Graeme Biggar, Gregor McGill and Baljit Ubhey gave evidence.

We will now hear evidence from Graeme Biggar, director general of the National Crime Agency; Gregor McGill, director of legal service for the Crown Prosecution Service; and Baljit Ubhey, director of strategy and policy for the Crown Prosecution Service. For this panel, we have until 10.40 am. Welcome to you all, and thank you for joining us. I know I have just done it, but could you all please introduce yourselves for the record?

Graeme Biggar:

I am still Graeme Biggar, director general of the National Crime Agency.

Gregor McGill:

I am Gregor McGill, director of legal service at the Crown Prosecution Service.

Baljit Ubhey:

I am Baljit Ubhey, director of strategy and policy at the Crown Prosecution Service.

Q Thank you, witnesses, for your time this morning; it is much appreciated. Graeme Biggar, clauses 1 to 8 relate to serious crime, theft or fraud. For us in this place, it can be a challenge to keep up with the new and novel tactics used particularly by organised crime enterprises globally, but also in this country. What are your reflections on those new provisions, and are they up to date enough to keep up with the changing challenges of organised crime?

Graeme Biggar:

Sorry, I missed which clauses you referred to.

Clauses 1 to 8.

Graeme Biggar:

Can you just remind me which ones clauses 1 to 8 are?

They deal with offences related to things used in serious crime, theft or fraud, such as SIM farms and 3D printers—the sorts of items that can be used in organised crime.

Graeme Biggar:

3D printers, concealment and pill presses are three different things that are used in crimes a lot. I will come to SIM farms later. We have seen 3D-printed firearms emerge. They are a function of the fact that we have done well to control the availability of firearms in this country generally, but there is new technology available. We seized 17 weapons—3D-printed firearms—last year; we have seized 25 so far this year. At the moment, the possession of the blueprint to make that firearm is not unlawful, so we can go in and see there is a firearm there, and we can see it is a factory that is making these weapons, but we cannot do anything about it. The Bill could really help on that particular issue.

On pill presses, you will be aware of the number of deaths from drug overdoses, misuse and poisoning in the UK. In 2021—there is a bit of a lag on drug deaths—there were almost 1,500 drug deaths from overdoses on benzodiazepine, which is largely used in pill form. We get other drugs in pill form, such as ecstasy, most notably, but the Met seized 150,000 pills of fentanyl just a couple of weeks ago. Pill presses are used to create these pills and distribute them at the moment. We are unusual, globally, not to have regulation of pill presses. This legislation would make the possession and supply of pill presses without a good, legitimate excuse—there are some legitimate uses for a pill press, obviously—an offence, and that would really help us. In 2020, for example, we did a raid in which we seized 40 million pills from England that were being supplied up to Scotland.

Concealment is the final one of the three in that category. We can seize a vehicle at the border if we discover a sophisticated concealment that is built into a vehicle to hide drugs, cash or, potentially, people, but we cannot actually seize a vehicle within the UK unless we can also show that there is some criminal activity there. These concealments are purpose-built to enable stuff to be both brought across the border and then distributed around the UK. We have seized 438 vehicles over the past three years; about 150 of those were at the border, so we could do that just because there was a concealment. For the others, we had to demonstrate that there was also criminal activity, so that has largely been when we have found drugs or a gun in them. There are factories around the UK that are building these concealments, and people who specialise in building them. It would be really helpful for us to be able to seize the vehicles and prosecute the people who are building them.

You mentioned SIM farms as well. You will all be aware from your constituency correspondence of the amount of fraud there is in this country, and some of that volume is driven by the ability of fraudsters to use SIM farms to automatically generate tens of thousands of text messages. A SIM farm puts lots of SIMs together and does that in an automatic way. The vast majority of that happens overseas, but we have discovered a few SIM farms in the UK. Being able to take action on that would be really helpful too.

Q Just quickly, I have a question for colleagues from the Crown Prosecution Service. There are lots of new offences in this Bill. New offences mean new arrests, and new arrests should then lead to new charges and new cases. From a CPS point of view, how do you feel at the moment about resourcing and being able to take cases through speedily, and do you have any anxieties about new burdens and the extra support you might need in order to exercise those new burdens?

