Examination of Witnesses (Questions 61
- 79)
WEDNESDAY 4 JUNE 2008
Mr William Hughes and Mr Rob Wainwright
Q61 Chairman:
Mr Wainwright, Mr Hughes, welcome. Thank you very much indeed
for coming. We very much appreciate it. As you will know, this
Committee is a sub-committee of the main European Union Select
Committee of the House of Lords and we are currently conducting
an inquiry into Europol. We have had evidence from the Home Office;
we shall have visited The Hague and Brussels towards the end of
the month and had other witnesses to see us. You will realise
that this is on the record. We are most grateful for your evidence
to the Committee. If there is anything you want to add at the
end of the meeting, the Committee would be most grateful to hear
from you in writing. I do not know if you would like to make an
opening statement or go straight into the questions which I think
you have had warning about.
Mr Hughes: My Lord Chairman, perhaps
I could start by saying thank you very much for inviting us. Rob
Wainwright is the Deputy Director for our international side.
Europol is his day-to-day business, as well as Interpol and other
international issues, so on technical matters he is well placed
to answer those questions. On issues around the strategy and direction
of SOCA and our relationship at a more senior level in terms of
the European sub-committees, I will take those questions. I hope
that is fine with you.
Q62 Chairman:
Absolutely fine. Please do not hesitate, either of you, to chip
in, to underline what has been said. Let me start. I wonder if
you would give the Committee a brief overview of the current UK
arrangements under the Europol Convention for connecting the United
Kingdom competent authorities to Europol through the UK Europol
National Unit.
Mr Wainwright: SOCA is the Europol National
Unit for the United Kingdom under the terms of the Europol Convention,
whereby each Member State establishes a central point of contact,
a single point of contact, to co-ordinate its law enforcement
activities and interests in regard to Europol. Here in the UK
that National Unit is located within the International Department
of SOCA and deliberately so, co-located with the other international
channels of police co-operation that we have in the United Kingdom.
It is an integrated part of a bureau that also includes Interpol,
the European Arrest Warrant functions in the European Union, and
also a very large bilateral network of liaison officers that we
have around the world (some 140 now in 40 countries). Our International
Department will also be the home, in a UK Central Bureau, for
the Schengen Information System when the UK connects to that in
2010 or 2011. My Lord Chairman, in one part of our department
we are the UK centre for UK law enforcement co-operation worldwide.
Europol is a very important part of that. From that central base
we are able to provide support services to UK police forces and
other law enforcement agencies and offer to them, therefore, the
full range of Europol's capabilities through our central co-ordinating
function. That National Unit provides specialist advice to our
UK partners. Also, on behalf of the UK community as a whole, we
carry forward the UK's interests at Europol, as a single voice
representing the UK community over a range of operational matters
and policy matters as well. It is my responsibility, for example,
to represent the United Kingdom on the Europol Management Board.
Mr Hughes: To add to Rob's very full
answer: we have about nine officers, but that includes three officers,
one from the Metropolitan Police, one from HMRC (Revenue and Customs),
and one from the Scottish Crime and Drugs Enforcement Agency,
who work as a team and are The Hague end of the unit Rob has just
described.
Q63 Chairman:
You say in paragraph 10 of your paper: " ... the large network
of SOCA Liaison Officers around the world". Could you say
something about that?
Mr Wainwright: Yes, of course I can.
These are regular SOCA officers experienced in the full range
of our operational activity who have been appointed overseas—as
I have said, in some 40 countries now—to roles which involve
them being normally diplomatically accredited, so working in most
cases out of British Embassies. Their job is to manage our operational
relationships with the bilateral agencies, the agencies within
the countries in which they are located. We have many, many officers
in countries outside Europe and in large stations in Afghanistan,
in Colombia, in parts of the Caribbean and so on. Within that
network of 140 officers, approximately 30 or so are located within
Europe. That gives us, therefore, an alternative channel of communication
for the conduct of our operation with Spain, with France, with
Germany and our other partners in Europe. Of course, on a case-by-case
basis, therefore, we have a choice of which channel to use in
the conduct of our operations. Over a period, certainly, of two
years under SOCA and many years before that through our precursor
agencies, we have developed a habit that works very well, I think,
in terms of which of those channels of communication we should
use in any particular case.
