The Serious Crime Bill published on January 17 proposes to take on organised crime by setting up ‘serious crime prevention orders’.
That is, civil orders against crooked people or companies doing frauds and money laundering.
While these orders made headlines, it begs the question, where the authorities are to get the information to go to court. And indeed the bill proposes data sharing within the public sector and between the private and public sectors. To quote from the bill: “A public authority may, for the purposes of preventing fraud or a particular kind of fraud, disclose information as a member of a specified anti-fraud organisation …” Such disclosure, the bill adds, however must not break data protection law or the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, that covers surveillance by policing bodies. It is understood that bodies such as CIFAS (set up by consumer credit companies, www.cifas.org.uk) or APACS (trade association of payment clearing companies, www.apacs.org.uk) could be the channels for sharing fraud information.
The bill also provides for the creation of new offences to outlaw encouraging or assisting someone to commit an offence.
Making life difficult
According to the Home Office, the new measures are designed to make life more difficult for serious criminals by disrupting their activities in big and small ways, making it harder for them to cause damage or defraud people. The Home Office says that one of the most significant changes the bill calls for is to target those who operate around organised crime gangs. This will ensure that anyone who is loosely connected with serious crime groups will face prosecution, it is claimed.
What they say
Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker said the bill was necessary because ‘serious crime is a menace to our society’ bringing ‘misery to the lives of those it touches.’
‘The government is determined to do everything possible to prevent it, to detect it and to make sure that criminals do not benefit from it,’ he said. Mr Coaker claimed that the new bill builds intelligently on existing legislation, enhancing existing laws to ensure they are as effective as they can be at stopping criminals. He said: “For example, the new serious crime prevention orders will allow courts to impose restrictive conditions on those involved in serious crime, making it very difficult for them to operate.” The new bill will help law enforcement agencies stay one step ahead of the organised crime syndicates and those who run them, he said.
Assets Recovery Agency
Untrumpeted by the government but in the bill was the abolition of the Assets Recovery Agency, by merging it into the Serious Organised Crime Agency. According to the ARA, it is "business as usual" and it will be ‘relentless’ in making sure that crime does not pay, and in training and accrediting financial investigators. The ARA was set up to seize the assets of criminals, but has proved to cost more to run than the amounts seized.
You can download the bill to read it in full:
