Lords Sitting of 11 November 1996

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of Lichfield.): The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

Franco-German Memorandum on Flexibility
Lord Bruce of Donington Lord Bruce of Donington asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will report on any further developments concerning the joint Franco-German memorandum of 18th October 1996 (Annex to CONF/1955/94), including any developments at the meeting of personal representatives on 21st and 22nd October; and what are their views on these developments.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Chalker of Wallasey): My Lords, the Franco-German paper on flexibility (Annex to CONF/3395/96) was circulated in the Intergovernmental Conference Personal Representatives' meeting of 21st/22nd October. It was discussed at the meeting on 29th October. The debate on flexibility is still in its early stages.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for that Answer. Bearing in mind that the Economic and Financial Council of the Community is meeting in Brussels while we are deliberating on this matter—that is, on the assumption that it has finished lunch—will the Minister assure the House that the question of an economic stability pact, to which Her Majesty's Government will be invited to give sympathetic agreement at today's ECOFIN meeting, has not in any way been approved by the other place or discussed in this House? Will the Minister bear in mind that reaching any such agreement, however unofficial, would be wholly out of order and will she assure the House that Her Majesty's Government will not commit this House in advance?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I am well aware of the excellent role played by the Select Committees which scrutinise these matters. I am sure that my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer is similarly aware, and I am certain that until there has been adequate discussion, no decisions will be taken.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, but could not my noble friend go a little further than that? Is she aware that the Select Committee of your Lordships' House will consider the report of Sub-Committee A of your Lordships' European Committee on the 26th of this month and that I am informed by Her Majesty's Treasury this morning that a decision will actually be
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taken in ECOFIN on 2nd December on the so-called "stability pact"? Can my noble friend give your Lordships' House the assurance that that stability pact will not be nodded through by the Chancellor without a full debate in your Lordships' House and the other place?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, my noble friend knows that the business of this House is not for me to decide, but I can assure him and the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, with whom he has so much in common, that no final decisions are expected until probably the European Council on 13th and 14th December. There will undoubtedly be a discussion of these matters, probably on 2nd December as my noble friend said. I believe that it is right that such matters are discussed, but today's meeting is a monthly ECOFIN meeting and the stability pact is on the agenda—as it has been on the agenda of most meetings in the past few months. On a previous occasion the House seemed very much to agree with me that it is crucial that we remain at the heart of the negotiations. We have a clear interest in ensuring that EMU works well. Whether we are in it or out of it, it must work properly. It is important that British interests are represented at all times—and that means discussing the issues while not coming to a final decision today.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, is the Minister aware that there is a great deal of puzzlement about this whole issue? We have been assured by Her Majesty's Government on many occasions that if a Conservative Government are elected after the next election, which is most unlikely, there will be a referendum on whether or not we join a single currency, but at the same time discussions are going on month after month about what will happen once there is a single currency and how it will affect us whether we are in or out. It really is time that the British people had an opportunity to know exactly what goes on at the ECOFIN meetings as opposed to those meetings taking place in complete secrecy, perhaps reaching decisions which are not then reversible by Parliament.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I must point out that this is the third supplementary question which has nothing whatever to do with the original Question. However, as I always try to answer noble Lords' questions, perhaps I may repeat what I said to the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, a few moments ago. The United Kingdom has a clear interest in ensuring that whether we are in or out of it, economic and monetary union works properly. If we remain out, as the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, clearly wishes us to do—he wishes to be out of everything—it will have an impact on what happens in this country. We must be in the discussions that are taking place now so that we may do what is right for Britain—and that we shall do.