Gregor McGill:

It is fair to say that resources are tight at the moment, so any new offences coming into the system will affect not only the CPS but other parts of the criminal justice system—the courts and the prisons—so that will have to be factored in. We are in the process of talking with the Treasury about resources, but that is a relevant factor. We do not know how many cases this will involve. What I can say is that our corporate position is that these will be useful offences to be able to work closely with our colleagues in the National Crime Agency and wider policing to affect criminality, but you are quite right that we will have to keep our eye on the resource implications of them and come back to Ministers if we find that there are issues.

Graeme Biggar:

May I just add a comment? For a lot of these particular offences, it will shortcut our investigations, because at the moment we are finding 3D-printed firearms or concealments, but we have to do a whole bunch of extra work to be able to reach the criminal threshold for an actual charge, so in some senses this will actually make things easier for us.

Q Graeme, thank you for all the work that you and your colleagues at the NCA do—and thank you also to the CPS for the work that you do prosecuting cases. Graeme, you mentioned in response to the shadow Minister, who covered many of the points I would have asked about, the articles used for serious and organised crime, including 3D printing templates for firearms. Do the clauses as drafted contain everything you would want to see in that regard? Are there any areas where the drafting could be improved or does this do the trick as it is drafted?

Graeme Biggar:

The drafting for those items does everything I think we need to see regarding both possession and supply. There are other issues that, over time, we will want to think about adding. It is very helpful to see that the Bill allows a mechanism for secondary legislation to be brought forward in order to add other items. One issue that we are looking at currently is childlike sexual abuse dolls. We can seize them, as it is an offence to bring them across the border, but it is not an offence to possess one in the UK. That is an issue we would want to look at adding to that section.

Q Thank you. There is a power in clause 21 to allow police and law enforcement, including the NCA, to access driving licence records to do a facial recognition search, which, anomalously, is currently quite difficult. When you get a crime scene image from CCTV or something like that, do you agree it would be useful to be able to do a facial recognition search across DVLA records as well as the other records that can currently be accessed?

Graeme Biggar:

Yes, it would. It is really important for us to be able to use facial recognition more. I know that is an issue you have been championing. We use it within the NCA, but there is more we need to be doing within the NCA and across police forces in the round.

Q Great. Can I just turn to the CPS? You probably heard us a moment ago asking Gavin Stephens about whether there is any merit in considering a separate stand-alone offence for assaulting a retail worker. Obviously, we made it a statutory aggravating factor in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which has really only just begun to come into force now. What is the view of the Crown Prosecution Service as to whether a separate offence is merited, or do you feel that we have an offence that covers it and continuously adding new groups of people through stand-alone offences might be counterproductive or unnecessary?

Baljit Ubhey:

I think it is probably unnecessary. I would echo what Gavin has said about building confidence with the retail community. In the code for Crown prosecutors, it is a public interest factor in favour of prosecuting—where the crime is committed against someone who is conducting a public service—so we already treat that more seriously, and obviously there are a range of offences that cover a range of different assaults.

Q Yes—so the CPS would not be in favour of creating a stand-alone offence.

Baljit Ubhey:

I do not think it is necessary.

Q No? Okay. Thank you very much indeed.

My next question is again for the CPS. In relation to the knife crime provisions, some of them are in this Bill and others are being taken forward via secondary legislation, of course; I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West for her campaigning on this issue. Do you feel that the new offence being created, of possession of a weapon with intent to use unlawful violence, is a helpful addition to the statute book and might enable those who intend to use serious violence but have not yet committed it to be given longer sentences?

Baljit Ubhey:

We recognise that this bridges the gap between simple possession and the different circumstances where violence is threatened, so we think it is a helpful addition.

Gregor McGill:

It mirrors the offence in the Firearms Act 2023, which prosecutors use a lot and which is a very useful tool, so there is no reason to think that this would not be an equally useful tool.

Q In relation to the firearms offence, do you find that in practice that has led to prosecutions with commensurately higher sentences?

Gregor McGill:

Yes.

Q Thank you. I have another question for the CPS. Can you give your views on serious crime prevention orders and say how we can make sure they are used as widely as possible?