Q64 Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts:
You have described officers serving overseas. How long do they
go for?
Mr Wainwright: The tour length is a maximum
of four years. In Afghanistan it is two years because of the unique
operating circumstance there.
Q65 Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts:
That is long enough for them to get bedded in, to achieve what
is presumably a pretty trusting relationship.
Mr Wainwright: That is a good question.
In some cases we have extended our officers beyond that four year
period to capitalise on the impact they have made in understanding,
if nothing else, the cultural dynamics of co-operation in that
country. We think in most cases four years is about right, because
we have to balance that with their future as well and the need
for them to be reintegrated into the UK structures here in SOCA.
Also, for us to take advantage of their unique experience of working
overseas, we can bring that back into the main body of SOCA's
work here.
Q66 Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts:
In addition to that, language is a key to understanding cultural
differences. Do those officers who go out for that four year period
have sufficiently good linguistic skills or is that something
they come back with?
Mr Hughes: When they are allocated, we
give them language training to a very high standard as much as
we can. For most of the languages that we are learning now in
the various more exotic parts of the world it is survival skills
that they need. We then employ locally employed individuals who
have language skills who can act as translators and interpreters.
Also, because we are working with embassies abroad, we have access
to their linguistic backup as well. Some in this room will be
familiar with the old drug liaison officers that Customs used
to have around the world and the National Criminal Intelligence
Service (NCIS) had some crime liaison officers. We inherited them
when we formed SOCA and brought them all together, but we have
rationalised that type of approach, so that they are no longer
simply liaison officers who pop in on occasions to various agencies
that we work with overseas but we are seeking, wherever we can,
to embed them in the enforcement agencies that we work with operationally.
That is another difference: SOCA now operates operationally overseas
as well as in the UK. On the issue around the SLOs, we have moved
away from the situation of having single liaison officer posts
to where we have double or more, supported by regional networks,
so the continuity is maintained with people who rotate at different
times and have a regional back-up and a support network back in
the UK in the international side and at the regional level.
Q67 Lord Mawson:
My experience in this country is that there has been a lot of
talk about partnership and joined-up thinking with agencies working
in Europe. You obviously have to develop a whole range of quite
complicated partnerships and relationships. My experience in this
country is that, whilst there is a lot of talk about it, when
you examine under the detail of a lot of this it is not happening
on the ground and things are not moving on. In the modern world,
it is all about relationships and senior relationships, and often
the top, middle and bottom beginning to build those personal relationships.
What financial investment and personal time are you investing
in that whole area, so that, as a modern organisation, you can
interface with other organisations in the modern world with the
demands that that makes?
Mr Hughes: The answer to that question
could be quite long, so I apologise in advance. If you go back
to the basic issue, which is maintaining relationships and partnerships,
that is what we have been doing for the last two years at a very
high level and at a tactical level with our operational colleagues
in police forces and HMRC, and now the UK Borders Agency as it
is starting up. As an agency of around 4,150 individuals, we are
relatively small in those regards, so the leverage that we look
for in partners is very important to us. Partnership, as you say,
does not always work: it is absolutely crucial that it does work
for us if we are going to be successful. There are some copies
for the clerk of our annual report which highlights the partnership
working that we have been doing operationally around the world
and in the United Kingdom. In order to put it on a more strategic
and, if you like, coherent footing, the UK Threat Assessment is
something that we produce as well, the idea of which is to highlight
those threats of serious organised crime impacting on the United
Kingdom in a real sense. The old document used to be a bit historic.
This is about trends: where it is now and where it is going. From
that we have developed the UK Control Strategy, which picks up
on the main 16 programmes of activity that we think we need to
combat that. That is a multi-agency approach, where other agencies
beside SOCA lead on taking those programmes forward. We are attempting
at every level to build up that partnership approach: at the intelligence
and strategic level; at the tactical level working with our operational
partners; at the top level (where I am still a member of the ACPO
Council of Chief Constables, so I have an opportunity therefore
to influence the strategic direction that policing is taking in
the United Kingdom); in bilaterals we have with our senior colleagues
in HMRC; with ACPOS; with the Northern Ireland Office; and with
the Organised Crime Taskforce in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
It is hard work, you are right, and in the past it has sometimes
been less than complete, but we are trying in every way we can
to ensure a partnership approach on this.