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that many Members of your Lordships' House

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warmly agree with her that merely to distance ourselves from things which some people may like while others do not is not an alternative to a policy?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend. We have made it quite clear that we have to be in those discussions. In an Answer to the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, a fortnight ago, I made it clear that flexibility means that we have to be involved in the discussions. My noble friend is absolutely right.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the observation of the noble Lord, Lord Peyton, that there are those who disagree with the thrust of the earlier questions applies not only to his Benches but also to these Benches? If the Minister is right in saying that we should be involved in these discussions as they proceed without commitment to the final outcome, does not that apply also to the social chapter?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I wondered how long it would be before we got to that. I think that it is right to discuss these matters until we come to the time to take a decision. Perhaps I may welcome the conversion of the Opposition as announced by Mr. Gordon Brown this morning that they will now sign up to the social chapter only as it now is. The Opposition have already done the first of what will no doubt be many U-turns. They are no longer going to support the extension of majority voting although in The Road to the Manifesto they clearly stated that they would do so.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the questions that I have ventured to put to her today have nothing whatever to do with the ultimate decision on whether or not to join economic and monetary union? My questions were limited, and relevant, to the steps that are being taken now (which will come into force before any question of EMU arises) and which relate to the Community's control of British fiscal and taxation policy, as envisaged in the so-called "stability pact". The whole question of that "stability pact" has not yet received the consideration of either the other place or this place. We want an assurance that no decision will be made until after Parliament's views are known.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, first, as I have said to other noble Lords, I am sure that these matters will be debated in your Lordships' House. However, I am not responsible for business and I cannot tell the noble Lord when that will be. Secondly, the noble Lord asked me about developments concerning the joint Franco-German memorandum. That was the point that I sought to answer. That is not the matter with which he has proceeded since putting his initial Question.

Sterling Exchange Rates
2.40 p.m.
Lord Spens Lord Spens asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether the recent rise in the relative value of sterling was foreseen and whether there are any consequences for their future monetary and fiscal policies from a continued and sustained increase in the value of sterling.
The Minister of State, Department of Social Security (Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish): My Lords, exchange rates are volatile and notoriously difficult to predict. If the rise in sterling is sustained, it could have a temporary effect on domestic inflation. The exchange rate is only one of many factors that has to be taken into account. Monetary policy is, and will continue to be, aimed at achieving the Government's inflation target of 2.5 per cent. or less. The Government recognise the value of a stable exchange rate but do not have a target for sterling.
Lord Spens: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his answer. Is the Minister aware that twice in the life of the present administration sterling exchange rates have been at a historical high, particularly in relation to the dollar, and that afterwards there has been a period of recession? Are we heading again into those depths, or will this country do something to prevent exchange rates from going even higher?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I believe that I answered the original Question put by the noble Lord when I said that, although the Government recognised the value of a stable exchange rate, they did not have a target for sterling. Before the noble Lord becomes too concerned about the recent increase in the value of sterling—I understand that since the trough in mid-summer it has appreciated by about 8.5 per cent.—he should remember that this takes sterling back to around the level it was towards the end of 1994.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I do not believe that the noble Lord really expressed a view. I certainly did not predict that sterling would strengthen to the extent that it did. I believe that it is right for me to declare a prejudice. I prefer a strong to a weak sterling. There is nothing more disastrous than the continuous decline in the value of sterling which this country has experienced during the lifetime of this Government. I could not resist that one! I also promise not to guide us back to EMU by asking about the fixed value of sterling if we follow that route.
If the rise in sterling is the result of speculative forces, does the Minister agree that that will yet again be deleterious to British industry on a scale far in excess of anything else that might affect Britain's ability to compete abroad? Further, does the Minister agree that a 10 per cent. appreciation, much as I may like it in a way, cannot possibly be of help to industry in the short term?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I do not have to make predictions either as I am not a professor of economics. But I do not believe that the increase in the value of sterling has been caused by speculation. There are other factors at work. As I said in my main answer, these movements are difficult to predict, as the noble Lord has agreed. The Government, together with the Governor of the Bank of England, simply have to take a view every month of the effects of a number of factors. As far as concerns exports, for many months they have been strong. Only this morning there was an announcement of an export order worth £1 billion from Australia.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, does my noble friend recall that two of the countries with the strongest exchange rates over the past 50 years or so, Germany and Japan, have also had the two most successful economies?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, my noble friend makes a telling point. Although exchange rates are not the only factor in the success of an economy, it is true that both Germany and Japan, with strong currencies, have been very successful. That confirms the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Peston, that one should not be tempted by the siren song of those who believe that it becomes easier to live if one devalues one's currency.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is now in a bit of a trap? He is harkening to the advice of the Governor of the Bank of England that interest rates should be increased in order to limit inflation, but, on the other hand, the more he increases interest rates the more sterling will rise and the more difficult it will become for our exporters?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I believe that the last person who can be accused of being in a trap is my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There are a number of different factors in the economy. At their monthly meeting the Governor of the Bank of England and the Chancellor have to take into account all those factors. If one looks for the success of the economy, one has only to consider the way in which unemployment has declined year on year for many years in comparison with our European friends and how the number of people in employment has increased. I believe that if the noble Lord looks at those figures he will be a little more optimistic.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, can my noble friend say why he is so convinced that sterling is not suffering some of the problems of the Swiss franc, into which billions of deutschmarks are being poured because knowledgeable people in Germany and elsewhere have formed the firm opinion that the Euro, if it ever comes into existence, will be a weak currency? If sterling is to stay out of that weak currency, may it not attract similar speculation? If so, does that not underline the immense difficulty of the whole project of European monetary union?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, my noble friend tempts me into discussing European monetary union, which does not greatly surprise me. I thought that I was about to have the exchange that my noble friend Lady Chalker has just had. As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Peston, I do not believe that we are seeing much in the way of speculation. Although I will check later, I do not believe that there is evidence that, like the Swiss, we are getting great inflows of deutschmarks because the Germans are afraid of EMU.

