Oral evidence: Serious and organised crime, HC 903Tuesday 24 February 2015

Oral evidence, 24 February 2015.

Witness

Keith Bristow QPM, Director General, National Crime Agency, gave evidence.

Chair

Mr Bristow, we are most grateful to you for coming in. Can I start with an article that is in this evening’s Evening Standard, in which you are reported as saying that you think that only £124 million of the £1.46 billion of confiscation order debts will ever be seized? Do you want to clarify that, because it is a little depressing? It must be very gleefully received by some who have had confiscation orders but a bit depressing for this Committee because we are a great fan of the National Crime Agency and the work that you are doing, and if you are saying that only £124 million will be seized we get a bit worried.

Keith Bristow

Chairman, it is accurately reported but there is a bit of context I would like to share with you, if I may. The valuation that has been put on unenforced confiscation orders is done by the courts service who are responsible, with the CPS, for enforcing those orders, and they value it, as you say, at just under £1.5 billion. The value of the orders, of course, is that the amount of criminal profit that a criminal derived from their activities at the point where the order was made is different from how much asset is actually available to be recovered. So if there was a judgment that a criminal had benefited by £10 million the order that we could seek under the current regime would be for £10 million, even if they only had £1 million-worth of assets to pursue. The point that I was making in the interview is that when one looks at the cumulative effect of that, plus 8% interest a year on unenforced orders, some of which are frankly not enforceable because the asset does not exist, there is a big gap between the outstanding orders and what is likely to be recovered. The point I was making to the reporter is that working with our partners we have identified 161 priority cases, which are active criminals who we think have assets that we can take off them and with outstanding orders, and we think there is £124 million-worth of recoverable asset that they still have. So far together—not just the NCA, together with the CPS, the courts, regional asset recovery teams and the SFO—we have taken £40 million back.

Chair

But you understand how the public’s expectations are raised when they hear that £1.3 billion is owed to the taxpayer and the courts have issued these confiscation orders, and then you say that only £124 million is recoverable. I understand the point that you are making, but you understand the expectations are raised and then dashed as to the amount that is to be recovered.

Keith Bristow

Of course, if one looks back at the history of asset confiscation—and many of the orders that are outstanding go back many, many years, including before the current legislation—the focus in the early days was on getting as many orders as possible for the greatest value possible. Hence we have a legacy, and I am being straightforward when I say that I do not believe that sort of amount is enforceable because I don’t think the asset exists to recover. What we are doing is focusing on recovering the assets that are in criminal hands now and disrupting their activities.

Chair

In respect of the 176 serious criminals who owe £695 million, do we know who these people are? You, as the head of the National Crime Agency, would know who these people are?

Keith Bristow

Yes, if there is an order outstanding against a convicted criminal we would know who those individuals are. We have prioritised 161 of those where we think they have assets and we think they are dangerous people who ought to be targeted.

Chair

You say they have £695 million that you would like to get your hands on?

Keith Bristow

No, I am saying those 161 cases that we have prioritised have £124 million and we have taken £40 million off them already.

Chair

Sure. Now, are these people allowed to enter and leave the country freely? They have finished their sentence. They have gone to court, finished their sentence. They still owe millions of pounds to the British taxpayer in confiscation fines. There are no restrictions on them, presumably, opening a new business or conducting themselves in any way they like because obviously they are not subject to any court orders, are they?

Keith Bristow

Unless they have been banned from being directors perhaps but, for the most part, if they have served their sentence and they are back out at liberty then they are at liberty.

Chair

They are at liberty to enter and leave the country freely?

Keith Bristow

Yes.

Chair

What can we do to help you, Mr Bristow, to squeeze them more? Having gone through the judicial process, what changes of law would you like to see that this Committee can recommend, in this very short report that we are doing, in order to help you do your job better to squeeze the last pound out of these people? Because of course, as you know, the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee have said that only 26 pence of every £100-worth of orders is currently being recovered. You have put that into context and I am grateful for that. But the Public Accounts Committee—this is not what I am saying, it is what they say—described the “Rubbish performance of the agencies involved”. Of course, the Home Affairs Committee does not use such emotive language as that. Having said all that, what can we do to help you? What changes in the law will allow you, as head of the NCA, to go after these serious criminals and get more money back?

Keith Bristow

Okay. Can I point out some of the problems that we have?

Chair

Yes.

Keith Bristow

You may have seen some of the coverage—again, in the Evening Standard last week—on a civil recovery case where we took £4.5 million off a money launderer. That case was started in 2009. That has taken five and a half years. So these cases are not quick. They are complex. I will cite some ongoing investigations, but I will name them because they are in the public arena. These people will do everything they can to frustrate us. SOCA started pursuing a man called Arran Coghlan through a civil recovery order. We are continuing to pursue him. He will use every loophole available through the civil court—

Chair

Is he a British citizen?

Keith Bristow

Yes.

Chair

Residing in the UK?

