Oral evidence: Draft Modern Slavery Bill, HC [1019], Tuesday 4 March 2014

Oral evidence, 4 March 2014.

Witnesses

David Ford, Minister for Justice, and Simon Rogers, Deputy Director, Protection and Organised Crime Division, Northern Ireland Department of Justice, examined.

Chairman

Simon and David, might you identify yourselves for the sake of the record and then Michael will begin.

Simon Rogers

I was just checking whether I was allowed to go before the Minister. I am Simon Rogers, Deputy Director in the Protection and Organised Crime Division of the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland.

David Ford

I am David Ford, Minister of Justice for Northern Ireland.

Michael Connarty

Thank you and welcome. It would be helpful to the Committee if you could give us an overview of the extent of the human trafficking problem in Northern Ireland, which we do not have.

David Ford

In summary, with almost 3% of the population of the United Kingdom, last year we had 2% of referrals into the NRM. From 1 April 2013 to 30 January this year, 39 potential victims were referred to the NRM from Northern Ireland; 21 adults and 18 minors, 17 potentially trafficked for sexual exploitation, 10 for labour exploitation and the other 12 as yet undetermined. We have had eight convictions for trafficking offences in Northern Ireland, including three cases that were prosecuted in the courts in Northern Ireland, three in Scotland and two as a result of a joint operation with the Swedish police, where the prosecution took place in Sweden. In that sense, we recognise that we have part of the problem that the UK has, but we are very much the smallest of the three regions within the UK in that context.

Michael Connarty

Are any particular problems created with the land border with the Republic of Ireland?

David Ford

In some senses, the border presents us with a number of challenges around the justice system generally. Having the UK’s only open land border creates significant differences within Northern Ireland. It also presents us with the issue of cross-border co-operation—a high priority. Trafficking as a whole is a borderless crime. In that context there are clearly cases where trafficking occurs to Northern Ireland from the Republic; through Northern Ireland both ways; to Northern Ireland from England and from Scotland; and indeed through flights from elsewhere in the world. However, we have very good close working relationships. There is a specific sub-group of the organised crime task force which brings together a number of agencies operating in Northern Ireland, both devolved and UK-wide. There is a specific sub-group on immigration and human trafficking matters. It includes representation from An Garda Siochána. It is an example of how we are able to operate, despite the border being a potential benefit to these kinds of crimes. Good working produces that. We have also had a number of joint events. My colleague Alan Shatter TD, Minister for Justice and Equality, and I hosted an event last October where people from north and south looked together at trafficking issues. An Garda Siochána were successful in retaining EU funding under what they called the Reach project, in which my department is associate partner, so we have used the benefits of the fact that we can get European funding by associating with people a few miles away who also speak English. That is sometimes a benefit to us.

Sir John Randall

You have previously stated that the National Crime Agency does not operate in Northern Ireland in the same way as it does in the rest of the UK, and that that could place an additional burden on the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Could you highlight any particular areas where you have concerns on that?

David Ford

The answer is nearly every area. The practical reality is that, because of political unwillingness on the part of the two Nationalist parties, the NCA does not operate in Northern Ireland in the devolved sphere, though it does operate in the reserved and excepted sphere. That is already a few months into operation, from last autumn, producing difficulties where the PSNI has to devote resources to deal with issues that would be the responsibility of the NCA in any part of England and Wales or Scotland. There is also a significant issue about having the relevant expertise. We get the benefit of the NCA’s overseas reach, but that does not always translate easily. Inevitably, to some extent we are at the end of the line. There are particular problems when the NCA would be responsible for carrying out operations on the ground in GB, which they cannot do within Northern Ireland. We also, of course, do not have the other issue about the opportunity for civil recovery, because that lapsed with the demise of SOCA. We are therefore unable to pursue criminals’ assets in the way that is still possible in the other two jurisdictions.

Michael Connarty

Why has the demise of SOCA taken out your ability to pursue assets?

