My Lords, I am pleased to propose this short series of government amendments. Intelligence will sit at the heart of the National Crime Agency and will drive its crime-fighting activity across its operational commands. The NCA’s intelligence hub will be a vital component of the fight against serious and organised crime. It will gather intelligence to identify targets and threats and will enable the agency to direct operational activity against the most serious threats to the public.
The success of the NCA’s intelligence hub will be based on its ability to access and analyse information. Recent serious crimes have strongly highlighted the need for strengthened information-sharing agreements across government and the law enforcement community. Schedule 3 already contains a duty on UK police forces to keep the NCA informed of any information they hold which appears to be relevant to the exercise of NCA functions and to disclose this information on request.
However, we know that organised crime gangs come into contact with a number of different agencies. They are involved in corruption, using fraudulent passports and in some cases amassing property empires, as well as gun running and drug dealing. We believe that the public can be better protected from the damaging effects of serious and organised crime by improving the intelligence picture across a wide range of organisations. As a result, Amendment 25 will extend the existing duty on the police to the Serious Fraud Office, the UK Border Agency and the UK Border Force, to increase the information flows between the NCA and a wider range of government bodies.
Amendments 31 and 120 complement Amendment 25 by conferring a power to add to the list of bodies subject to the information-sharing duty by order. Any such order would be subject to the affirmative procedure. This is necessary for two reasons. First, it is a reality that the remit and structures of relevant agencies and bodies change over time; for example, in response to the changing nature of a threat. Secondly, if an organisation consistently refused reasonable and appropriate requests for information, to the detriment of collective law enforcement efforts to respond to serious criminal activity, it would be right and proper for the Government to have the means to consider, through secondary legislation, whether that body should be subject to the strengthened duty to share information.
Of course, information sharing needs to be balanced with safeguards to protect personal and other sensitive information. Schedule 7 to the Bill sets out a number of important restrictions which will apply to the onward disclosure of information by the NCA. Amendment 36 is a drafting amendment which makes it clear beyond doubt that those restrictions on onward disclosure apply to the duty to share as well as to the permissive gateway in Clause 7.
Finally, Amendment 24 brings the duty on UK police forces in Schedule 3 into line with the new duty on the Serious Fraud Office, the UK Border Agency
and the UK Border Force. This means that the duty on UK police forces is also now restricted to the crime reduction, criminal intelligence and the Proceeds of Crime Act functions conferred on the NCA. I beg to move.