Keith Bristow

Yes. So there is a real challenge about how long the process takes, particularly using a wide range of tools, including civil recovery and taxation, which we use to disrupt these people. It takes a long time. It is complex. It is also very risky. A case that I know you are aware of, Chairman, is the Israel Perry case, which is again a case where SOCA started to take assets off a convicted criminal. There was then some case law that meant that we have had to spend significant resources defending the position that we inherited, and we have lost on some of that. The Abacha case is another example: £100 million of assets under control. Therefore, the first thing I would say is that it is important to understand the complexity, the length of time, the legal challenges we face.

Chair

Would it help if you were able to publish—these are people all convicted, they have gone through the system, it is in the public domain—the list of those people who are still subjects of confiscation orders? You have talked about three of them today. We now understand the difficulties that you have had in trying to get at them. Would it be possible to publish that list? Is this one way of naming and shaming those who have still not paid up?

Keith Bristow

It is. Can I again—

Chair

It is possible to publish it?

Keith Bristow

We could publish some of this where there are outstanding orders and much of it is in the public domain because some of the cases I have just mentioned, the Coghlan case as an example, is being conducted in open court. It is a court battle to take this man’s assets off him, which we believe—and the courts believe—have been derived through criminality. I know an area, Chairman, where you and I and the Committee have not necessarily disagreed but had a slightly different view, but if you can bear with me, one of the most helpful things would be to recognise the disruptive effect that taking assets off criminals can have.

Chair

Sure. We will come to that in one second. I want to just push you on changes in the law. Is there nothing we can do in Parliament to help you? We are talking about criminals that have gone through the system; the court has imposed an order. They are out of jail. They still owe a huge amount of money. You are spending a huge amount of your time chasing people who have been through the court system. Before we come up to disruption, are there any changes in the law that you would like to see that we can recommend to the Home Secretary or the next Home Secretary?

Keith Bristow

Chairman, we have very tough legislation. I think the interpretation and implementation of what is required of us is where the improvements are necessary.

Chair

By the judges?

Keith Bristow

By people like me, people like you, Chairman, and the Committee, so if we go back to where we started, exposing some uncomfortable truths about how much asset can be actually recovered is really important so that we are focused on delivering what we can rather than constantly harking back to a number, which I do not like. I do not want criminals having any assets but I don’t want to chase assets that are not there.

Chair

You mean at the time of conviction and sentence this inflated figure is put out, “We will take this much of assets from you,” but you are telling us there is no way they even have those assets that are recoverable.

Keith Bristow

No, and I think if we can focus as much as possible on what is available and what we are doing about it, and the effect we are having, that would be really helpful to us because we have very strong legislation. It is about the implementation and the operational response. To be clear, I am dissatisfied with where we are because, as long as criminals are benefiting from their crime, I remain dissatisfied.

Chair

Yes. I will allow you to go on to the point on disruption that you want to make.

Keith Bristow

I think really positioning the regime in what we are trying to achieve and trying to get a consensus around that is important, rather than chasing assets that either do not exist or chasing assets for the sake of assets. I mean part of the problem we have in the gap now, between outstanding orders and what is enforceable, is born of chasing the number of orders that are as big as possible. What we have to do is focus on the disruptive effect that we can possibly have against criminals. That is our top priority, and any support you can give us in amplifying the importance of that would help us enormously.

Chair

Thank you.

Mr Winnick

Before I ask you about what is happening in Calais, may I ask you, Mr Bristow, arising from what you have just told the Chair, are the banks co-operating fully with your organisation?

Keith Bristow

One of the points in the Government’s serious and organised crime strategy is the importance of helping the banks and other financial institutions understand some of the risks that they face, and because they face those risks, citizens and the reputation of our country face them. So we are open with the financial services industry, including banks, about the nature of the threat. At the moment, we are working with the banks to agree information-sharing protocols that will give us opportunities to target criminals in a way that we haven’t before, that goes well beyond the SARs regime, which is a statutory regime where we need to be informed if there is a suspicious transaction, and the banks are being co-operative. We are still working through the detail of that but I am very optimistic that it is a good step in the right direction.

Mr Winnick

You see, arising from what has been occurring at least very much now in the public arena, over Switzerland, HSBC, tax havens, offshore islands and the rest, do you explore all this? Because clearly the criminals cannot all keep the money under the mattress; they must find various outlets, and banks would be one of the obvious examples where such money may be located.

Keith Bristow

I want to choose my words carefully because I don’t want what I am going to say to be over-interpreted, not by the Committee but by those that will be listening. Because of the nature of our banking industry, the trillions of pounds that go through it every single year, the political stability that we have and the established nature of the industry, the sort of people that we are interested in will of course be laundering money through the UK banking system. The banks for the most part, of course, do not know anything about that. It is merely transactions—high-volume transactions. But that is a reality. That is why the banks want to work with us to ensure that we have access to the intelligence that we need about criminals—not law-abiding citizens, criminals, and they use the banking system to launder their money or move money around the planet because for the majority of people we are interested in, apart from those who are pursuing a sexual interest in children, it is all about the money.

Mr Winnick

As far as you are concerned, all the banks in the United Kingdom are co-operating fully with the National Crime Agency?