Gregor McGill:

They are used relatively frequently now; we use them a lot with our NCA colleagues. They are probably not used as much as they could be with National Police Chiefs’ Council forces, so we could use them more there.

I was part of the group that negotiated introducing these orders in 2007. The limitation then was that they were not to be used as an alternative to prosecution, so I think that sometimes a rather restrictive view was taken about their use. They have been used a lot after a conviction in a Crown court trial, but they have not been used a lot as a stand-alone measure in the High Court, so there is more that we can do in consultation with our law enforcement colleagues to make sure that we use these measures more frequently.

There are some risks in using them in the High Court. As you know, costs follow the event in the High Court and cost orders can be high. Also, although the standard of proof is said to be on the balance of probabilities and the civil standards, we are seeing that what is required to obtain an order inch up in the High Court to close to the criminal standard. Therefore, by the time you have gone through all that and you are up near the criminal standard, if you have got the evidence, often you can prosecute rather than going for the civil sanction, and that is part of the problem.

However, I do not think any of this is not resolvable with proper communication between ourselves and our law enforcement colleagues. But these orders are a useful tool.

Q The creep-up in the standard is not a statutory issue, is it, because the statute is clear that it is the balance of probability? It is the way that it is being applied judicially, with all due respect, of course, to judicial independence.

Gregor McGill:

On the whole, I think there have been some concerns because you are putting limitations on people’s ability to do things without them being convicted of a criminal offence. There is always a nervousness about that and a request for really quite strong evidence before that is done. I understand that, but it is an issue sometimes.

Q Indeed. Parliament clearly considered that question in legislating and chose, deliberately and after consideration, to set the standard as the balance of probabilities, and one would expect the judges to apply that.

If I have time to do so, I would just like to ask a question to the NCA and to the CPS about the confiscation regime and the changes to that regime proposed in this Bill. I think that the Committee would be interested in hearing your assessment of the likely impact of the changes proposed in the Bill, particularly in clause 32.

Graeme Biggar:

We really support these changes. There has been a detailed Law Commission review that has underpinned them. The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 has been transformative for law enforcement, but it is also quite complex, and we have evolved ways of making it work.

All the provisions that are in the Bill, and there are obviously an awful lot, will simplify and codify some of what is current practice. It will take some of the work out of doing things; it will enable us to get to resolutions more quickly. It is an awful lot of individual measures, so it is quite hard to put a figure on how much more we will seize or how much less effort we will put into seizing, but we expect to be able to get to more. How much more? It is quite lumpy, as you will know, Minister. Some very large seizures of tens or hundreds of millions can change how much we get each year, but we expect it to make it easier for us, and expect to seize more as a result.

Q These provisions are referenced in clause 32, but that references schedule 4, which is 38 pages long—even by the standards of primary legislation, that is quite extensive. Have the NCA and the CPS studied the draft in detail, and are you content with it, or not?

Graeme Biggar:

Yes and yes, and we fed a lot into the Law Commission review. We looked closely at what they came up with, and we fed into the Government consultation. Yes, we are content.

Q It does everything it needs to. This is your last chance to request changes. Are you content?

Graeme Biggar:

Yes, we are happy. You did not direct the question to me on SCPOs, so unbelievably quickly on that, two things that will be easier as a result are our ability in the NCA or the police to put an SCPO directly to the court—in consultation with the CPS, rather than putting the burden on to the CPS—and the standard set of conditions. At the moment, we have to set out and justify every single one; in the future, we will be able to draw on the standard set of conditions, which will also reduce the bureaucracy. That should ease the burden on SCPOs as well.

Q So you welcome these changes on SCPOs.

Graeme Biggar:

Yes.

Q Thank you. Same questions to the CPS on the confiscation provisions in schedule 4.

Gregor McGill:

We had full consultation with the Law Commission. These proposals have been lifted out almost entirely from the Law Commission proposals, and we worked with the commission and supported the proposals, so we support them. I cannot say whether it will lead to more—we will have to see—but what it will do is to make the process more transparent and better for victims.