David Ford

Because those powers are now given to the NCA. We are talking about devolved matters, and the Assembly has not agreed that the NCA should have operational powers within Northern Ireland except in the reserved sphere. They can deal with things like revenue and customs matters, but they cannot deal with ordinary organised crime, including many trafficking offences.

Lord McColl of Dulwich

Do you think there are any merits in putting victim support on a statutory footing?

David Ford

Yes, I do. We have done work around that. I was listening to Lord Morrow just ahead of me. It is part of the joint approach between us that we are looking to see how we do that. In Lord Morrow’s Bill, clause 10 puts specific requirements on both my Department and the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety in terms of providing support, in our case for adults and in their case for children. I need to be slightly careful in the unwieldy coalition that we have in Stormont in speaking on behalf of another Minister, but my understanding is that he is quite happy to take on those powers with regard to children. Certainly we are happy enough with that clause as it is drafted. It ties in with a lot of other more general work that the DOJ has done since devolution around providing support to victims generally.

Sir John Randall

How has that worked?

David Ford

We are in the process of putting in place a statutory charter for victims, and indeed for witnesses as well. We have a variety of other measures we put through the courts, like registered intermediaries to assist those who have difficulty in giving evidence. I fear, Chair, that, if you let me go on, I would talk too much about that and too little about this particular Bill. It is an issue which has been a priority since devolution, and we have been looking at a number of different ways to ensure that the victims’ experience is made less bad, since we can hardly say made better.

Chairman

Can you say how you built up the charter?

David Ford

Through significant engagement between the Department and a range of bodies—for example, Victim Support, which has a wide-ranging responsibility for victims, as they would in other parts of the UK. There has been that level of engagement to see what the needs of victims are and how we can best provide for them. We have also set up arrangements where there will be a single point of contact in a victim and witness care unit, where those who are involved in criminal cases have the opportunity to get support and to be talked through the process. Too often, people have said to us that, particularly when they have been involved in a serious crime, they get a degree of support from the police, but when things pass on into prosecution and the court system they feel that they lose out. It has been a matter of trying to find a point of contact, bringing together the work done by different agencies, to ensure that the victim and witness care unit is available to assist individuals as seamlessly as we can make it. I would not like to claim that it is entirely seamless.

Chairman

Did you say victim or witness?

David Ford

I said both, with the key issue obviously being victims, but in many cases vulnerable witnesses also benefit.

Baroness Kennedy of Cradley

What do you see as the benefits of a UK-wide response to human trafficking, specifically the benefits of extending the role of the anti-slavery commissioner to Northern Ireland?

David Ford

We are in a difficult position. I was listening carefully to the earlier remarks about the Scottish position. I was keen before I became Minister and I remain equally keen, in conjunction with the majority of the Assembly, that legislation is done through the Assembly where possible. There are clearly certain issues where, on relatively minor matters, a Legislative Consent Motion, in effect to piggy-back on Westminster legislation, is appropriate, but by and large we seek to do our own legislation to make it most appropriate for what we see as the needs of Northern Ireland. On an issue like slavery and trafficking we wish to be part of a joined-up UK approach, but still on the basis that much of the legislation should be done separately. The approach I am currently consulting on, which could result in some amendments to Lord Morrow’s Bill coming from the DOJ, would look at some slight amendments but very much tying in with the basic principle of ensuring that the UK is a cold house for traffickers. For example, we would have some slight differences, but overall we would have a similar approach in Northern Ireland to that which is adopted here. Specifically on the issue of the commissioner, I am a member of the interdepartmental ministerial group on trafficking, which clearly has some roles to fulfil in terms of the national rapporteur at this stage, though we need to be careful as to whether a body which is purely formed by Government Ministers can satisfy that entirely. I would not wish to be an expert on European law to judge how well we match that. What I believe we would benefit from by having a UK-wide commissioner operating in Northern Ireland is that they would be able to examine the operation of all the agencies operating in Northern Ireland, whether devolved or agencies of UK Government bodies. If we simply have—as currently proposed by Lord Morrow, although he has acknowledged that there is an issue to address—a Northern Ireland rapporteur, they would not be able by Assembly legislation to look into the work of, for example, UKBA or various other agencies. The best way we can get it joined up is by having the UK commissioner, or whatever term ends up being used, operating in the devolved sphere in Northern Ireland as well.