Keith Bristow

No, I am not saying that. What I am saying is there is a statutory regime that requires co-operation. We are working—

Mr Winnick

It requires it?

Keith Bristow

Yes.

Mr Winnick

But let’s get to the point: are there any that are not giving you the co-operation that you require?

Keith Bristow

There are a number of banks that, on the back of a meeting that the Home Secretary, the Governor of the Bank of England and the FCA hosted, a breakfast meeting last year, are agreeing now a regime with us that goes beyond the SARs regime, to help us develop the actionable intelligence we need of people who are using the banking system inappropriately.

Mr Winnick

I just want to get you on to this particular point because I consider it—and I am sure other colleagues do—of much importance. I asked if all the banks are co-operating fully and you have qualified that in a perfectly frank and honest answer to me, so I can only conclude there are some banks that are not giving the co-operation that they should be.

Keith Bristow

Not all banks are the same, of course. They go from the big high-street retail banks, the investment banks, to small, what I think are called boutique, banks. We are working with a number of the big ones to ensure that they are discharging not only their lawful but also their ethical responsibilities.

Mr Winnick

Are they doing so? Are they doing so?

Keith Bristow

We are on the cusp of a really big step forward.

Mr Winnick

You have qualified it but you have given a very frank answer and we will draw our own conclusions, Mr Bristow, but I am sure you are doing all that you possibly can.

Keith Bristow

Mr Winnick, the only reason I am qualifying it is because it is a qualified answer. I am being open with you.

Mr Winnick

As far as Calais is concerned—the criminal network that exists in human trafficking and the rest—is there much progress in trying to undermine such criminal activity?

Keith Bristow

We have a responsibility, of course, to ensure in particular the intelligence flows work to present opportunities to law enforcement to target groups that are involved in trafficking people, where that is clandestine entry for modern slavery. One of the things that we have done is embedded an officer within French law enforcement to get the benefit of our intelligence picture and their intelligence picture, to provide actionable intelligence, tactical opportunities to target those involved in trafficking, and that is starting to show some good early results. Much of the work is being led by the Joint Border Intelligence Unit in Kent, led by Kent Police. We are part of that. It is about bringing the intelligence picture together and intervening robustly against trafficking groups.

Mr Winnick

This is the last question from me on this particular aspect. I went with two colleagues from the Committee to Calais and certainly got the impression from the French that there is no easy answer, to say the least. What has happened in the last few weeks, where people have been coming in to Europe, to Italy and so on, seems such an open-ended problem that it would be very difficult, wouldn’t it, Mr Bristow, for the law authorities to deal with the human traffickers because people are willing to risk their lives, and do so? Hundreds have died in the last year in trying to get to Europe, so it is a very difficult one and complex and seems to be getting worse rather than otherwise.

Keith Bristow

Of course it is a range of problems. It ranges from people who legitimately want to come to the UK—they believe they want to be here—to people who are conned into coming to the UK, through to people who are forced to come to the UK. It is a range of difficult, complex problems driven by instability elsewhere in the world and the real or perceived benefits of being here in the UK. I know you know this: if it was a simple problem we would solve it. It is about persistence. We are not responsible for controlling border entry. We are responsible for providing the intelligence opportunities to tackle the groups that are benefiting criminally from this awful trade.

Tim Loughton

Mr Bristow, on the back of the Calais situation—and I was one of the members of the Select Committee who went to Calais—we spoke to migrants there who were quite open about having been trafficked, having paid large sums of money. Going round the town they actually pointed out where some of the traffickers were living, often alongside some of the temporary camps of these migrants. There seemed to be very few cases of the French prosecuting them. If that was happening in the UK, and we knew who and where those traffickers were, surely we would be taking action against them. Why is it not happening in the case of France?

Keith Bristow

Yes, it is right to say that if we knew where the traffickers were in the UK we would be charging them—that is, the police or other agencies. Part of what we need to do, I think, is add to the intelligence picture in France to help French authorities who, from our perspective—from an NCA perspective—have been very committed to working with us to position the interventions, in the way that you said, to target the traffickers and if you have examples of where that has not been happening, it is very useful to know about those examples because it helps me challenge ourselves and our partners to do more.

Tim Loughton

But it was freely acknowledged where and who these people were. There seems to be no lack of intelligence, with or without the good services of yourself and your staff placed over there. There appears to be a reluctance to prosecute them by the French, and all the time few of them are prosecuted more people are brought over, added to which, of course, there is the problem that the migrants themselves are not detained. If they are caught they are picked up and deposited two miles out of town without any identification procedures having been followed at all. So the whole process goes on and on and traffickers continue to profit from it. What should the French be doing and what pressure can we—and your outfit in particular—bring upon the French to make sure these people are dealt with?

Keith Bristow

One of the challenges that we have generally with the trafficking, whether it is people, drugs, any sort of contraband, firearms, is that quite often source countries and transit countries do not necessarily understand the impact of the criminality when it arrives in the UK, and the same is true for other countries. So the primary concern for us is to point out exactly what is happening, the impact of the criminality on the UK and why it is important, and that is something the NCA can do. But I think, in terms of accounting for what the French authorities do or don’t do, that is not for me to justify and I would say for a parliamentarian that is an entirely legitimate challenge. My job is to provide the intelligence and explain the threat.

Tim Loughton

No, I understand. You are being very kind to the French but you would agree that if that situation prevailed in the United Kingdom, it is much more likely that you and the police forces in this country would take action against these traffickers?

Keith Bristow

If we knew where members of an organised crime group were, who are involved in trafficking people, we or the police or immigration enforcement or others would be targeting them.

Tim Loughton

To go back to the source of the problem, I think many of us would agree that by the time they reach Calais it is too late and we need to be doing much more, working with other EU countries and other enforcement agencies in Italy, in Greece perhaps, to stop these people coming into the EU in the first place. What action is the NCA taking or what further action could the NCA take to work with partner agencies in those countries?

Keith Bristow

Part of our overall strategy in the formation of the Border Policing Command was that, from point of entry, through transit, through to source country, we try to push the challenge away from the shores of the UK. We did inherit a very able and mature international liaison officer network from SOCA. I believe we have built on that legacy. We have grown it. We have developed it. We are challenging more areas of criminality now than we were, and quite often where it is appropriate the work that we are doing in regions, alongside other law enforcement partners, is having a big impact. So on modern slavery and people trafficking, for instance, we will often have a regional plan that involves not only host countries but other law enforcement agencies working alongside us, and that is starting to have a real effect.

Tim Loughton

Okay, can we come on to a completely different subject in which I questioned the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office, earlier? That was a recent fraud case that came about in December. Judge Wendy Joseph, who instructed the jury to collapse the case, was exceedingly critical of the NCA in the way they pursued that fraud case—quite a big fraud case involving £40 million, 200 bank accounts and several institutions. It was not just criticism of a few procedural errors; it was fundamental incompetence which she was targeting the NCA for. How did that come about and can you assure us that that was a one-off, or what lessons have been learnt from that case?

Keith Bristow

Okay. Since the NCA went live we have made about 4,000 arrests and secured over 400 convictions—that is about the pipeline. It takes a while for people that we are prosecuting to come through the system. I read the criticism. We, with the CPS, have initiated a review. We are proud of our 92% conviction rate, many of which are guilty pleas. It is very clear that that trial did not go well and there are very real lessons for us to learn. Some of that is on an individual level. There are often issues about systems and how evidence is presented that manifested in this particular case and those improvements will be made. There were some very real lessons from that case.

Tim Loughton

What do you think the real lessons were? What actually went so badly wrong in that case?

Keith Bristow

My sense is that some of the officers may not have had the support and guidance that they perhaps should have done for such a complex investigation. What I would say is, for the organised crime group involved this is not the end. We are continuing to investigate them and will continue to seek out opportunities to disrupt them.

Tim Loughton

That raises the whole point of the competence of the economic crime section within the NCA, and that is one of the four command pillars of the NCA, and obviously dealing very often with very complex, specialist forms of crime. Are you happy that you have the expertise within that command to be able to deal with similar complex cases in the future?

Keith Bristow

What is absolutely legitimate is to raise this particular case. I think it would be wrong to assume that that is the standard of investigation and prosecution that we are pursuing across the piece, because we are not. We have competent, able investigators. It is fair to say that we did not inherit an enormous amount of economic crime capability from any of the organisations that we brought together to create the NCA, so we are learning and we need to learn quickly because some of the crime that we are targeting has not been targeted in this way before. Some of the work on corruption and bribery presents very real challenges for us. Economic crime is a complex landscape—lots of agencies, lots of niche types of criminality—but we have able investigators. There are lessons to learn from that investigation. They will be learnt and they will be implemented.

Tim Loughton

Finally, are you implying that you are playing catch-up in economic crime command, compared to, say, something like CEOP that came in, obviously with a great deal of expertise? Already they are a finished product in many respects, and you have had to go out and recruit more people who are still finding their feet. Could that explain some of the problems that we have seen in that trial, and perhaps the others as well?

Keith Bristow

We have had some fantastic success around economic crime and I know of more that will come and that you will see. But I do not think I can be more candid than I have been, so from SOCA, for instance, we inherited great capabilities overseas from CEOP—very able people—around child exploitation. But whether it is on the National Cyber Crime Units or it is on economic crime or in border policing, the very reason the NCA was created was to stiffen up the response to this type of criminality, and that means we are having to build capability. That is different, though, from saying that we are not capable of doing our job. We are absolutely capable, but we are going to get better and build greater capability.

Nicola Blackwood

My quick supplementary question was purely to ask, what are you doing to build up that capability? Are you partnering with economic specialists in the same way that you do with cybercrime and in other areas, in the private sector for example? Economic crime is a very technical field. I am just wondering what the nature of your economic crime unit is because I am not aware of that.

