Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 99)
WEDNESDAY 4 JUNE 2008
Mr William Hughes and Mr Rob Wainwright
Q80 Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts:
This is a serious imposition on the position of the financial
sector in this country. The fact is that, because you are not
prepared to speak out, it is necessary to get clearance to open
a savings account for your child who is aged six years old. Somebody
like you needs to be clear about whether there is a valid need
here or not.
Mr Hughes: You will probably be aware
from your background as well that there is an issue called smurfing.
You are familiar with the term "smurfing". This is where
lots and lots of small accounts are opened in order to get round
the asset recovery and proceeds of crime legislation, whereby
small amounts that do not figure on this are then all channelled
to the same location, usually overseas, so that is a way of laundering
money out of the United Kingdom. There are always arguments for
what is the right approach to take on this. This was examined
very closely by Sir Stephen Lander in his report and no recommendations
were made or changes.
Chairman: We must move on.
Q81 Lord Dear:
I would like to move on to strategic co-ordination. The European
Criminal Intelligence Model I think was implemented by Europol
almost as soon as it was born in the middle of this decade. Could
you fill us in generally around that. Has it been implemented
elsewhere? Does the Europol Decision build upon the ECIM?
Mr Hughes: Perhaps I could say something
first of all, probably to spare some blushes in the room. At the
United Kingdom Presidency in 2005 we were concerned that there
was what we thought a pretty good solution to deal with intelligence
analysis. It is something that we brought in in the United Kingdom—and
you will be familiar with this—the National Intelligence
Model. We thought this could perhaps provide some traction for
Europe also. We made the business case to our European colleagues
for a European Crime Intelligence Model based very much on the
National Intelligence Model. They took that very quickly, because
they could see the benefits of it. Out of that came the Organised
Crime Threat Assessment which is very much based on the UK Threat
Assessment Approach that we have made in the United Kingdom. During
the Dutch Presidency that followed, we moved down a more operational
route, to the COSPOL approaches, which are specific operations
that at the moment are supported through the Analytical Work Files
of Europol: child pornography; Western Balkan organised crime;
synthetic drugs; the trafficking of human beings; research on
illegal immigration; and heroin trafficking. These are big issues
that impact across the whole of Europe. The Dutch and other colleagues
when we were working with them tried to find common issues across
the whole of Europe, or most of Europe, that we could then focus
on in an operational route but this was through the mechanism
of the European Police Chiefs' Taskforce which was set up under
the Tampere Meeting in 1999. This has now given a very structured
place for intelligence-led law enforcement across Europe which
the European Crime Intelligence Model I think has helped enormously
with.
Mr Wainwright: It is a business model
for police co-operation at this level, drawing on what we thought
was British best practice of intelligence-led policing. More to
the point, we recognised a significant appetite for sharing best
practice with our European colleagues. It is a simple business
model and was accepted in principle in 2005 by our European partners.
Its framework has been implemented, in part, so far, most notably
in the form of the Organised Crime Threat Assessment which is
now an embedded, very important part of the Europol machinery.
That certainly was a direct response to what we did in 2005. I
say in part: there is still some way to go. The concept of a dedicated
intelligence requirement, in particular, has still not taken root
in Europol and we need to do more to promote that.
Q82 Lord Dear:
Is there any particular reason for that? Is that cultural, or
technical, or financial?
Mr Wainwright: It is not technical. It
is not financial. So it must be cultural. The powers of a detective!
Q83 Lord Dear:
Without naming the suspects, can you give us any examples?
Mr Wainwright: We have found, also, in
our bilateral exchanges with partners, that we have had a lot
of success with the Dutch, in particular, in transporting our
case and learning from them as well. That is fine. There are other
countries as well. In other parts of Europe policing at this level
tends to be based more on reactive activity and policing rather
than proactive. This is very much a business model to be proactive
in the fight against organised crime, so the idea of an intelligence
requirement is that at the start of your planning cycle you establish
what your priorities are, and you make a concerted effort to go
out and acquire more information about those priorities rather
than respond to criminal activity as it waves over you. It reflects
the change that the UK policing community has gone through over
the last 15 years. That same change has not happened in other
countries in Europe. We will not criticise them for that because
they have their own unique domestic circumstances but I think
it is a cultural issue.