Mr Wainwright: In our international work,
partnership is our lifeblood. We do nothing of any substance overseas
without working with at least one other partner. It is the way
we do our business. To reflect that, the organisation has invested
about 10 per cent of its budget and its people in its international
programme of work—which is a sizeable investment, to reflect
the point you have made. We have some examples we can give, if
the Committee is interested, in how we have developed partnership
arrangements to operational effect around the world.
Chairman: Thank you. Let us move on.
Q68 Lord Mawson:
How does the UK make its independence requirements for organised
crime and terrorism known to other European partners in the Europol
framework?
Mr Wainwright: Mr Hughes has already
outlined to you the national intelligence framework that we have
developed for SOCA here in the UK. It is to exert an interagency
response to organised crime. We have the instruments of what we
call the UK Control Strategy, the UK Threat Assessment, and something
we call the National Intelligence Requirement. That last document
is the principal and national means by which we make clear to
our partners where our priority intelligence gaps are and the
priority collection process which would follow thereafter. Although
that was framed principally with domestic partners in mind, it
does work very well overseas for us as well. We use, therefore,
the requirements that we have established here as those that reflect
our priorities, to share that with our partners around the world
through our bilateral network of officers that I was talking about,
but, in particular, through institutions like Europol as well.
We are pleased, of course—and I think the Committee has
noted this in previous evidence—that in the last few years
Europol has developed a similar approach, following a successful
campaign in the UK Presidency in 2005 to promote UK best practice
on intelligence-led policing, so we have the principles of what
we now call the European intelligence model, embedded more or
less in Europol and the European partners. That has been designed
very much with the UK experience in mind and we are using instruments
of that, in a similar way that we are using instruments at a national
level, to connect the two. Our success, therefore, in reflecting
the UK requirements in that European framework is quite high.
I think there is still some way to go to develop it in a more
coherent way at the European level, but we are pleased with the
progress in the last couple of years.
Q69 Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts:
I would like to go back to the role of SOCA as the UK's National
Unit at Europol. We had inferences in previous evidence that quite
a lot of the most valuable part of the Europol organisation is
from the bilateral International and National Unit contacts, as
opposed to the central unit itself. As we understand it, we do
not have a harmonisation of what each individual Member State
chooses as its National Unit. Would you like to tell us how this
process works, what the consequences have been, and what the impact
has been on the effectiveness of the organisation both at a cohesive
and a bilateral level.
Mr Wainwright: Like in so many aspects
of work within the European Union, harmonisation of precise structures/procedures
across 27 Member States is very difficult to achieve. Instead,
the architects of the Europol Convention got it right 10 years
ago by agreeing some common principles so that there would be
a single point of contact, a National Unit in each country, so
that there would be a single interface there. The National Unit
would operate in a certain way without being overly prescriptive,
because it was recognised, of course, that the national policing
arrangements in those 27 Member States are different, unique in
each case, and to impose, therefore, a very rigid prescribed model
that might work for one or maybe two countries certainly would
not work for 27. We take a general framework of some common strategic
principles and seek to apply that according to the unique domestic
circumstances of each country. I think that has survived. It has
passed the test of time over those 10 years. The network of National
Units has survived and, indeed, strengthened—very much so—and
there are no Member States—certainly not the UK—that
are calling for any reform there. The first part of your question
was about the extent to which the Liaison Bureau perhaps consumes
more of our interest. That is true. It is a very effective Liaison
Bureau network. Last year the UK processed something like 560
operational cases through that bureau. That is the second or third
highest between the 27 Member States, so we are a good user of
that network. I think, however, it is oversimplistic for us to
compare that with what we might get from the main body of Europol
itself. The two are co-located, certainly, in the same building,
but, also, in almost all of those cases there will have been a
supporting involvement of Europol and therefore it is not so easy
to separate the two. Perhaps my most important point with regard
to that is that the service we get from Europol is, in the main,
a high quality service. It is one of receiving tactical and strategic
intelligence from its analysis files in particular. These are
very important to us because they represent the only access we
have to a pan-European database for organised crime, containing
millions of data entries about the most serious forms of organised
crime operating in the EU, and it is at Europol only that this
information and database and technical capability exists. That
is the principal capability of Europol that we are interested
in.