Keith Bristow

The first thing we have done is to recruit a director who knows exactly what he is doing, Donald Toon, who was director of criminal investigations in HMRC for some years, is now director of economic crime. This is a person who has the right background for what we need. He is focusing the command in on its co-ordination responsibilities with the police, SFO, HMRC, others, and being very clear about the niche capabilities that we bring to support the overall effort. Some of the high-end capabilities we have as an agency are lawful interception of communications, as an example, our overseas reach. We bring that to bear on economic crime, the same as we do on other types of criminality. Where we are investing heavily at the moment is on our money laundering capabilities, our ability to follow the financial trail, not just for us at recovery but to disrupt criminality as well. We are also in the process in line with the anti-corruption plan, bringing together a national unit that will focus on corruption and bribery, by bringing together specialists from the Met, the City of London Police and our own existing capabilities. We are going through a process of building those specialisms.

Nicola Blackwood

How many individuals would you say you have under your command in the economic crime unit and then how many can you bring to bear on a case from all those other locations we have just mentioned—the SFO, HMRC or wherever? If you were talking about a big trial, a complicated trial such as this, who can you leverage in but also who do you have under area command when you have a number of complex trials going?

Keith Bristow

The operating model for the NCA is we keep the commands as lean as we can and they only hold the specialist capabilities they need for that particular threat. The vast majority of our work force and capabilities sit in the intelligence and operations directorate. We are now targeting broader crime types with the resources we inherited in this way. Those officers and those capabilities we then decide through tasking with our partners where we need to target them and on which type of criminality. If we are pursuing a complex corruption case, for instance, we would then task our offices in the intelligence and operations directorate to support their specialist colleagues in economic crime command to assist them with that particular operation; that is how we build a flexible agency.

Michael Ellis

Mr Bristow, your organisation is too bureaucratic, is it not? The taxpayer is putting a great deal of money into the very important work the National Crime Agency does, but how many tiers of management and commands do you have? How many of your resources are deployed on pushing paper around? What can you say to this Committee to reassure us that the work of your very important organisation is directed where it should be—at finding these evil people who are engaging in these criminal activities?

Keith Bristow

Our priorities, as set by the Home Secretary, are very clear. This is an operational crime-fighting agency; that is why 85% of our officers are in operational roles. We did inherit, in my view, a top-heavy management structure—not too many layers but too many people in the upper layers.

Michael Ellis

What have you done about that?

Keith Bristow

We have had about 250 people, mostly senior managers, leave through early voluntary exits since we started and we have got another 167 leaving before the end of March. What we are doing with the funds that we are releasing—and we have savings to make—is recruiting people lower down the organisation as operational crime fighters to reshape and rebalance the organisation.

Michael Ellis

Just by those numbers alone, 250 managers and another 167 leaving, how many people were those managers managing? How many, on average, people were there under one particular manager—5, 10?

Keith Bristow

There is a challenge we have in terms of how we shape our work force. If you can bear with me, let me give you an example. Let us go back to a conversation we had earlier about civil recovery. We need more lawyers who are expert in civil recovery than a police force would need because that is not what a police force does. If one wants to recruit lawyers, you cannot recruit them where you have one set of management grades at the lowest grade because you do not pay enough. What has happened historically is that people have been recruited further up the management grade, so it looks like one has an awful lot of lawyers who are managers when it is about paying the going rate to attract lawyers. One of the things that we are having to do is differentiate more clearly between professional and technical pay and managerial pay. In some cases, we have had people on quite a senior management grade who are not managing many people at all; that is the way that we attract and retain those specialists because we do not have separate pay structures.

Michael Ellis

You accept that you have had people on presumably very high salaries in management grades who are there because you feel you need people who will only accept salaries of those sort of numbers.

Keith Bristow

If I pursue the same example, we are not going to recruit a lawyer who is expert in what we need at £20,000 a year. We have had people who have, in effect, been on a management grade because, because of their technical expertise, we need to attract and retain them.

Michael Ellis

As far as the taxpayer is concerned, they would want us to seek reassurances from you. With respect, we cannot just take your word for it. Why is it that you are satisfied that you are able to lose hundreds of managers and still do the job that you can do and not in fact lose more managers? Convince us that you should not be losing another 30 or 40 managers, as opposed to the 167 you are losing now.

Keith Bristow

I am sorry; I agree with you. I will convince you that I am going to reshape this organisation to deliver as much operational effect as possible. We have lost two directors. We have downsized the board. What one needs at the beginning of an organisation is quite different from what one needs as the organisation starts to mature. In my judgment, we will have a clearer set of arrangements for technical grades. We will have a clearer set of arrangements for management grades and the structure around management grades will be sensible ratios and spans of control for those managers. I am not in the business of wasting public money.

Michael Ellis

Good, thank you. It is judges who make the confiscation orders, is it not? Do you have any problem, or do we have any problem, persuading judges? I put this to the Minister—is it an issue where the judges are not making these confiscation orders or is it some other type of problem? Have you experienced cases where, despite the prosecution asking the judge to make a confiscation order, he or she has said, “There are no assets that I can see here, so I am not making a confiscation order because it would be a waste of time”? Are you getting that type of problem?