Mr Hughes: Within the Police Chiefs'
Taskforce there has been the advantage that we have been able—and
I was the UK delegate on that up until very recently—to
influence some of the accession countries coming through and changing
their styles of policing. Particularly the European Crime Intelligence
Model has been picked up by Croatia and we had an approach from
the South Eastern European police chiefs to join the Police Chiefs'
Taskforce in Europe. These are the countries that are very much
new accession members and they picked up on the European Crime
Intelligence Model as well. There is quite an appetite now to
move away from that old style of policing. It was not really policing,
it was very much a totalitarian type approach. As Rob has quite
rightly said, the focus was not on intelligence in law enforcement,
it was on intelligence in other agencies.
Q84 Lord Dear:
There are two threat assessment models, the EU model and the UK
model. It would be helpful to us to understand what the differences
are in how they operate in generality and hopefully work in parallel.
Mr Wainwright: Not to be too pedantic,
it is only one model. That is the point: they share—
Q85 Lord Dear:
There are two acronyms though.
Mr Wainwright: I am sorry, what I should
say is that they are two different products. One is a threat assessment
of organised crime across Europe and one is based here in the
United Kingdom, but they are underpinned by the same methodology
and by the same intelligence network principles.
Q86 Lord Dear:
Which was going to be a supplementary question.
Mr Wainwright: The Europol Director,
I am sure, would say himself that the development of the EU equivalent
was directly as a result of the UK initiative a few years ago.
We are lucky in that, therefore, our assessment domestically has
a cousin, if you like, a European cousin. They have a symbiotic
relationship. They feed each other in terms of the information
flows, so our threat assessment will reflect what Europol is telling
us about their pan-European view of trends in cocaine trafficking,
for example. That is reflected in their UK assessment. It is helping
to inform their UK assessment. At the same time the pan-European
picture is supported by our domestic understanding of what the
threat is. There is this symbiotic relationship and on a day-to-day
basis they work really through the functioning of Analysis Work
Files at Europol. There are 18 of these in total. As I said, they
contain many, many, many intelligence entries and they are of
significant strategic value. More to the point, they have their
equivalents here in SOCA as well. We have national programmes
of activity that we work with our domestic partners on in our
top priority areas of cocaine trafficking, of heroin trafficking,
of money laundering, for instance. As it happens, there is an
equivalent SOCA analysis project to our domestic programme of
activity in a majority of those cases, so we are in a privileged
position to feed off each other and that is how it has worked.
Q87 Lord Dear:
What you have given is a very full answer and I am grateful to
you for that. To clear my own mind absolutely, what I am seeing
is a model with exactly the same common understanding of terminology,
common acceptance of terminology; the same model which almost
produced, machine-like, a UK assessment at one level and a European
at another but using exactly the same machine to do it, if I might
use that expression.
Mr Wainwright: Different instruments,
of course, because one is managed by SOCA and one by Europol,
but the way in which the machine works, the way in which it has
been built, is largely the same. There are European modifications,
as you might expect, but the principles are the same. The architecture
of the European model, I think, is still underdeveloped but then
it is bound to be because it is a newer and more complex project
spanning 27 countries.
Q88 Lord Dear:
With more players involved and feeding into it.
Mr Wainwright: Yes.
Mr Hughes: For Europol, they do not produce
the OCTA, as they call it, on an annual basis. They are more keen
on the Analytical Work Files being the main structure. The OCTA
is produced at regular intervals as an overarching picture of
where they are approaching, but the AWFs are their day-to-day
practical business of taking it forward. They are similar, therefore,
in what we are doing with the UK Control Strategy Programmes,
but, as Rob said, each one of those programmes or almost all of
our programmes slot neatly into one of the AWFs in Europol, so
there is a linkage there.
Q89 Lord Dear:
There is a threat assessment on the enunciator behind you. It
sits there and is updated presumably every day at that level for
the House of Lords. Is your threat assessment something which
is updated on a daily, weekly, monthly or annual basis? I am not
too sure.
Mr Hughes: We do it on an annual basis.
You will be familiar with the old NCIS threat assessment that
was produced which tended to be, as I said earlier, a bit of a
historical document which was very interesting but was not a lot
of use in terms of taking things forward. We have moved that on
and we now produce two versions. One is a restricted version which
is available for law enforcement and the other is the unclassified
version which is available for public consumption. The unclassified
version is scheduled to go out via our website on 6 June. OCTA
is produced annually. I have just been corrected by Rob. That
shows I am a little out of date, because last time I was at the
European Police Chiefs' Taskforce there was some debate over whether
it should be produced annually or not. My argument was that it
should. Other people said, "No, only every two or five years."
It would appear that I have won the argument and I did not know
it. The UK Threat Assessment now, I would suggest, because the
restricted version has the sensitive sources listed in there—and
that is obviously why it cannot be in the unclassified—is
taking us towards the route of our Control Strategy as well, bringing
partners into line there, so they have something to work on rather
than being a very interesting document which you put on your shelf
and ignore until next year. It is produced on an annual basis.
Q90 Chairman:
Could I ask a question about how this all works out in practical
terms. Where you have the number plate recognition arrangements
which many police forces have, where a vehicle sits on a motorway
bridge and analyses number plates and somebody is down the road
in order to stop a vehicle if there is either somebody or a vehicle
which in which the police are interested. Is that computer which
is used attached only to the UK database or does it also make
use of a Europol database?
Mr Hughes: This is probably a question
you are going to have to ask Mr Frank Whiteley, who is the Chief
Constable of Hertfordshire who leads for ACPO on ANPR. As I understand
it there are quite a few ANPR systems, some operated by private
or other public sectors. There is not, as far as I am aware, any
common linkage. Within SOCA we use ANPR facilities and if we had
a vehicle that we were interested in we would enter it onto the
PNC, which is where the ANPR will pick up those details, but there
would have to be a clear criterion on why that vehicle went up
there. If we had a European linkage that came into us, then, as
far as I can see, we would be able to put it on to a specific
ANPR system. As I say, there are lots of ANPR systems, so we would
have to be careful as to which ones are being used. We would use
the ones that are operated by police.
Mr Wainwright: My colleague has just
confirmed that ANPR would be automatically connected to the Schengen
Information System—if and when that arrives.
Mr Hughes: It links into the PNC and
the PNC would be linked with the Schengen Information System,
so therefore the same details would be on there.
Q91 Lord Dear:
The UK National Intelligence Model had a child called the UK Control
Strategy. I wonder if you could expand on the latter in terms
of controlling organised crime. How does it work within Europe
itself? What is the benefit to the UK?
Mr Hughes: The UK Control Strategy, as
I say, picks up from the UK Threat Assessment and is a multi-agency
approach. I have not brought the documentation with me but in
our SOCA annual plan we refer to the UK Control Strategy and it
shows the particular agencies that are leading. Some of the agencies
might surprise you. The Home Office lead in one. The UK Border
Agency. HMRC on fiscal fraud, as you would expect. All of those
are picked up and then other agencies work together on that. When
you link that into Europe, as I have said, the UK Control Strategy's
programme of activities relates straight into the subject areas
of key Europol Analytical Work Files, so there is a direct read-across.
The Analytical Work Files are a source of intelligence that feeds
the UK Threat Assessment, so it is a continual process by which
we are building up what we know about the individuals and the
type of crime threats that we are looking at. Perhaps I could
give you a couple of examples where Europol has added value as
a result of those work files. First, there was an operation—and
I will not go into details in relation to the individuals—where
an Eastern European gang was armed and violent and committed around
20 armed robberies against high quality jewellery shops in the
UK and over 200 similar incidents across the EU. At the end of
2007, officers from three United Kingdom forces, visited Estonia,
an action co-ordinated by Europol, searched eight addresses, arrested
seven suspects, and with the support of Europol the police in
the UK have identified offenders in 16 out of 24 cases and have
brought prosecutions in 11 cases.
Q92 Lord Dear:
Sixteen in the UK?
Mr Hughes: Yes. The offenders have been
identified and prosecuted in 11 cases. It may be that some of
the offenders may be prosecuted in other countries in the EU.
In counterterrorism Europol have played a key role in an operation
led by Greater Manchester Police to prosecute a man for offences
related to terrorism. That key evidence was developed from the
documents that were seized at his address in Manchester but most
of the correspondence between him and his associates in Pakistan
and Afghanistan was in Arabic. This is perhaps picking up on the
linguistic issue. Europol experts supported that investigation
for GMP, translated and analysed the material and found evidence
that clearly showed his complicity in supporting terrorism. That
man has now been prosecuted and convicted and sentenced. Europol
does add value. It is linked in with our threat assessment. It
is a continual operation which I would support. I think we get
good value from it.
Q93 Lord Young of Norwood Green:
On your evidence paper, paragraph 8, you say, "Europol has
signed 20 co-operation agreements with countries and bodies outside
the EU" but you then go on to damn it with a bit of faint
praise at the end, where you say, "Experience suggests Europol
should spend less time pursuing such external agreements and focus
on delivering its goals ... " I can understand there is a
balance to be struck but, even listening to what you have described,
given the global nature of organised crime and counterterrorism
activities, would you like to expand on that a bit as to why you
have reached that conclusion?
Mr Wainwright: Yes, of course. I would
refer to my previous answer regarding the data protection problems
we had. In many of those cases, as I said, where Europol has co-operation
with third countries, it is forbidden from exchanging personal
data because of the data protection safeguards. We are unable
to realise the kind of operational benefits that Bill has just
talked about with those other countries because we cannot exchange
data about other countries' investigations. Therefore, the co-operation
agreements that Europol has with Russia, for example, and other
countries is limited to the exchange of strategic information
only, threat assessment papers and so on, which sometimes is helpful
but has a natural limit in terms of how useful it can be. The
amount of legal and other effort, political effort, to get them
signed is such that very often the dividend that then follows
in those terms is not great. People would argue that Europol has
a big enough job on its hands to help Member States within the
EU before pursuing an endless number of these. Where it is targeted
at the right partner, absolutely yes.
Q94 Lord Young of Norwood Green:
Thank you. That is helpful.
Mr Hughes: The answer is exactly as Rob
says.
Q95 Lord Marlesford:
Going back to Lord Dear's questions about the threat assessments,
I think there is the danger of confusion for ordinary people like
me in the phrase "threat assessment" because to the
ordinary people a threat assessment would normally be in relation
to terrorism. Of the two examples you gave, obviously the Greater
Manchester terrorism matter comes into that type, but the gang
in Lithuania is a threat assessment for jewellers, if you like,
in London. Is there some way in which we can get a clearer distinction
between, as it were, a threat assessment crime which would not
normally affect most people, except that somebody might say that
in this area there are a lot of pickpockets but that is a very
minor threat assessment, and the terrorist threat assessment.
Perhaps the phrase is unfortunately the same.
Mr Hughes: I understand. The UK Threat
Assessment does refer to terrorism but our remit is not terrorism
so we have not majored in that area. That said, there is a Metropolitan
Police counterterrorism officer who is at Europol and we support
our colleagues in that area of work. I suppose it is back again
to the lexicon and what you mean by "a threat" and all
the rest of it. The threat to the United Kingdom of serious organised
crime is very much underestimated. That is what we tried to highlight
in the threat assessment in previous years, but, as you say, many
people associate threat with terrorism. The threat to the United
Kingdom is quite significant, and not just in financial terms.
I think the Home Office did some research about four years ago
now which estimated the cost of organised crime to the United
Kingdom was in the region of about £20 billion a year in
terms of the harms caused, but then you look at the other real
personal harms that come from that; for example, from drugs; the
use of violence; the importation of firearms; organised immigration
crime, where we are not talking simply about people being smuggled
into the country but of them being placed in debt bondage, the
exploitation of those individuals when they arrive in the United
Kingdom, whether from prostitution or in working for very poor
wages in sweat shops, and so on and so forth. There are real threats
in there which are identified in here. Many people will be unaware
of the activity. Acquisitive crime generally is carried out to
provide funds so people can either buy drugs or are required to
pay back debts to other people who have been threatening them
with some criminality, particularly organised immigration crime
and other areas. There is a lot more in terms of the organised
type of crime that is impacting on the UK. We are also talking
there about, for example, issues where major frauds and scams
are perpetrated in the United Kingdom by serious organised crime
gangs. These go from the classic old 419 scams that most people
are aware of, the ones that usually emanate from West Africa:
"If you'll allow me to use your bank account to launder this
money ... " I work on the basis, if you fall for that one,
that if it is too good to be true then the answer is that it probably
is, but there are other scams which are more insidious now. We
have been working with the Office of Fair Trading to deal with
some of these, where vulnerable people in society are targeted
over and over again with scams such as, "Congratulations!
You have won the Spanish lottery. Send a £10 administration
fee and we will organise the prize." This is high volume/low
value but, when you add it all up, people are making millions
out of the people who respond. More dangerous and more nasty,
in my view, is that, if you do respond—and often it is the
more vulnerable people in society—they put you on a suckers'
list which they then sell to other people so that they can target
you as well. The effects of serious organised crime are underplayed
in terms of the threat that it applies to everybody in society.
I could make the statement, of course, that not many people die
from terrorism on an annual basis, though every one is a tragedy,
but there are a lot of people who die or others whose lives or
ruined by organised crime every year. You would expect the head
of the Serious Organised Crime Agency perhaps to say that but
that is the reality. That is what we are trying to identify in
that threat assessment.
Q96 Lord Harrison:
I am pleased to learn that I am probably not on the suckers' list,
as I had one invitation that I put in the wastepaper bin without
opening it. I would like to come on to changes to the Europol
mandate. The Council Decision introduces more flexibility to allow
Europol to support criminal investigations into the most serious
of crimes that may not obviously be linked to organised criminal
gangs. Does this signal move towards traditional investigations
and away from policing measures as a way of compensating for the
removal of the EU internal borders? I wonder whether that was
in part touched upon when the reference was given to the Suffolk
murders.
Mr Wainwright: I do not see significance
to this move in these terms. I think this is a tidying up of the
arrangements based on the first 10 years or so of Europol's experience.
Even after the adoption of the new Council Decision, Europol's
activities will still be focused on its existing priorities: drug
trafficking, terrorism, money laundering, and so on. The tidying
up I referred to really is where on a relatively few occasions
Europol could provide some added value in the case of some very
high-profile, serious crimes that do not involve an onwards crime
check: multiple murders, perhaps across borders; or a child sex
offender travelling around Europe; or a serial rapist. In these
circumstances Europol could provide added value but at the moment
is prevented from doing so by the way in which the Europol Convention
is termed. The Council Decision helpfully provides a bit more
flexibility for Europol to provide support in those exceptional
cases, but I think in five years time, looking back, perhaps I
would anticipate that the nature of Europol's work and the areas
in which it is delivered will not change significantly.
Mr Hughes: Perhaps I could add one thing
to something the Chairman said recently when I was talking about
Schengen. I will not go down that road again but there is an issue
to this which is that this allows Europol to support the national
law enforcement agencies investigate serious crimes in the European
Union without giving the investigators cross-border powers, which
is another issue on that. We have a European Directive around
joint investigation teams, so, as Rob said, it is a tidying up
without going further than that into wider pan-European policing
agencies.
Q97 Lord Harrison:
To follow that up: if there is this new mandate in dealing with
serious crime, does that fundamentally require a different set
of skills or a wider or broader knowledge in order to accomplish
that from that which you have already used in combating organised
crime?