Mr Hughes: This is a crucial aspect.
The Council of Europe in 2007 held up the way that we are structured
in the UK as the best type of model. We are very pleased with
that. The other aspect is having access to what Europol provides.
When the Europol Information System comes online, that will give
us phenomenal results, because the vast majority of the issues
we are dealing with in terms of serious organised crime are either
at a global level or certainly start outside the borders of the
United Kingdom. If we are not able to pick up the intelligence
in that, then we are hamstringing ourselves to only being able
to work within the UK and we need to work outside.
Q70 Lord Marlesford:
I can see how valuable this immense amount of information is.
Does that mean that you will have realtime access shortly, for
example, to the names of individuals which are on the Europol
computer system?
Mr Wainwright: We have realtime access
to that now.
Q71 Lord Marlesford:
Would all the names on the British police computer be on the Europol
system, so that other countries who want to check a name can check
whether there is a Brit who is regarded as serious enough to have
on the Police National Computer?
Mr Wainwright: There is no direct connection
between the Police National Computer and Europol's database.
Q72 Lord Marlesford:
What is the source of the names in the Europol database?
Mr Wainwright: In the main they are drawn
from the national police investigations of serious organised crime
within the 27 Member States. It, therefore, in that sense, gives
a more restricted view of criminality. The Police National Computer,
and equivalents around Europe, is a much larger database and is
connected around Europe, in the main, by a differently used system,
the Schengen Information System in particular. In Europol, therefore,
we have a different kind of database. It is smaller but it contains
information about a higher level of criminality. In particular,
it contains information that is of a higher level of sensitivity,
because very often it is about major organised crime suspects
connected to live police investigations, so the levels of confidentiality
have to be much higher—which is why there is controlled
secure access through a central point of contact in each Member
State.
Mr Hughes: Europol and Interpol are different
in this regard. Interpol is very much a fact-based post office,
in effect, for looking at data which has provenance and records
back in the home countries. Europol is much more intelligence-based.
The Analytical Work Files that we have referred to are the database
for operations that are ongoing. That is where sensitive information
is stored. That will be built up by relevant countries, Member
States, giving that information. There are very strict controls
on how that information is held and who has access to it. One
of the benefits that we have of Europol at the moment is that
it provides the only restricted level, in terms of confidential
information to be shared, around Europe between law enforcement
agencies that exist. We have that in the United Kingdom but the
only way we can communicate with other countries' law enforcements
is through what Europol does in that regard. So we have access
to very high quality intelligence about actual operations. A database
which just gives a summary of all those who are known or wanted
is on the PNC, and, as Rob has said, in due course, when the United
Kingdom signs up to Schengen, there will be a sharing of information.
When countries indicate that a UK national has committed crimes
abroad, that information is then put through on to the PNC by
us, but there is no direct linkage in terms of being able to do
that between the PNC and the European databases at the moment.
Q73 Lord Marlesford:
When that happens, obviously there will be a big step forward,
because there has been a lot of criticism recently about people
who are found, foreign nationals, for example, employed at Heathrow
who have criminal records, a fact unknown to the people employing
them in the UK. Will that be something which the linkage will
deal with in the future?
Mr Hughes: It should be. The CRB as well
will be able to link into that information and intelligence again.
This is where we have a disconnect at the moment.
Q74 Chairman:
Mr Hughes, you said when the UK signs up to Schengen. There will
be some people in this building who would rather say "if
the UK ever signs up to Schengen" being an island. But I
will leave that point.
Mr Hughes: That is more practical than
political, My Lord Chairman.