Simon Rogers

At the moment the provision for that does not extend to Northern Ireland. Obviously, if we were going down that route, the Minister would want to look at the appointment, the reporting and so on. In other words, the commissioner would be reporting not just to Westminster but to the Assembly in Northern Ireland. The commissioner’s appointment arrangements and so on at the moment are very much focused on Westminster and the Home Office, and, subject to the Minister’s consultation, obviously that would need to be altered in the Bill so that the Minister would have a role in the appointment and reporting arrangements.

David Ford

That would be a point where we would seek an LCM, if that is the way we wished to go.

Baroness Kennedy of Cradley

But it would be a benefit because the UK-wide commissioner could look at all agencies across Northern Ireland.

David Ford

Yes.

Chairman

When you were talking about the ministerial group, David, did you mean the UK one or do you have your own?

David Ford

I mean the group led by the Home Office, which has a number of Whitehall Departments and the three devolved Administrations all represented on it.

Chairman

Might we ask what your attendance record is like?

David Ford

If you wish me to be immodest, I believe my attendance record is 100% since I was appointed.

Chairman

You are the only Minister who has that. Well done. It just shows you the attraction of London, doesn’t it, and the topic of course?

David Ford

It does include attendance in part by video-conference. I have to get that on the record, because the Home Office has changed the date of the meeting from last week to two weeks’ time, which means I am unable to attend it, even by video-conference.

Chairman

How many times since you have been a member has the Prime Minister chaired it?

David Ford

The Prime Minister chaired it the day before Anti-Slavery day last October. That is the only time he has chaired it that I am aware of.

Lord Warner

I want to move on to the national referral mechanism. As I understand it, you are proposing a two-tier NRM system which would allow a person’s experience of slavery and trafficking to be gathered through anonymous referral without the victim’s consent. We have had quite a lot of witnesses before us who told us that even anonymous referral is likely to deter people from coming forward. Can you explain to us why you have gone down this route and whether you have any concerns about it?

David Ford

I have no evidence that the point you have just made is correct. I am not disputing it; I simply have no evidence of it. Part of the problem is that we have such a limited piece of information around a number of aspects of trafficking and we need to get better evidence than is currently the case. We certainly hope that by allowing anonymous referrals we will increase the number of referrals without necessarily getting into the difficulty that you are foreseeing, or that you are saying witnesses have foreseen. I am simply not aware of enough detail.

Lord Warner

It is the NGOs who say that people are coming to them to tell them about it. Many of these people are coming from places where the police or any organ of the state—NRM would be seen as an organ of the state—would make them very fearful. They are even suspicious of anonymous referrals to a mechanism of the state. That is their argument.

David Ford

I can appreciate the point being made; I just have no knowledge as to whether that is likely to be the case or not. If we cannot gather better data than we currently have, we will not be able to tackle trafficking. The issue is how we get the best data.

Simon Rogers

At present, there is an annual assessment called the baseline assessment, looking for cases which have not come through the NRM. One of the benefits of this proposal, which potentially has the risk you highlight, is that the information will be real time; in other words, referrals will be coming in as they happen, anonymised, rather than waiting until the end of a 12-month period when there is an influx of cases from X or Y. Obviously as a law enforcement agency you want to know what is happening in real time, not to wait until the end of 12 months. The other side of it is that there would be an important element of communication around any new system, trying to provide reassurance through first responders and others. I am not saying that will work in every case, but it would certainly temper some cases.