Keith Bristow

That is very much Mr Loughton’s point earlier. There may be cases where there have been isolated incidents but, for the most part, if we set out the evidence—and most confiscation orders are secured by the police, not the NCA; we are targeting a small cohort of criminals—if we make out the case we find the courts are sympathetic and supportive of giving us the opportunity to take assets.

Michael Ellis

If you make out the case, which is how it should be.

Keith Bristow

Yes, which is our responsibility.

Michael Ellis

It is up to you, the NCA, to recover assets, perhaps through third parties like the CPS if necessary, where there is an order. You mentioned to the Chairman, I believe, a couple of examples of cases where an order has been made for the confiscation of criminal assets. Presumably the criminal in question has not had assets to recover and then at a later date he or she will have assets to recover and there are a certain number of orders totalling tens of millions of pounds that you said fall into the category, old cases, whereas nowadays the person has assets to recover. It is up to you to go back and recover those assets, is it not?

Keith Bristow

The responsibility to enforce the order falls to the court and CPS, not to the NCA. We are part of the dedicated asset recovery team that we have set up with our partners because our focus is on disruption of criminality and enforcing the order delivers disruption, so we think we have a stake in this but it is not our responsibility to enforce the order.

Michael Ellis

Do you make any effort to tell the courts service that it is our understanding that this person now has assets that they did not have five years ago and it is time that you go and recover them?

Keith Bristow

Yes. The people that we are most interested in, we expose to what we call lifetime management. Once they are on our radar, whether they are in prison or they are at liberty, and where we have an order such as a confiscation order in place that provides us with opportunities, we manage them non-stop.

Michael Ellis

Right. I notice something else you said about the layers of appeals that certain individuals are going through, but is it not up to you to make representations to Government to say there are too many avenues of appeal here? This is something we were experiencing within the immigration arena. At one point before this Government there were 17 tiers of appeal and they have now been cut down significantly. No doubt if you—with the respect that you bring and the office that you hold—make representations to Government and say, “There ought not to be this many appeal processes,” because it is no good complaining about someone who is using the law, you would be heard. It is up to you to persuade Government to change the law if you do not think there ought to be that many appeal processes, is that not right?

Keith Bristow

On civil recovery we should remember that, in effect, we are going through a civil process, not necessarily legislation and courts that are specifically around asset confiscation. We consistently set out to Ministers and Ministers are supportive of some of the challenges that we face but also some of the risks that we carry. We will have actions taken against us for tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of pounds where individuals will claim they have lost opportunities to invest or we have disrupted their business. But the reality is, if they are criminals we need to be brave and relentless in going after them, but this is often quite a risky process.

Michael Ellis

My final question is this. Just at the end of last year—I think in December of last year—the Prime Minister announced that there is going to be a joint unit between the National Crime Agency and GCHQ to tackle the worst forms of child abuse online. Have you set this up? When is it going to be set up, if it is not already? How is it going to address the challenges of analysing imagery hidden on the dark web? One of the reasons why it has sometimes been considered historically difficult for agencies to work with security services is because of the requirements of the courts for full disclosure. Do you anticipate problems working with GCHQ in the requirement of those seeking to defend themselves that they have full disclosure about GCHQ tactics, which would not be in the public interest to disclose?

Keith Bristow

In the spirit of what you have just said, Mr Ellis, I am going to sound a bit of a caveat before I answer your question. This is being broadcast. I have absolutely no doubt that people that we are interested in who would exploit children are listening to this broadcast and if I say too much, if they are not listening now, it will be out through their networks.

Michael Ellis

We certainly do not want you to do that.

Keith Bristow

I know you don’t want that. I am happy, if I can, to give more detail privately but I will seek to answer your question as much as I can. We have very good relationships with the agencies, all of them. GCHQ are being particularly helpful in our joint efforts to target those with a sexual interest in children. Without wanting to go too far, part of where the unit will start is, how do we get the full intelligence dividend out of seized media? Let me give you an example: during Operation Notarise we seized nearly 10,000 digital devices. You can imagine the amount of analysis that is required, not only to secure the evidence but also so that we act appropriately around disclosure of any information that is relevant to the defence.

Michael Ellis

It is huge.

Keith Bristow

It is huge. GCHQ are absolutely expert in their ability at getting the value out of bulk data. One of the places that we are going to start is, how do we get the intelligence dividend out of the media that we have already seized? That is an example.

Michael Ellis

So they can help you with analysis, how best to manage it.

Keith Bristow

Yes. I have discussed this with the Committee on a number of occasions. One of the challenges that we, as a society, face—and the NCA and law enforcement are right in the centre of this—is the real risk to children in terms of image offending, the risk is hidden in volume. Getting through the volume to the risk and targeting the risk quickly, there is no zero-risk option. We have to continue developing a methodology to get that risk quickly and manage it.

Michael Ellis

Thank you. I appreciate that and I appreciate that it is sometimes a needle in a haystack with the vast volumes that you are dealing with. I wanted to thank you for the work that you and your personnel are doing.