Q75 Chairman:
We are talking about data and I want to intersperse another point
here. You say in paragraph 8 of your paper, "Due to EU data
protection requirements limiting the extent to which Europol can
exchange personal data with third parties ... " and, then,
in paragraph 9, "significant issues around data protection
would need to be overcome first." You have talked to us about
the structure of data information but I think we must ask you
about the effect of it. How serious is the limitation created
by EU data protection requirements on to the effective work of
Europol? How are you proposing to "overcome" it? Then,
over the page, at paragraph 12, you say, "Technical difficulties
currently restrict the extent to which the UK contributes and
retrieves data from the system." Is that the same technical
difficulties you have referred to in paragraphs 8 and 9? Perhaps
you could tell us how you would like to see changes made so that
a more effective use can be made of the relevant data.
Mr Hughes: My Lord Chairman, taking paragraph
12 first, if I may, this is a technical issue on the basis that
at the moment we do not have an automated data transfer system
in SOCA in order to do this. We will have it very soon as part
of our IT change-out, so that when that comes on stream—hopefully
within the next year or two—we will be able to update on
to the EIS very quickly. That is a technical issue. On the other
two, I would ask Rob to go through the particular issues. Of course,
you will be well aware of the constitutional issues for different
countries, so, to an extent, what happens at Europol is that to
take account of that you end up with not the lowest common denominator
but you go to the most severe level of confidentiality.
Mr Wainwright: We do not wish to imply
in either our written or spoken evidence that we are dissatisfied
with current data protection safeguards that operate in the EU.
Indeed, we welcome data protection. Of course it is a very, very
important part of police work. We recognise that both domestically,
in the work that SOCA does, and in our international collaboration,
but, as Bill says, to a certain extent they impose—rightly,
in my view—certain restrictions in the way that we can operate.
In the particular example that is quoted in paragraph 8, I am
referring to the co-operation agreements that Europol has made
with third countries. It is a statutory requirement in Europol
that it may only exchange personal data (that is, the most sensitive
of its data holdings) with those partners where it has concluded
agreement that is consistent with the data protection principles
and requirements of EU legislation. The data protection standards
in the EU by world standards are very high, and we have found,
therefore, that it is not always possible to find similar levels
of data protection standards in other countries. That is why Europol
has not been in a position, for statutory reasons, to conclude
agreements with some countries, at least, outside Europe. In relation
to the extent to which that inhibits police-to-police co-operation,
I guess it does, but there is a balance always between allowing
police officers the most open playing field perhaps in which to
conduct their inquiries and the very important need for data protection
and safeguards. I think the current arrangements in the Europol
Convention are about right. They certainly do not reflect EU values
and requirements in the main and we are not seeking to change
them.
Q76 Baroness Garden of Frognal:
We have observed that there seem to be differences of interpretation
in terms such as "intelligence", "personal data",
"information", terrorism", "organised crime",
"serious crime" and so on. Could you comment on this
apparent lack of clarity in definition and say what the implications
are for the work of Europol and for national member agencies?
Mr Hughes: This is not just limited to
Europe, of course. It is also the case that in any other mix of
law enforcement agencies you will have different terms. Part of
the arrangements we will be doing to answer the question just
now about partnership is to set protocols and SLAs with our partners
as to what we mean by this and what we are going to do about it,
et cetera. Whenever we set up a bilateral with another country
in Europe or elsewhere, that is part of our first operation. On
the specific issues around personal data, there are definitions
in the Europol Convention which pick up on the contents of what
will be put in the information system and how they are put in
there, in both Article 8 and Article 10, and that also includes
witnesses, potential witnesses, and other people as well. So there
are references to personal data. Organised crime does not always
carry any definition. In many countries, their definition of organised
crime can be different. One of the things when we set up SOCA
and you will have noticed from the SOCPA legislation, the Serious
Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, is that we make no definition
of "serious" or "organised" in there because
it is not a term that is recognised within UK law as such, it
is more a practice within a type of criminality. We are looking
at organised criminals who engage in very serious levels of crime
where there is an organisational aspect to what they are doing.