Chairman

When you talk about those not going through the NRM, what is the proportion of not on the official books to on the official books?

Simon Rogers

I do not have figures to give you today; I know that the increase from the official NRM figures and the baseline is not double, but it is approaching double the numbers.

Chairman

It is quite significant, isn’t it?

Simon Rogers

It is.

Baroness Doocey

How would you ensure that you are not double or even triple-counting, on the basis that you are having anonymous data, and a lot of trafficked victims can be picked up by a variety of agencies? There could be three or four agencies reporting the same victim. How will you work that one out?

Simon Rogers

In a jurisdiction like Northern Ireland we have the benefit of being small. Therefore, I think the different agencies will pick that up. Also, the number of first responders is not that great and the duty will be placed on them to make these referrals, not on anyone who comes into contact with a potential victim. There is that risk, but the difficulty we have is that, on the one hand, people are saying we don’t have enough information. For example, in Northern Ireland, we are doing a major piece of work at the minute trying to work out where we should be targeting our resources. Is it urban, rural or at ports? Without this sort of information, you are largely guessing. It is a double-edged sword. Yes, you want to protect the victims, and that is the first thing all law enforcement agencies will say to you; it is protect and support first and prosecute second, in terms of evidence and so on. But we do not have the information coming through, so we have to find a way of increasing that without jeopardising or putting at risk the potential victims.

Baroness Doocey

I understand what you are saying, but I still cannot see how you could guarantee with anonymous data that you are not picking up the same victim three or four times. I understand entirely that you need data, but surely the data you need must be absolutely correct.

Simon Rogers

When you are talking in Northern Ireland terms of up to 40 cases per annum, it is not going to be the issue that I suspect it will be for England and Wales.

David Ford

We are also looking at first responders as being the police and the local health and social care trust. That would only be two agencies in any one geographical area. That is the benefit of being a small region, where people tend to know each other and co-ordinate perhaps rather better than they can in England and Wales.

Chairman

It is a problem though. I went to a children’s charity that runs Childline, and I was with one of our special advisers. He was incredibly confident that nobody else knew about the case he had met that morning, but in fact the children’s charity had already picked it up.

David Ford

But when we are talking about merely the statutory first responders we are reducing that danger.

Baroness Butler-Sloss

I want to move to prevention and risk orders. We have rather elaborate clauses in this Bill on both those orders. Perhaps I could concentrate on the risk order. I think you are quite enthusiastic about them. What kinds of behaviour do you think the risk orders should be aimed at that would actually be serious enough to indicate that someone is about to commit or ready to commit an offence of modern slavery, but would not be suitable for normal investigation and prosecution? Where do you see these risk orders coming in?

David Ford

Certainly the aim, where at all possible, is to go for prosecution if there is adequate evidence for the standard of criminal proof. It sounds a terribly trite analogy, but it is almost like how we deal with anti-social behaviour; there can be behaviour which is clearly indicating a risk but which does not meet the burden of criminal proof. In those circumstances it is appropriate to look to a risk order to ensure that there is some regulation of the individuals, particularly when we think of the level of seriousness of the potential crimes that we are talking about.

Baroness Butler-Sloss

Some of the evidence we have already had referred particularly to preventing people coming to the United Kingdom who are known to be traffickers. We cannot prosecute them because they are overseas, but we could prevent them from coming here. Do you see any use for a risk order for those who are actually in the jurisdiction rather than those who might be coming in?

Simon Rogers

I think there could be a use, in that, if you have intelligence that someone might be planning to traffic victims and is then planning to travel somewhere, you could restrict that. You could restrict someone’s engagement with children if you have concerns about child sexual exploitation and trafficking in that field. The safeguard is that it goes to a court. This is not an Executive or indeed a law enforcement decision; you have to take your evidence to a court, and it can impose an interim or temporary order first before a fuller hearing. We think there are safeguards, but, like the Home Office, we are consulting on this. It is part of the Minister’s consultation, and if there are views expressed to the contrary obviously you will want to take those into account.

Baroness Butler-Sloss

When do you expect your consultation to come to an end?

David Ford

It is mid-April, the 16th, I think.

Baroness Butler-Sloss

That is too late for us then.

David Ford

I am afraid it is too late for you, but it is in time to inform us as we look at working around Lord Morrow’s Bill to co-ordinate with your work.

Chairman

That’s its objective, isn’t it?

Sir John Randall

Talking of Lord Morrow’s proposals, with which areas do you have particular concerns? Obviously we heard there were points of agreement, but what concerns do you have?

David Ford

I suppose I should carry out my commitment to Lord Morrow as he left and say that, yes, we have significantly more agreement than we did when this process started off. Interestingly, when his Bill went through second stage in the Assembly I was attacked by somebody who did not like the Bill, on the basis that I had expressed reservations and therefore he thought that I should have been voting against the Bill at second stage. I did a quick sum and came to the conclusion that, if a third of it was okay, a third of it was potentially tweakable and a third you did not like, it was a Bill worth proceeding with. There are three outstanding areas at the moment. The first one is the specific issue of the clause that would ban the payment for sexual services in all circumstances. We simply do not believe that we yet have the evidence on which Northern Ireland should be legislating on that basis. We have a research proposal out at the moment, which we expect to see back in the autumn time. I could quote some people who would say there are issues to be considered around prostitution, but they should perhaps be the subject of a Bill dealing with prostitution and not tacked on to a human trafficking Bill. Lord Morrow’s clause 4 specifically deals with minimum sentencing for trafficking offences. In particular, as it is currently stated, it applies to children as well as to adults. In Northern Ireland, the only minimum sentence we have prescribed by legislation is a life sentence for murder. I am unenthusiastic about going down the route of minimum sentencing in any cases, but I deem it particularly inappropriate for children. I think Lord Morrow and myself may have reached agreement on the children’s aspect, but I do not think we have reached agreement in so far as it would relate to adults. The third contentious clause is clause 8, which is the effective blanket immunity from prosecution for those who have themselves been victims of trafficking. We certainly have cases on record where prosecution has been considered by the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland, and not proceeded with on the basis of the information to hand relating to the individual having been a victim of trafficking. I believe that that is something which should be left to the DPP to decide. It should be his responsibility to determine, on the facts of each individual case, whether prosecution is appropriate, and not to have a blanket ban.

Sir John Randall

You said somebody was opposed to Lord Morrow’s Bill; I would imagine with regard to the Bill we are doing that the opposition to it will come because it is not strong enough. Do you have anybody there who is just opposed to the concept? By and large, it is a good thing, but the detail is going to be the problem. When you said that, I just wondered where that opposition came from.

David Ford

Certainly I was advised, when the Bill was originally introduced, that the legislative draftsman would not have allowed me to introduce some of its provisions as an Executive Bill because they replicated or duplicated what existed elsewhere. That is part of the concern. In a context where the Home Secretary is planning to legislate for England and Wales, and perhaps in some respects slightly for the United Kingdom, we would be very remiss if we did not follow the same principle of putting in consolidating legislation, to show that we were part of a united stance across the UK against the crime of trafficking and slavery. As I said, that particular individual is, I think, the self-appointed leader of the opposition who feels the need to oppose nearly everything that is happening.

Sir John Randall

We have them here.

Chairman

When the Home Secretary asks you to suggest how you could improve her Bill, what would be your major suggestion?

