Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Maria Miller

Monday 13th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Liz Saville Roberts]

But the question of resources and how those priorities direct them does indeed highlight again the fact that Wales has different needs, and those resources from central Government do get directed to those priorities which best serve England.

When devolution of policing to Wales was discussed in Committee, the Minister present referred to the Silk commission on devolution in Wales, which was established by his party in 2011 with cross-party membership. Part 2 was published in 2014 and recommended devolution. He made much at the time of the fact that there was no consensus on this recommendation as a result of the St David’s day process and “Powers for a purpose”.

Those involved in that process have told me it was little more than a tick-box exercise: if all party representatives liked it, the power was in the bag; if not, chuck it out, regardless of the implications for the governance and needs and, indeed, people of Wales. I note that in Committee Labour indicated a grudging support for devolving policing, albeit in the distant future: 10 years away. It seems pressure from Plaid is driving the accelerator. This is not a matter of jam tomorrow; we are living in hope of this today.

This opportunity is before the House here and now. The contents of future legislation and future amendments lack this certainty. If this House votes for devolution today, policing will be devolved to Wales, and the Government will then have to amend the Wales Bill accordingly at the very start of its journey. Indeed, surely, the Wales Bill deals first and foremost with constitutional matters, but here is our opportunity to make sure. I urge Labour to grasp the opportunity and support the National Assembly for Wales and all four police and crime commissioners in Wales and vote for the devolution of policing today.

New clauses 3, 4 and 5 relate to aspects of digital crime. I would note that these and new clause 44 are probing amendments. The Government state that resources are already provided to counter digital crime in the form of the National Cyber Crime Unit. I would respond that the National Cyber Crime Unit is relatively small, and that the national cyber security programme concentrates primarily on the security of businesses and infrastructure. Action Fraud addresses crime in relation to online fraud. The priorities are business, financial and serious crime, and do not cover the safeguarding of victims of abuse crimes such as domestic violence, stalking, harassment or hate crime.

The first of the new clauses proposes a review of legislation relating to digital crime and to consolidate the numerous Acts into a single statute. There are now over 30 statutes that cover online crime. Criminal justice professionals, including the police and CPS, believe this to be confusing at best and overwhelming at worst. Victims’ complaints are sometimes subject to delay, and there are times when officers are uncertain whether specific activities are criminal or not. The law has developed incrementally as technology advances, and there is an urgent need to codify and clarify the current situation. Consolidation will save police time and money. It will avoid duplication of officers on cases. Swifter action on victims’ complaints will reduce distress and anxiety.

As regards new clause 4, surveillance and monitoring highlights further issues against which there is currently no redress. The identification of these actions as offences will enable the police to counter activities that are evidently related to surveillance with intention to cause distress, and the law should respond appropriately.

New clause 5 addresses the need for training that is fit for purpose. Even in large police areas, fewer than 5% of officers and staff, including call and first response personnel, are trained in cyber-crime. Victims report being advised to go offline and not to use social media by officers. This defies modern communication media. It is equivalent to telling victims of harassment not to venture outside their own homes. The Home Office believes that training is a matter for individual forces, but in the absence of strong central leadership, this can only perpetuate present inconsistencies and variations from force to force. National training would help to raise the status of victims.

Finally, I turn to new clause 44, which calls for the establishment of a specialist digital unit to investigate online offences against children and young people. As I mentioned earlier, there is a real risk intrinsic in dependency on central units, although I acknowledge the work done by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. But, once again, children’s charities report to us that the scale of abuse of children online in terms of offenders, devices and images is leaving police swamped. There are delays in forensic analysis of devices—delays in some cases of up to 12 months. These delays pose risks to the safeguarding of children.

In Committee, the Minister mentioned the child abuse image database, and praised the accuracy of imagery interpretation and how it aids identification. It is of course to be commended that this database will take some of the load from individual forces. I would argue, none the less, that there is precedent for digital units on a similar model to domestic violence units as a means to ensure that all forces direct proper resources to this serious issue.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Lady for tabling these amendments. Importantly, she talked about the idea of a specialist digital unit within each police force. Does she agree that, if that were to happen, it would be imperative that this would feed back to some central database to ensure the work that was done in each of those individual units had read-across across the country?

[Liz Saville Roberts]

Of course, what we need is the expertise of a central unit alongside the work on the ground that individual forces can do, and to ensure that we avoid the risk that the presence of a central unit results in a tendency to treat certain crimes as another agency’s problem. There is also—this is important at individual force-level—a need for specialist approaches to support child victims and their families.

Those are the amendments that I have chosen to discuss, and I reiterate that they are probing amendments, but in closing I repeat my intention to press a Division on new clause 2.

[Mrs Miller]

I rise to speak particularly on new clauses 3, 5, 44, 46 and 47, and note the advisement of the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) that her amendments are set out as probing amendments. Those five amendments tabled by both Liberal Democrat Members and Plaid Cymru Members all have a common theme: to call for reform in connection with the internet and the digital online world.

We all need to get our Government and Governments around the world to wake up to the extent to which crime and criminal activity has now moved online. Our laws are not giving victims the protection they need and our police forces face a revolution if they are to tackle the crime that they face now effectively in the future.

There has been a significant shift in the way people experience harm in this world. New clause 44, as the hon. Lady has set out, calls for the police to have special digital units to deal particularly with child abuse images. Many police forces in this country, including my own in Hampshire, have gone a long way to building up this sort of specialist expertise, but the new clause is an interesting piece of advice on which I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response, as well as the response on police training.

There are serious questions to ask as to whether the providers of online space are doing what they need to do to keep their communities safe. They have not only a corporate social responsibility to do that, but I also think an economic imperative, because it is their brand names that are tarnished, and rightly so, when their products are used for illegal purposes.

Another aspect is not particularly brought up in the amendments today, but I will mention it: the importance of the international implications of all these things. If we are to get a solution to the sorts of crimes that are being committed online in this new digital world that does not respect country boundaries, we need to have some buy-in from international Governments, too. I myself have met companies in the US, but we need to go further than that and see whether we can actually get the sort of action that we need on an international basis by perhaps looking to the United Nations, or indeed the youth part of the UN, to explore how we can get more effective laws in the future that are not constricted by international boundaries.

Our law is struggling to cope. These amendments recognise that. The real need to recognise that online crime is different is a battle that was won when this Government put in place the revenge pornography law a year or so ago. We have already seen 1,000 reports to the police and thousands more people using the revenge pornography helpline, yet two-thirds of those cases that have been reported to the police have seen no action because of problems of the evidence that victims have been able to give or indeed because the victims have withdrawn it. Again, the new clauses are picking up those issues and calling on the Government to consider again. New clause 46 calls for anonymity of victims. That was considered at the time the law was put in place, but the advice then was to wait to see how things progressed. The statistics suggest that now is a time to think again, as new clause 41, which also deals with compensation, also seeks to do.

The myriad amendments before us today show the level of complexity involved and the level of concern among hon. Members from at least three parties represented in the Chamber tonight—I am sure Labour Front Benchers would share in this, too—but I worry that they offer a piecemeal set of solutions. The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd picked up on that. Surely what is needed is a wholesale review of the law, police training and the development of international support for digital providers to take seriously the importance of keeping their communities safe online. I support the spirit of these amendments, but I am struck by the need for a more comprehensive review, perhaps in the form of the digital economy Bill, which Her Gracious Majesty announced in the Gracious Speech only last month.