What we are particularly pleased with is the idea that you can go back to court to increase a confiscation order, which I think is better for victims. At the moment, we have a workaround, where we can go back to raise a confiscation order, but if the perpetrator is prepared to pay money direct to the victims, we will allow that money to go to victims, rather than towards the confiscation order. Putting this on a statutory footing, putting hidden assets on a statutory footing, and being able to be realistic where it is clear that some orders will never be enforced will improve transparency and the whole system.

Q To be expressly clear, may I confirm with you that the CPS has reviewed all 38 pages of schedule 4, and you are happy with them?

Gregor McGill:

I have not personally, but my specialist proceeds of crime team in the CPS tell me that they have.

And they are happy?

Gregor McGill:

And they are happy.

Graeme Biggar:

The Minister gave me a last chance to come in, and I said no, but there was one other thing we would appreciate. At the moment, people who are subject to these orders will sometimes stall, they do not meet their deadlines and the process can drag on for years—we have just concluded a case in which the conviction was in 2018 and we only got the order last month—so amendments to the Bill that would require people to meet the deadlines, giving them a penalty if they did not, would be helpful.

That is a very good point, which we will undertake to take away to look at. It sounds like a very fair request. I will get on to it now.

I am looking at clause 20, “Suspension of internet protocol addresses and internet domain names”, and schedule 3. Two thirds of online fraud and purchase scams are done through social media platforms. Do you think the Bill gives enough power to ensure that social media companies take those platforms down quickly enoughQ ?

Graeme Biggar:

We are getting to definitions of the different tech companies. The social media companies are not often the ones that have the IP addresses and so on. We absolutely support this measure, and we have argued for it in the consultations on both this Bill and the Computer Misuse Act.

By and large, the organisations in the UK—the registers here of IP addresses—do act when we put a request in to take down, but not in every single case. Internationally, that happens less often. This would give us that ability—we absolutely would go for voluntary first, and we should stick with that process, because it largely works, but if that does not work, we would then be able to compel the suspension of the domain or the IP address. That would help.

Internationally, we have less success. The very existence of a court order that most other countries have and then companies act on would be really help. It would still be hard to implement in some countries, but it would still increase the amount of positive action taken on the basis of our requests.

Q This will definitely make things like Meta, which I think most of it comes through, be able to access the domain names and take them down quickly.

Graeme Biggar:

This is a bit less relevant to Meta, but we have worked hard with the Home Office on the fraud sector charter, which was published the week before last. It encourages Meta and other companies to take more action to try to stop fraud, which remains really important. They have a huge responsibility that they are currently only partly living up to, but they have signed the charter to make big steps forward, and we look forward to seeing what they will do as a result.

Before I call the next question, I remind Members to catch my eye as early as possible. If you do not, I will give leeway to those who caught my eye earlier and you may not get in. I appreciate that points may occur to you as discussions develop, but it would be helpful for timing. I call Jess Phillips.

Q Specifically to the NCA, what is not in the Bill that would help your work? For example, I take a personal interest in the NCA’s work on people smuggling and human trafficking, and—no offence to the CPS—the woeful levels of conviction in that space. What is missing from the Bill that would help you?

Graeme Biggar:

There is nothing missing on people smuggling that we would need at the moment, to answer that direct question. I mentioned child-like sexual abuse dolls. Another issue that you care about is child sexual abuse websites. At the moment, it is obviously a criminal offence to possess or distribute indecent images of children, but it is not a specific criminal offence to be a moderator or an administrator of the dark websites that hold millions of images and videos of children being raped. We often investigate and we prosecute individuals for viewing and distributing the images, but there is not an extra offence for being the person who runs and sets up that kind of website.

Q Currently, there is no legal definition of adult sexual exploitation in our country, only child exploitation, and there is no strategy on adult sexual exploitation. What work does the NCA actually do in the space of huge grooming gangs, for example, or does it not matter when the people are over the age of consent?

Graeme Biggar:

We do work on grooming gangs when people are below the age of consent, as you know, with Operation Stovewood in Rotherham. We also work on sexual exploitation of adults. We have had a number of investigations recently into women from Romania and Brazil being brought into the UK.

Q What about women from Britain?

Graeme Biggar:

We have come across less of that in our investigations, but we will work with the NPCC.

I’ll take you on a night out, mate. I could show you it in every single part of the country.

Graeme Biggar:

We focus on the ones who cross the border; it is the NPCC that focuses on adult sexual exploitation within the UK.

Q So the NCA would not undertake work on large-scale criminal gangs in our country that are exploiting British adults?

Graeme Biggar:

No, we would. If we could see large-scale, organised crime that involves modern slavery, which includes the sexual exploitation of women, we would investigate it. We have not yet come across such a case—certainly not in my time in the NCA.

Order. I remind you that you need to focus on the scope of the Bill rather than the general work of the agencies, not to in any way diminish the importance of the issue. Do you have any further questions, Jess?

I am done.

Q Back to knife crime and clause 10 of the Bill. As you know, clause 10 will introduce a higher maximum penalty for manufacturing, importing, supplying or selling offensive weapons such as zombie knives and flick knives, especially to under-18s—to children. Amazingly, at the moment the penalty for that is only six months, and it is a summary-only offence in the magistrates court. Under the Bill, it will become an indictable offence carrying a penalty of two years. Do you think that is a good change, which will lead to longer sentences? Because it is indictable, it will give the police more time to investigate these crimes, particularly when they are online sales using web app groups and so on, and it takes a lot longer to get the data.

Baljit Ubhey:

Certainly the fact that it is an either-way offence and you do not have the challenges of the six-month time limits that summary-only offences create —given, as you say, the complexities of how these knives are manufactured, sold and so on—will helpfully close a bit of a gap.

Graeme Biggar:

We agree with that point and the points that Gavin made earlier in relation to it.

Apologies to Vicky: I understand that you could not hear me, down at the bottom. If any Members cannot hear, please raise your hand to let me know and I will endeavour to speak up.

Q I have just one question for you, Mr Biggar. You were talking about child sex abuse material. I want to ask specifically about border services. At the NCA, have you encountered as a limiting factor the fact that border services cannot search electronic devices such as laptops and iPads for potential child sex abuse material, even when they have intelligence or evidence to suggest that a person entering or leaving the United Kingdom may be an offender in that way? Are you aware of that? If so, can you comment on it? Do not worry if the answer is no.

Graeme Biggar:

No, but let me write to you and the Committee about that.

Q May I ask the question I put to the previous witness about spiking? It comes up from time to time in the night-time economy in my constituency. If there were a modernisation of the law that made it very clear that spiking is a legal offence, could that act as a deterrent?

Baljit Ubhey:

I think it could be helpful in communicating very specifically. At the moment, there is a specific offence under the Sexual Offences Act 2003. In addition, there is the Offences against the Person Act 1861, which is old legislation although we still use it for a wide variety of criminality. I take the point, however, that the language of some of the offences under that Act may not be as explicit. We can prosecute spiking, whether it is related to sexual offences or otherwise, but modernising may be helpful.

If there is time, Chair, I would like to ask a couple of things.

Absolutely. There is time. So that Members are aware, we have until 10.37 am. Please make the most of our esteemed guests.

Q There are some proposals in the Bill relating to attendance at sentencing hearings. I am mindful that somebody has to deliver the individual to the court. Are there potential pitfalls with that in the proposed legislation?

Baljit Ubhey:

It is an important measure, given some of the high-profile cases we have seen and the impact they have had on victims. We will have to look very carefully at how we apply for that power—which allows the court or the prosecutor to apply for compulsory attendance—and seek victims’ views. The consideration to think about is whether that would cause extra violence. There is something in the Bill about the use of force, which prison custody officers would need to think about. As the provisions stand, I think prison officers will still have the discretion even if there is an application. I can see why it is in the Bill, but we will have to wait and see how it operates in practice.

Q We will put the question of how it will be managed to the Minister during the line-by-line scrutiny. We are supportive of the idea, but we want to understand how it can happen.

The Bill also proposes to transfer prisoners to foreign prisons. That will require international co-operation. I am interested to know whether the police or anybody else have any reservations about transferring people to foreign prisons.

Graeme Biggar:

It is probably more a matter for the police than for the NCA. The challenge for us will be our ability to demonstrate that there will be human rights protections in the jurisdiction that the individuals are being transferred to. If we are trying to extradite people from the UK and cannot guarantee where they will be in prison, that will be a challenge in getting the extradition. That will need to be worked through as this proposal is taken forward.