David Ford

I need to be slightly cautious about suggesting too much. In the nicest possible way, one problem frequently appears when either the Ministry of Justice or the Home Office is considering legislation: with due respect to the people who live in Petty France and Marsham street, sometimes they do not always think of the implications for the whole of the United Kingdom when they legislate. The NCA was an example of that. I do not know whether it would have been any easier to get it agreed in Northern Ireland, but the way it was introduced did not make it easy. The key issue for me is to ensure that, if we want a joined-up UK approach, there is appropriate consultation with and by officials in the two Departments at an appropriate early stage so that we can get co-ordination of that. Beyond that, it is the issue of accepting that the Home Secretary has a responsibility for both England and Wales and for the United Kingdom. It is a matter of how we ensure that co-ordination goes ahead. I am happy with the broad outlines of the Bill, but clearly significant parts of it are purely for England and Wales. I am not sure I should properly be telling the Home Secretary what to do there, any more than I would wish her to tell me what to do in Northern Ireland.

Chairman

Given the lack of consultation, that does not seem a realistic prospect.

Michael Connarty

You said you thought you should leave it to the prosecutor in individual cases to decide whether there is criminalisation and a prosecution.

David Ford

Yes.

Michael Connarty

As a rule, do you think that children who are trafficked should not be criminalised—for example, young men found in cannabis factories?

David Ford

One of the key issues as to whether prosecution is appropriate or not would be the vulnerability of the individual. Clearly the younger they are, the more likely they are to be vulnerable. That is why it is very difficult to say there should be a blanket ban, and why it is appropriate to say that the prosecutor should consider on the basis of the merits of an individual case. Although I heard what was being said about Scotland, that is not the way I understand it to be happening in Northern Ireland, where we have not seen cases of vulnerable people subsequently being prosecuted.

Michael Connarty

I can assure you that a young offender institution in my constituency has three young Vietnamese gentlemen. It is an easy collar. If you can’t catch the big guys, you just catch the farmers. My second question is much more difficult. It is about jurisdiction lying within Northern Ireland. The national referral mechanism and the UK Border Agency are totally interlinked. We have heard so much evidence in the past few weeks that the UK Border Agency and the NRM should not be involved, because basically the UK Border Agency is more likely to send someone from a non-EU country back home as an immigration breach than they are to treat them as a victim. If we can solve the problem at a UK level, would you accept that you do not need separate legislation in Northern Ireland for that immigration question? I tend to support the view that we have been hearing; that we should not link immigration to the trafficking question and NRM, because NGOs and victims won’t speak.

David Ford

Immigration is not a devolved matter, so I assume that the UK will deal with immigration on behalf of Northern Ireland as well as England and Wales and Scotland. That is the simple position. I have no role, although, for example, the UKBA would be involved with the organised crime task force in terms of its local operation. It is an example of joining up at that local operational level, but as far as policy is concerned I have to leave that because it is not a devolved matter for me.

Michael Connarty

Are you aware of cases where trafficked people have been sent to their home country, which seems to be the strategy, when they were found in Northern Ireland?

David Ford

I am aware of cases where a variety of people have been sent home. I am not aware of anybody who has been removed from Northern Ireland who was seriously believed to have been trafficked.

Lord McColl of Dulwich

You mentioned your opposition to the idea in the Bill of making it illegal to pay for a prostitute. If we were to do that, as has been successfully done in Sweden and is operative in Iceland and Norway, and if you abolished prostitution, you would abolish most of human trafficking, would you not?

Chairman

If you abolished genes as well.

David Ford

At the risk of being argumentative, I said—or at least I hope I said—that on the basis of the information we currently have available, I am opposed to that particular provision in the Bill. I am seeking to get the appropriate information. Certainly from what I have heard of what happens in Sweden, I remain to be convinced that the Swedish model is appropriate for any part of the UK. In particular, my understanding is that much of the prosecution in Sweden is operated on the basis of telephone intercepts that can be authorised by a police superintendent. I am not sure how that would go down in England and Wales or in Scotland, but I can imagine how a telephone intercept authorised by anybody other than the Secretary of State would go down in Northern Ireland. I doubt whether the Secretary of State would give that power to the PSNI. There are sheer practicalities in its inapplicability, whatever may be said about Sweden.

Chairman

Is it your view that it is such a major issue on its own account that it should have its own inquiry and its own Bill and not be tacked on to ours?

David Ford

It requires a proper examination of the facts.

Sir Andrew Stunell

David, I wonder if I could tempt you a little bit on the rest of the Bill. We are looking at ways in which the Bill can be improved. It would be unfortunate if we recommended to the Home Secretary changes that were not in fact very consistent with your views or the Northern Ireland Government’s views about what would work in Northern Ireland. If we are going to be operating on quite a tight time scale, one can imagine that if last-minute changes were introduced you might well be a victim of them rather than a participant. We are looking, for instance, at possibly changing the definitions of some of the offences. We are looking at an overall exploitation offence and so on. There are some serious questions about whether the anti-slavery commissioner should be statutory or independent of the Home Office, which in relation to Northern Ireland might be quite a significant thing—where would you want that person actually to be standing?—and the fact that the NRM is contributed to by the former UKBA but also by UKHTC for EU victims, if I can put it that way. Some of these things interact with Northern Ireland, and it would be quite helpful to have your view about where you would like the dice to roll on potential changes to the draft Bill.

David Ford

That’s some question. You also have not hinted precisely where you are. When you say around offences that there will be an overall offence of exploitation, to some extent that is where I would say, “Well, you do what you think is best for England and Wales and we will do what we think is best for Northern Ireland.” As long as they are not inconsistent I do not think they need to be exactly the same, but it would certainly be helpful to know any developing line of thinking, because that might affect us. We have a consultation reporting back in six weeks’ time, so it would be useful to know that. On the precise issue of the independence of the commissioner, I confess that I have not given a great deal of thought to that, except the point I noted about the role of the interdepartmental group and how it functions in the national rapporteur role at the moment. I think there is probably a need for a degree of independence, but exactly how independent I am not sure. My concern is more to ensure that a role is available for somebody to look at every part of the UK or, if I can’t say that to Scotland, at least Northern Ireland as well as England and Wales. Clearly a degree of independence, with it not being totally tied into the Home Office of England and Wales if it is fulfilling a UK-wide role, might be beneficial, but there is detail there that I probably should not pretend I am too au fait with at the moment. As far as the NRM is concerned, it is my understanding that the Home Office is going to be doing a review shortly of the operation of the NRM.

Baroness Butler-Sloss

Not shortly; they do not yet have their terms of reference.

Chairman

The full stop comes earlier in that sentence.

Fiona Mactaggart

Maybe that is why they deferred the meeting to a date you can’t make.

David Ford

I fear I will need to leave those points to your Committee members. There clearly has been an issue. The NRM has been in place for some years and there are lessons to be learned from the way it is operated. If you are making any input to the Home Office’s work on that, I will certainly be delighted to hear how it goes.

Sir John Randall

Did I mishear you, or did you say that seizure of the assets of organised crime is now very difficult in Northern Ireland?

David Ford

We do not have powers of civil recovery since the demise of SOCA, because there is no body to carry that out within Northern Ireland.

Sir John Randall

If we were going to strengthen our seizure of assets here, which is something we are looking at, to get in earlier and to get more money, is there a danger that we would push the problem over to you?

David Ford

We believe there is that danger, yes.

Sir John Randall

Are there any plans in Northern Ireland to rectify this problem because of the NCA?

David Ford

At the moment, it would be polite to say that discussions are continuing with Sinn Fein and the SDLP. It would be accurate to say that neither of them has replied to letters that I wrote towards the end of January. You may have noticed that we have had a few little local difficulties over the last week or so, but that should not have stopped them replying some weeks back. I am unclear as to where they stand at this stage. It is becoming a serious point where we will have to look to see what else can be done. It appears that we will not get agreement even though, in fairness to the Home Secretary, she responded to several iterations of letters on my behalf seeking changes in order to try to mollify certain people, but we have not yet reached that point.

Chairman

Thank you very much, both of you, for your evidence. Oral evidence: [Draft Modern Slavery Bill] 4