Millennium Site, Greenwich
2.47 p.m.
The Earl of Kinnoull The Earl of Kinnoull asked Her Majesty's Government:
What progress is being made on the proposals for the millennium development at Greenwich; and whether British Gas, the owners of the polluted site, are co-operating in accordance with the principles of best environmental practice.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of National Heritage (Lord Inglewood): My Lords, British Gas is decontaminating the site in line with its responsibilities under the Environment Act 1995. The Environment Agency and the London Borough of Greenwich have approved the remediation strategy and are monitoring the ongoing works. An outline planning application was submitted by W.S. Atkins to the borough council on 31st October 1996 for the construction of the dome and allied buildings.
The Earl of Kinnoull: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his encouraging reply, particularly the progress of British Gas in cleaning up its heavily polluted sites. In view of the massive funding required from public and private sources amounting to something like £400 million, what is the long-term future for the millennium project beyond the exhibition of two years? Can my noble friend confirm that British Gas has offered the land for long-term benefit as part of its contribution? Finally, does my noble friend agree that among the considerable gains to the Greenwich area, one may be the return of commercial traffic to the river Thames, which was lost about a century ago?
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, the planning application which was submitted on the 31st October on behalf of the operating company was for temporary exhibition use. The purpose is to build durable low-cost structures on the site which have a long-term use. Over the next few years the operating company will liaise with British Gas, English Partnerships and the London Borough of Greenwich about the long-term use of the whole site. It is important to be clear that the proposed use of the site for the exhibition is temporary. The site will then have been decontaminated and have had infrastructure put into it to enable it to have a use beyond the lifetime of

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the exhibition. Obviously, this depends upon the aspirations of the landowner and the London Borough of Greenwich.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, in his supplementary question, the noble Lord who put the Question on the Order Paper mentioned the required sum of £400 million. I understand from press reports that there has been a governmental promise through Mr. Heseltine that half of that sum will come from lottery funds. Will the Minister ask the Secretary of State for the Department of the Environment, who is handling this matter, whether he will be as generous towards Manchester, whose heart has been blown out by the IRA, and which, so far, has received only peanuts?
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, I shall certainly pass on the noble Lord's comments to my right honourable friend. As your Lordships know, the Government are most concerned about Manchester. Last week some announcements were made to help bring forward the proposals to redevelop the city centre where it was blown up.
Lord Donoughue: My Lords, if one might go a little wider than pollution, does the Minister agree that this has about it the smell of an impending muddle? Here we have a project running late, with a fixed and very public completion date. That seems to me to be a recipe for putting the contractors in control and for cost overrun. I have a basic question that I should like to ask the Minister. With about half a billion pounds to be spent on cleansing the site and a mainly temporary enjoyment of the site, is there nothing in the areas concerning children, the sick, the elderly, or anything else upon which £500 million could be spent which would be of more permanent benefit to the British public?
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, the figure that the noble Lord has given is one that I cannot accept. I want to be absolutely clear for the benefit of your Lordships that we are talking here about a 300-acre site within a 15 minute Tube journey from the centre of London. It was a gasworks, and is seriously contaminated. The proposals have two separate parts to them: this 300-acre site will be decontaminated, infrastructure will be installed, and it will be available to be used in the future. In the short term there is a proposal to put the millennium exhibition on the site. That involves the construction of a dome and other buildings together with a large area of car parking. It is proposed that that will be in place until the end of 2000. Thereafter, the detailed future of the site is unclear; but, as I have already explained, that is a matter for the landowners and the London Borough of Greenwich. The noble Lord expresses some scepticism about the ability to bring this project to fruition within the inevitably constrained time scale. I have every confidence that it will be a case of just-in-time delivery.
Lord Donoughue: My Lords, before the Minister sits down, perhaps I may ask this question. He questioned my figure, which was roughly half a billion. Since nothing has been announced to the public, perhaps he could be helpful to the House. We are led to believe that the commission has put a maximum of some £200 million on the expenditure; the Deputy Prime Minister is attempting to raise large sums from private industry. Will he help us with what will be the sum that will be spent on this project? Is there a maximum, and what is it? Can he guarantee that it will be less than half a billion pounds?
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, I am advised that the cost of the exhibition, which does not include the cost of the infrastructure or the decontamination work, is likely to be of the order of £350 million.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, the Minister said earlier that a planning application had been submitted. Later he said that there would be the building of a dome and a car park. Are not the Government prejudging the outcome of the decision on the planning application?
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, I hope that I made it clear that the uses to be made of the site were a matter for the London Borough of Greenwich. I have a copy of the consultation document which has been circulated to many thousands of those living in the borough.
Lord Donoughue: My Lords, perhaps your Lordships will permit me to speak again, because it will be helpful to the House. Can we confirm that what the Minister has said is that the cost of the temporary structures will be no more than £350 million? Did he say earlier that the cost of decontamination would be about £400 million? If that is the case, does that make three-quarters of a billion pounds?
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, the arithmetic in which the noble Lord has engaged comes to approximately three-quarters of a billion pounds, but the figures that he has given are not those directly relevant to the points that he made. It is my understanding that the cost of the exhibition, which includes the construction of the various buildings and decking them out—if that is the right phrase—amounts to about £350 million. I am not in a position to give your Lordships an exact figure for the cost of the decontamination, the installation of the infrastructure and any improvements that may be necessary to the Tube system.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, will the Minister say how much is to be spent on the millennium in Edinburgh and Cardiff?
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, I regret to say that I do not have the figures immediately to hand; but I shall willingly write to the noble Lord and give him the information that he seeks.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, does the polluter pays principle apply in this case? If so, surely all the decontamination costs should be borne by British Gas? Is that not so?
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, the answer to both the noble Baroness's questions is yes.

Police Bill [H.L.]
2.56 p.m.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Blatch): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
This Bill represents a further major step forward in the fight against organised crime. It will give the police, working together with other enforcement agencies, the national structures which they need to tackle serious and organised crime even more effectively. It will establish a statutory authorisation process for the use of essential surveillance techniques which the police and Customs need to investigate serious crime. It will put the Police Information Technology Organisation on an independent statutory footing and so ensure that the police have the best computer and communications systems available. And it will help to protect the public and build a safer Britain by giving employers better access to the criminal records of those wishing to work with children or seek other positions of trust.
Before I describe the Bill's provisions in greater detail, it may help if I briefly explain the background. The police have always had to deal with organised and violent criminals. But modern organised criminals are better resourced, more sophisticated and even more ruthless than the public image of organised crime represented by the Krays or Richardsons. They operate across local, regional and international borders. They use the very latest technology to support their criminal activities. They create complex webs of illegal and legitimate businesses to hide their ill-gotten gains and to give the impression that their hands are clean. And they are well aware of normal policing methods and use anti-surveillance techniques to avoid being caught.
The National Criminal Intelligence Service and the regional crime squads have already achieved some impressive results. I pay tribute to their work. But we need to strengthen our capacity to tackle organised crime. We must harness the intelligence, the technology and the resources of the police, Customs and other agencies in a carefully co-ordinated national approach. We need a national response, in harmony with the local basis of policing in this country, to threats on a national scale.
I stress the importance of preserving our local system of policing. We are not proposing a British equivalent of the FBI. There will be no "federal crimes" over which the new organisations will have exclusive jurisdiction. The public will continue to report all crimes to their local police forces. There will be no direct recruitment of police officers to either body: police officers will continue to be seconded or recruited from police forces.
The new bodies will be firmly rooted in the traditions of British policing with its tripartite accountability arrangements. This means that the National Criminal Intelligence Service covering the UK and the National Crime Squad covering England and Wales will continue to support local police forces, as they do now. And local representation will be a key element of the arrangements for overseeing the new bodies and setting their strategic direction.
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I turn now to the detailed provisions of the Bill. It may be helpful to your Lordships if I deal together with Parts I and II relating to the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the National Crime Squad. The provisions in both parts are very similar and indeed the two organisations share some common features and will of course work very closely together.
The Bill provides for the creation of two bodies corporate: one, with 19 members, called the Service Authority for the National Criminal Intelligence Service; and the other, with 17 members, called the Service Authority for the National Crime Squad. These bodies will maintain the two services. The National Criminal Intelligence Service will provide criminal intelligence to police forces throughout the UK, to the National Crime Squad and to other law enforcement agencies, principally Customs, in this country and from overseas. In addition, in fulfilment of our undertaking during the passage of the Security Service Act 1996, the Bill provides for the Director General of the National Criminal Intelligence Service to be responsible for co-ordinating Security Service activities in support of the law enforcement agencies investigating serious crime.
The function of the National Crime Squad will be to prevent and detect serious crime which is of relevance to one or more police areas in England and Wales. It will also be able to target major criminals and, at the request of chief constables, to support local police forces in England and Wales and other law enforcement agencies here and from overseas in the prevention and detection of serious crime. In particular, it will preserve the close links which the regional crime squads already have with the Scottish crime squad and the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
The membership of the service authorities seeks to reflect the tripartite structure on which our system of policing is based while recognising the national role of both services. Each service authority will be made up of independent, police authority and police service members, plus one Home Office representative. The service authority for the National Criminal Intelligence Service, because of its UK and multi-agency remit, will also include representatives of the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Northern Ireland, police authorities and police forces in Scotland and Northern Ireland and a representative of Customs and Excise.
Although independent of each other, the two authorities would have a common core membership of 10 in order to ensure a shared strategic direction for the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the National Crime Squad. The core membership would include three independent members appointed by the Home Secretary, one of whom would be appointed to chair both service authorities. These are key appointments to positions with responsibility for important national services. In these circumstances, we believe that it is reasonable for the Home Secretary to choose the independent chairman. As with police authorities, the independent members would bring a wider perspective to the management of the two services than might be obtained

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otherwise. For example, one might usefully have an understanding of modern banking practice, given the significance of money laundering in organised crime.
In line with the arrangements for local forces, both service authorities will have to set objectives to secure the efficiency and effectiveness of the services they maintain. They will be required to publish service plans, similar to policing plans for individual forces, and to report performance in annual reports. The director general of each service will be required to report annually on the activities of the services they manage. Their reports will also be published.
The role of the Home Secretary, in consultation with the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Northern Ireland in relation to the National Criminal Intelligence Service, will reflect his responsibilities for the police service generally. It will include the power to determine key objectives for each service, to call for reports, to hold an inquiry and require Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary to carry out inspections.
Each service authority will appoint, from a short-list approved by the Secretary of State, a director general to run the service it maintains. Both appointees will have to be chief constables or eligible for promotion to chief constable.
The staff of the two services will comprise police and other members. Police members will be seconded police officers on relevant service or, in the case of Association of Chief Police Officers ranks, they will normally be appointed. Other members will be direct employees of the services or will be seconded or loaned from organisations such as Customs and Excise in the case of NCIS. All the staff in each organisation will be under the direction and control of the relevant director general.
The Bill includes power for regulations to be made governing the handling of complaints against the staff of both services. In relation to the National Criminal Intelligence Service, a member of the public may not know whether his or her complaint is against a police officer, Customs officer or some other member of the civil staff. It is essential that the arrangements are clear and that all complaints can be properly investigated. For that reason, we propose to ensure that all staff in both services will be subject to a consistent complaints system reflecting existing police procedures.
Each service authority will levy police authorities in England and Wales for the costs of the service they maintain. These levies, which will be subject to approval and possible adjustment by the Home Secretary, will provide the majority of the income for the two services. Contributions to the costs of the National Criminal Intelligence Service will also be made by the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Northern Ireland.