Keith Bristow

Thank you.

Chair

Thank you, Mr Ellis. Just in respect of one of the points raised by Mr Ellis, when you took over in the Serious Organised Crime Agency, they had staffing of 3,990, according to our last report. You have started 2014-15 with 4,041 members of staff. In answer to Mr Ellis you seem to imply that 417 have gone, so you have lost 10% of your staff.

Keith Bristow

No, Chair, what you have said is reasonable but what we then do is recruit officers lower down the organisation that give us the capabilities we need.

Chair

Right; so you have not lost 440.

Keith Bristow

No, we currently have 4,569 officers, so even though our budget has reduced—

Chair

You have more.

Keith Bristow

We are managing to grow the work force by reshaping it with less senior people and more people go and put hands on criminals.

Chair

It has gone up from 4,041 to 4,500.

Keith Bristow

That includes part-time workers, the full-time equivalent is 4,267, so we are managing to grow the organisation by reshaping.

Chair

How many in your organisation formally work for SOCA?

Keith Bristow

I would need to come back to you on that.

Chair

Would you? Thank you.

Keith Bristow

May I make a more general point about work force size?

Chair

Yes, of course.

Keith Bristow

It is a challenge for the police but it is particularly for the NCA. I know you know this but it is worth saying again, in the kind of criminality that we are tackling and the capabilities we need we have to stop trying to judge the value of an organisation by how many people work for it. It is an entirely legitimate question, but part of the rebalancing we are going to need to do is to invest in our digital and technical capabilities—going back to Mr Ellis’s questions earlier—and that is not necessarily about more and more people. It is often about better qualified and able people who are able to operate in a digital environment and get the benefit from the technology. There is a reshaping, Chairman, that we are going through and I very much want us to be judged by what we deliver for the public.

Chair

That is very helpful; thank you.

Nicola Blackwood

I just wanted to come back on a comment that you made to Mr Ellis, that you are in the business of disrupting serious organised crime. Obviously I am an Oxford MP. We had a very serious child sexual exploitation case, Bullfinch, and one of the most useful tools that they have had are abduction notices. Also, the Government have recently passed a number of new prevention orders, the sexual risk orders, the trafficking orders, they have changed the thresholds for gang injunctions. Talking to some police officers, they have been trying to understand how this new architecture will all work together to make sure that this leads into prosecutions, rather than deal with it as just being ends in themselves. I am just wondering what your comment is on that, and how you think the Government can most effectively put forward guidelines to help officers on the ground to effectively disrupt child sexual exploitation but also bring forward more prosecutions in what is a very difficult field to investigate and prosecute.

Keith Bristow

Child sexual exploitation, the way that you describe, is often a local problem requiring a local intervention. Quite often that means that we have specialists within police forces and other agencies working alongside generalists. One of the challenges that we always have with generalists, whether constables or police staff delivering these important interventions, is helping them understand and know what they need to know to do the job on the ground at that time, across a whole broad range of issues. I know that Ministers know that and I know officials are working hard at making sure that sort of guidance is available to help officers make those particular judgments. But much of that is a policy issue, rather than an operational issue, but they are minded to make sure that guidance is available.

Dr Huppert

First, I want to pick up on something we have discussed a number of times before, Project Spade and then the failures with Myles Bradbury in my constituency and elsewhere. I do not want to go through the whole history of it. I spoke to the Home Secretary afterwards, when she said that one of the changes that was being made was that rather than just looking at the level of how many images, the individuals who had been accessing them and their risk—in this case a paediatric oncologist and in another case a deputy headmaster—would also be looked at in all cases. Is that now right? Is that now happening in every single instance where there is child abuse imagery?

Keith Bristow

Again, if I can put a caveat on what I am going to say, you know, Dr Huppert, that we and others are subject to an IPCC investigation.

Dr Huppert

Yes.

Keith Bristow

I do not want to say anything that will make their job impossible but I will answer as best as I can. The first thing that happens when we receive a referral, which is often data accompanied by an image, is we assess that immediately to see whether, based on what is in front of us, there is an immediate risk to a child or young person of harm. If there is, we then prioritise the process of trying to turn that data into a location and a person, actionable intelligence. If that is not the case—there is not an immediacy—we then need to work very hard to identify who the individual is for exactly the purpose that you have just said, because we are prioritising and looking at the individual and their access to children, rather than the harm demonstrated in the images. They are both relevant but the hard lessons that we have all learnt, even more so for victims, is that where we have to start is, who is the person accessing the images because there is a link between images, which is an abuse in itself, and contact abuse? I know you know that from constituents and elsewhere. That has happened but I would not want to oversimplify it or give you a level of reassurance that was unrealistic. This is difficult work and quite often turning partial data into a location or an individual for us to assess is impossible.

Dr Huppert

I do appreciate the challenges and I am glad that the lessons have been learnt but it was not even attempted, as I understand it, on the previous Project Spade data. May I move on to broader issues about cyber criminality? I put this to the Minister earlier. How well do you think we are doing in tackling cyber criminality in its broader senses? Are we just nibbling at the edges? Are we making a profound difference?