It is that type of approach. If you were to try to define that
too tightly it would restrict our ability to be able to support
partners; for example, when we assisted Suffolk when they were
dealing with the murders of the five women in Suffolk. That was
not an organised crime but it was certainly serious crime. We
try not to get into definitions like that, or one is constrained.
But, then, you may find when you operate across Europe that certain
types of criminality which are defined in countries as organised
may not even be a crime as far as other countries are concerned.
Mr Wainwright: In my view, it is not
a serious handicap. The terms "intelligence" and information",
for example, and even "personal data", are used interchangeably.
There is always the language, of course. In some European languages
there is not a term at all for "intelligence" I think.
So these are used interchangeably but they have become such a
natural part of the policing lexicon in Europe that all practitioners
understand what we mean when we may use these interchangeable
terms. Although there is a danger perhaps, particularly with regards
to some of the more precise legal definitions of these terms,
my experience is that this is not a serious issue.
Q77 Lord Marlesford:
My recollection is there is a fairly recent definition of legislation
which requires the reporting by professionals of any suspicions
of tax avoidance or evasion and so on, which, as one reads in
the press, has resulted in thousands or hundreds of thousands
of reports to your organisation. Is that correct?
Mr Hughes: Are you talking about suspicious
activity reports?
Q78 Lord Marlesford:
Yes.
Mr Hughes: That is a different issue.
The suspicious activity reports are a requirement of the Proceeds
of Crime Act to deal with money laundering and asset hiding. If
banks, financial institutions, estate agents, lawyers, anybody
who engages in transactions of large amounts of cash, high-value
traders (who are defined as people who would sell high-value motor
vehicles and things like this) consider that the transaction or
the person or the individual or the cash itself is perhaps concerned
in crime and therefore they have suspicions, they are required
by law to report it to what was NCIS before and is now SOCA, and
that forms the suspicious activity reports regime. That is held
on a separate database that we have access to, and it is used
and available to all police forces in the UK and to our partners
in the HMRC and Border Agency. It is a very useful database in
order to very quickly identify fraudulent activity. We have been
doing work around data mining of the database, and we now have
one million records on that database. It enables us to identify,
for example, very quickly, criminal networks involved in the laundering
of money, and the MTIC fraudsters, the so-called carousel VAT
fraudsters, become quite apparent. We still require more transactions
and more suspicious activity reports to be reported to us, however,
because there are parts of the industry that are not doing so
and they need to be aware that there is an imprisonment penalty
if they fail to do so.
Q79 Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts:
In my life outside the House I was formerly responsible for reporting
circumstances to NCIS and SOCA on the part of a building society.
It seemed to me that three-quarters of what we sent you was completely
useless and would end up nowhere but in the wastepaper basket
or blocking up somebody's filing cabinet or somebody's computer.
Would you not agree that there would be a serious case for a de
minimis limit of, say, £500?
Mr Hughes: Just before SOCA started,
the Chairman now of SOCA, Sir Stephen Lander, was asked by the
then Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Home Secretary to carry
out a review of the suspicious activity report regime, as you
are probably aware. As a result of that, he made quite a few recommendations
as to how it could be improved. All of those recommendations were
accepted and we have addressed all of those. We had quite a few
complaints, as you will be aware. A lot of people sent a report
in, which then disappeared into what they saw as some sort of
Bermuda Triangle and never emerged again. This happens. I am sure
other people around this table will be well aware that this is
a complaint that is often made: "We report things to the
police and we never hear any more about it." We have sought
to bring into our agency what we call a vetting unit, people representing
banks, financial institutions, other trading areas, who are then
given the very sensitive details of what we have done with that
information. As with all information, when you accumulate it,
the power of the ability to analyse that is greater than the single
report that comes in. As to a de minimis rule, that is perhaps
not for me to comment upon. We have already had changes in the
Proceeds of Crime Act which brought down the amount that you could
carry or have about your person from, I think, £10,000 to
£5,000. If you are carrying more than £5,000, you can
have that money taken off you by a police officer if there are
suspicious circumstances and you would then have to apply to a
magistrates' court to get it back. There are already changes afoot,
but it is a question of how far down you want to go in the de
minimis rule.
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