We believe that decisions on the levy should be strongly influenced by locally elected members of the service authorities, as levies will affect local budgets. For this reason, proposals for the levies will be prepared by the police authority members from England and Wales and the independent members only. The police authority group voting on a levy will have at least one more member than the independent group.
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Once the service authority has settled a budget and determined a levy, it will be considered by a tripartite group. This group will consider the levies in the context of overall spending on the police and proposed expenditure on centrally provided services such as police training. The tripartite group will advise the Home Secretary about the appropriateness of the proposed levy. He will then either approve the levy or instruct the service authority to adjust it. His decision will be final and the service authority will not be able to exceed the levy.
I have sought to highlight the key provisions of the Bill in relation to the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the National Crime Squad. I turn now to its other main provisions.
Part III contains provision to regulate the use of intrusive surveillance techniques by the police and Her Majesty's Customs and Excise. The use of these technical devices can often provide the crucial piece of the jigsaw in breaking organised criminal activity. I have no doubt about their value.
The debates on last Session's Security Service Bill highlighted the question of how best to regulate the use by the police and customs of intrusive surveillance techniques. Police surveillance operations are presently authorised by chief officers in accordance with administrative arrangements outlined in a long-standing Home Office circular. Similar guidelines apply in Northern Ireland, Scotland and for Her Majesty's Customs and Excise. The existing guidelines impose a tightly controlled system which has served us well and I know that chief officers take their responsibilities very seriously. The courts recognise and accept evidence obtained in this way. But there is a strong case—which the Government have accepted—for putting the authorisation system on a statutory footing. This will establish greater clarity in the way this crucial activity is controlled.
We believe that the best option is to build on the successful experience of the present system but to formalise authorisation by chief officers. This would be fully consistent with their operational independence. It would not result in delays in processing applications for authorisations which might hamper these serious investigations. And it would be more bureaucratic than the current arrangements.
I have already acknowledged the seriousness with which chief officers take these responsibilities. But it is also essential that there are safeguards to ensure the integrity of the authorisation process and that it is carried out properly.
The Bill includes a number of safeguards. It requires that the authorising officer is satisfied that the surveillance is likely to be of substantial value in the prevention or detection of serious crime and that what the action seeks to achieve cannot reasonably be achieved by other means. The new procedures reflect the fact that authorising officers wish to maintain personal responsibility for the use of these techniques.
The Bill also provides for the Secretary of State to issue a code of practice. This code will outline the authorisation procedures to be adopted and will ensure

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that practitioners are fully aware of what is required of them. It will be publicly available and will be admissible in evidence. Work on drafting the code is well advanced and we hope to make a draft available to this House for the Committee stage.
There will also be an important independent scrutiny of the process. The Bill makes provision for the appointment of a new surveillance commissioner. The commissioner will be independent; a person who holds or has held high judicial office. His functions will be two-fold: to review authorisations and to investigate complaints of improper authorisations. He will be provided with specific powers in the event of his finding in favour of a complainant.
I believe that our approach strikes the right balance of equipping the police with the essential techniques to tackle the ever increasing sophistication of our most serious and organised criminals, while providing adequate safeguards against the unnecessary intrusion on the privacy of the public.
Part IV of the Bill establishes the police information technology organisation as an executive non-departmental public body. PITO was set up on an interim, non-statutory basis on 1st April this year, although the Home Office has been providing national information technology services for the police for over 20 years.
Our aim in establishing PITO was to create a more customer-focused organisation, by bringing chief officers and police authorities into the heart of decision making. There are sound economic and operational reasons for the greater central provision of information technology. But it must be accompanied by a new partnership approach, in which all those with an interest in policing have a sense of common ownership of national computer and communications services.
PITO has three main functions. It is responsible for promoting the delivery of national information technology services in support of the police, such as the Police National Computer; securing a co-ordinated approach to the development and delivery of local information technology systems in England and Wales through the implementation of the national strategy for police information systems; and providing a procurement service for the police in areas where national supply arrangements are appropriate.
Under the new arrangements, the strategic management of PITO will be the responsibility of a tri-partite board whose membership will be drawn from chief constables, police authorities and the Home Office and Scottish and Northern Ireland departments.
