is happening and real progress being made.
Mr Storr: Yes, I think it is encouraging.
If you compare where we were before we launched our 2005 initiative,
we used to have a threat assessment that was not really all that
much more than 27 separate national reports on threats, some of
it anecdotal, some of it intelligence-based and properly analysed,
but it was all stitched together in a rather large document. You
really did not see any coherent or cohesive overview. I think
what you are seeing emerge now from Europol is a rather more useful
product. It still bears some signs of being stitched together,
but it is a work in progress, as I said, and it is more recognisably
similar to the sort of product that the Serious Organised Crime
Agency produces by way of a threat assessment than it was a few
years ago. In that sense, there is progress being made. Some of
the analysts that Europol has recruited to work on this assessment
are of very high quality. I think the role of Member States is
constantly to push Europol to produce more and better and to keep
moving in this direction of travel, and that is what we are doing.
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