Gregor McGill:

I think that is right: I echo what Mr Biggar said. In the extradition world, extradition is a state to state agreement. One state negotiates with another state about returning someone to a state. Bring a third state into that equation and it becomes much more complicated. When we are bringing someone over here, we have to give assurances about prison conditions, and so on. It will become more bureaucratic and more difficult, potentially, in those circumstances. We will have to see what the regulations say.

There is also another pitfall.

Q Sorry, can I interrupt? What should the regulations say?

Gregor McGill:

It is not for prosecutors to say what the regulations should say; that is political. As I say, extradition is an agreement between one state and another to transfer one person from one jurisdiction to another. That transferring country could become a little bit more concerned if they think they have to deal with a third state down the road, because they lose control over it. That is the point I was going to make. Once you send someone to another jurisdiction, you lose control over that person; they become subject to the laws of the country to which they are being sent. That can be another complication. If they commit an offence while they are in custody, over there they would have to be dealt with for that offence. If they escaped from lawful custody when they were there, that would have to be investigated by that new country. Those matters are political decisions, but the issues are practical. Echoing what Graeme said, I would have thought that there will be human rights challenges.

Q They are political decisions, yes, but we face a situation where, as you mentioned, if somebody commits an offence or if a prisoner assaults a prison officer, the person will then be subject to Dutch law, if we are using the example of a Dutch prison—not British law.

Gregor McGill:

Yes, they would.

So, as you say, it is quite complicated.

Gregor McGill:

It adds a further layer of complication to an already complicated process, if I may put it that way.

Q I want to pick up on a question I asked the previous witness about prosecutions of retail criminals such as shoplifters and people who assault shop workers. One of the complaints I have had from the police in my constituency is that where they do make an arrest and bring a prosecution, two things happen. The first is that, more often than not, the criminal gets a suspended sentence and is then back to commit more crime the following day, which is very frustrating for the retailer. The other problem is that the retailer will have to give up a day to give evidence to the court; and quite often they work in a small, one or two-man or woman business. You have a loss of earnings for that retailer, who then suddenly finds the same criminals back in their shop the next day.

Baljit Ubhey indicated assent.

Q Baljit, you are nodding very enthusiastically. I will go to Mr McGill first and then Baljit. Generally, do you have any comments about that? Is it a well-known problem and does the Bill in any way come to help in that?

Gregor McGill:

It is difficult to say. Sentencing is a matter for the court. The police investigate and arrest, send the file to us, we make a decision, take to the court and the court sentences if there is a guilty verdict. The kind of person who regularly does retail theft will often—not always, but often—have addiction or illness issues, which will mean that they will often be stealing to fund an addiction.

Speaking as someone who has been a prosecutor for 33 years, I can say that I recognise what you are saying. When I went to the magistrates court, I regularly saw the same people attending for the same offences, so I accept that it must be frustrating. We are beholden to the law, we have to apply the law and the law must take its course. People serve their sentence and that is what happens. There is not much more we can do in those circumstances, but I understand the frustration.

Q You end up with a negative spiral, where you have less enthusiasm from the victim to prosecute the crime. Baljit, do you want to leap in on that?

Baljit Ubhey:

I recognise the frustration, the challenge and, as you say also, having to give up time to give evidence. Unless you can prove the case without having that witness give evidence, it is challenging. We spoke earlier about CCTV and other ways. Where we can look at using other evidence, we should do that proactively, but often in these cases currently, we need the individual who has been the victim to give evidence. I can absolutely understand the frustration if the person is back. If they have a suspended sentence, which can be triggered, but I recognise the frustration.

Q Are the courts letting down the CPS, the police and the victims?

Baljit Ubhey:

I would not say that. I do not think it is a question of the courts letting down. Sentencing, which is a matter for the courts, is a complicated and difficult balancing exercise, as my colleague has just said. Often, the people who are committing the offences have a range of issues that will go into the balance when looking at sentencing. I certainly would not say that people are letting down; I think it is just a challenge.

That is helpful. Thank you.

I thank the witnesses for their evidence.

Sitting suspended.

On resuming—