Keith Bristow

We have a way to go. If Mr Loughton’s question about economic crime had been about cyber and I think he said something like, “So we’re trying to catch up,” that is true of cyber. We are narrowing the gap between the ability of the criminal and the ability of law enforcement. I can point to some fantastic examples where we have disrupted the most serious type of cyber criminality, which is virtually always overseas and highly complex and not just targeting the UK. But it is fair to say that we are not going to make the progress that we need to make until we shake off the misplaced belief that cybercrime is niche. The reality is, if you look at the bulk of criminality that the police and others deal with and we have a role in, much of it now is cyber-enabled—so fraud, child sexual exploitation, blackmail. Many of those now are cyber-enabled and even if in cyber-enabled people have a digital footprint in the way that they lead their lives. Trying to prove that someone was in a particular location, booked a hotel, communicated with someone is all about digital capabilities. It goes back to the point I made to the Chairman earlier, that certainly for the NCA we need to judge the agency by our capabilities and the effect that we have on criminality for the public, rather than the number of people that work for us because that will hold us back if we do that. We need different partnerships with industry. We need better capabilities. We need to focus on how we find the risk in the volume. Some of the uncomfortable contemporary law enforcement responses, which are often criticised like action fraud, are a reality of a changing type of crime. There was a time, during my career, where crime in a particular town was usually perpetrated by somebody from that town and fraud was a face-to-face type of criminality. That simply is not the case now and whether it is Brisbane or it is Bournemouth the reality is the thing that we share is language, which means there are new criminal markets, prosperity, access to the internet, which means we are right for targeting by criminals often from abroad who seek to exploit citizens in those countries. It means a different way of thinking and working.

Dr Huppert

That is very helpful. How do you think you are doing getting it taken out of that niche? Do you think police forces in general around the country appreciate that yet?

Keith Bristow

Yes, I think so, in general. Giving effect to that belief is more challenging. My assessment would be at the national level—not just the NCA but our partners as well—we are making very good progress. The director of the FBI, who I have a good personal relationship with—and our agencies work well together on cyber—his and their view is there is no better operational partner in cyberspace than the NCA. We work very, very well together. The regional capabilities are developing quickly and are starting to have an effect but there are real challenges at the local level to balance all that we were talking about. Ms Blackwood was talking earlier about child sexual exploitation within communities, contact abuse. Right the way through to fraud and cyber-enabled, I think there are real challenges about rebalancing.

Dr Huppert

You were talking about hiring more staff at a more junior level who are actually engaged. I suspect that there is a shortage of police staff—people in this space who are very familiar with the cyber world. Are you able to recruit all the people that you need there?

Keith Bristow

Let me share with you a little bit of learning for me. Since I first came to this job in 2011, I have underestimated how much we need traditional investigators working alongside cyber experts, because cyber experts understand the technical route through which we do things but until we can train them as high-level investigators, they need an investigator sat alongside them who knows the rules of evidence, how to arrest offenders, how to bring people to justice. There is a balance in how we develop our work force and go forward. We are taking an innovative approach to this. We have apprentices now joining us through a joint apprenticeship scheme with GCHQ. We have cyber specials that we are growing very, very quickly. The sort of people that we are recruiting now, those that are replacing managers that have left, might not be people who would want to pursue a career in policing; they might have thought about all sorts of other options elsewhere, but we offer a niche career for them working in that digital space. It is challenging often around what we pay. It is challenging to retain people but we have to focus on what it is that we are doing for the public and the importance of that. May I make a more general point, Chairman?

Chair

Only if it is very brief.

Keith Bristow

I will be very quick. In terms of the future of policing, coming back to your original point, I do think, particularly if driven by austerity, we need to think more clearly about what local police forces do, what regions do, what national agencies do. The capabilities should then follow those responsibilities, as should the funding. It needs a more rational model than we have at the moment because at the moment everyone is trying to do lots of things and I am not sure that it is wholly rational nor affordable in the future. Some of our digital capability, as an example, there is no point in the NCA doing things that every local police force can do, that does not seem rational to me. Distributing the capabilities more sensibly around the responsibilities so the whole system can have a greater effect, even though it seems to me money is going to come out of the system, is a real challenge for policing and the NCA.

Chair

Thank you. Mr Bristow, this is probably the last time you are going to appear before the Committee before dissolution. We want to thank you for all the work that you and your team have done. It has been a difficult start for you because you are starting a new organisation. As you have said in our last report, you have been very open and transparent with the Committee but Parliament will continue to ask these questions to get value for money and we need those answers, such as the answers you have given today. I hope very much that you will continue to work with our successive Committee and give us the answers that you have done in the past in a very clear and open way, which is quite different from your predecessor and your predecessor’s committee. Thank you very much.

Keith Bristow

Thank you for your support, Chairman, and for the Committee. We have made a very good start. There have been some challenges but we are doing things now for the public that were not possible before and the public are safer as a result. Thank you for your support.

Chair

Excellent. Thank you very much. Serious and organised crime, HC 903 30