Mr Hughes: No, I do not think so, because
the same basic gathering of the evidence—the intelligence,
the analysis, the investigative powers and investigative tools
and techniques—are similar. Sometimes it requires a different
approach. For example, a lot of SOCA work is very much proactive,
going after people who are plotting to do something, rather than
investigating after it has occurred. We have our own forensic
capability which is based on the same forensic type capacity you
would have in any police force investigating and reacting to a
crime that has occurred, but we are applying those principles
now to proactive work. DNA sampling enables us to identify who
was at the scene and that is the case whether the crime has been
committed there or whether we are looking at surveillance and
identifying who has been meeting and coming together. It is all
these areas. This is an area where, as Rob said, it is very much
tidying up and the same skills will be used. I think it is very
good that we are using the capabilities of Europol to support
what would in the past have been considered as more local policing
issues.
Q98 Chairman:
Your paper gave me the impression—although you did not actually
say it, I gained the feeling from reading between the lines—that
if there was a United Kingdom person in the top echelon of Europol
management—which there is not, and you say you are considering
putting somebody up next year—what particular gifts do you
think that person could give to Europol which would create added
value?
Mr Hughes: You are either operating on
very good intelligence or you are very astute, My Lord Chairman.
I must answer this one, to spare Rob. It is not framed that way,
but you are right. Rob Wainwright is on the Europol Management
Board. We have ministerial support now and Rob is going to apply
for that particular post of Director of Europol when it becomes
available. This is not our manifesto for improvement but it is
very much a case where we support Europol and always have and
Rob has the skills, I believe, to make a very good job of being
Director and taking that role forward. I think we had better be
careful on how much we sell him at this stage.
Mr Wainwright: I think it is right that
we declare that interest. I notice some of the questions that
may follow are about how the governance of Europol could be improved,
and you will want to bear that in mind when you listen to my answers,
I guess.
Mr Hughes: We were intending to say that.
We were not going to be disingenuous and wait until later for
you to find out.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q99 Lord Young of Norwood Green:
I think my two questions could be rolled into one. Helpfully in
your evidence paper in paragraphs 15 and 16 you go part way to
addressing them. The Council Decision has addressed that interaction
between the Management Board and the Director by giving the Management
Board responsibility for strategy. How does that differ fundamentally
from the current situation? If the Council Decision has not gone
far enough to giving more control, if you like, to the Director,
which areas of responsibility would you recommend?
Mr Wainwright: I think the changes are
important but fairly modest. The Management Board already has
codified responsibility to manage the strategic functioning of
the organisation, so it already has responsibility for adopting
the annual work programme, the annual plan, the budget, the five-year
financing plan as well. It already operates in that way. Over
the last few years, it has acquired other more de facto responsibilities;
for example, developing the Europol vision which we now have and
the Europol strategy itself. Those last two instruments, the vision
and the strategy, are not codified in the Europol Convention;
they will be in the Council Decision. That is another example
of very sensible tidying up of practice that has become an embedded
part of the way in which the organisation operates. During the
negotiation stage, between SOCA and the Home Office, we wished
perhaps for the Council Decision to go a bit further in delineating
a different level of responsibility between the Director and the
Management Board. In the end, having compromised across 27 Member
States, the final result is quite a good one and we are happy
with it. If you were to press me on what more we want to do, it
is really around the extent to which the Director should be allowed
to get on with his job. He should be allowed to run his organisation
as a Chief Executive Officer, running the day-to-day administration
of his resources and of the conduct of the operation which Europol
are supporting. The Management Board, for me at least—and
I have been a member of the board now for some eight years—should
not be concerned with the day-to-day running of the organisation
but very much with the strategy of Europol, its external relationships,
and ensuring budgetary probity and efficiency. That last point
is a very important one for us. I do not think the Council Decision
has gone quite far enough in delineating those two responsibilities
but it is a not a bad start. In the end it is going to come down
to personal relationships between the Director and members of
the Management Board. Like in so many other walks of life, it
is how the individuals themselves enact the legislation and operate
on a day-to-day basis that will be the difference between success
and failure.
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