The creation of PITO and its establishment as an independent statutory body offers the prospect of the improved delivery of cost effective, timely and responsive IT to the police, an objective in which we can all share.
Part V of the Bill contains provisions which bring into effect the proposals for access to criminal records for employment and related purposes which were set out in our White Paper On The Record.
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A new criminal records agency will be established as part of the Home Office to undertake this work for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland the work will be undertaken by the Scottish Criminal Record Office. Individuals will be able to obtain information about their criminal records. In carefully defined circumstances and with the consent of the individual, this will also be provided to those bodies which are registered with the agency which will include employers, licensing bodies and voluntary organisations.
The Bill proposes three types of certificate. The first, a criminal conviction certificate, will be issued only to individuals. It will state whether they have convictions recorded in central police records which are not spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.
The second certificate, a criminal record certificate described as a "full" check in the White Paper, will be available for occupations which are exceptions to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. A joint application will be made by the individual and organisation which is seeking the check. Information will be provided from central police records about spent and un-spent convictions and about cautions.
The third certificate, an enhanced criminal record certificate described as an "enhanced" check in the White Paper, will be restricted to those working on a regular, unsupervised basis with children; for certain licensing purposes; and, prior to appointment, judges and magistrates. An enhanced certificate will include the information contained in a criminal record certificate, plus information from local police records. Where relevant, non-conviction information might be supplied. Very exceptionally this could be provided to the employer but not the individual. This would only happen where the information might prejudice an ongoing or future investigation.
We expect individuals to meet the cost of the checks although employers or others could reimburse them if they wished to do so. The cost of criminal conviction certificates and criminal record certificates is estimated at about £5 or £6. An enhanced criminal record certificate would cost about £8 to £10.
Bodies eligible to receive criminal record or enhanced criminal record certificates must register with the agency. A registration fee will be payable which we expect to be about £15 to £20. A condition of registration is that organisations should follow a code of practice. We will shortly be publishing responses to the consultation exercise which was undertaken on the draft code. Some of the responses have already led directly to the inclusion of provisions within the Bill but some further consultation will be required with interested parties before the code can be finalised.
We recognise that there are important civil liberties issues connected with criminal record checks. What we have tried to do is to strike a balance between the need to protect vulnerable members of society, particularly children, while avoiding the need for intrusive checks. That is particularly so when we come to information which has not been tested before the courts. That is why we have felt it important to restrict the use of non-conviction information to situations where children

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might be at risk because those working with them will be in a position which gives them regular and unsupervised contact and for various statutory licensing purposes where it is important to guard against fraud or where the information is necessary for probity in the administration of justice.
The Bill will strengthen the fight against serious and organised crime. It will ensure that the efforts of the police and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies can be organised more effectively. It will mean that resources needed to combat national and international crime can be focused more effectively. These new arrangements build upon and complement our system of local policing. That combination of partnership with local communities and effective co-ordination of national resources will create a powerful new alliance in the fight against organised crime. I look forward to hearing the views of your Lordships on its provision. I commend the Bill to the House.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.— (Baroness Blatch.)
3.17 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the Minister for the clear way in which she introduced this complex and important Bill. I must begin with an apology. As the Minister knows, when there was a choice of dates for this Second Reading, this was not my first choice. I shall have to leave to take the chair at an important college meeting at about 6.30 this evening. I apologise to the House generally and to those noble Lords whose speeches I shall not be able to hear. Fortunately, I shall be able to hear—and I very much look forward to hearing—the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Warwick, who brings professional expertise to this subject. I am sure that he will make a valuable contribution to the debates of the House on this and other subjects.
In the consideration of the Bill, our starting point was made clear when we debated the Security Service Bill last year. As noble Lords will recall, that Bill was one part of the range of measures which the Home Secretary announced in his speech to the Conservative Party Conference in 1995. Although we had difficulties with some parts of the Security Service Bill, I made it clear at that time that we are in general support of the measures which he announced. That means that in particular we are in general support of those parts of the Bill which relate to the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the national crime squad. There are other elements in the Bill relating to criminal records and surveillance which deserve separate attention.
As regards Part I and II, I have only a few general points to make because my noble friend Lady Hilton of Eggardon, who knows far more about those matters than I do, will comment in more detail on some of the aspects. However, in so far as the Bill provides for a continuation of the tripartite system for the control of
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the police—that is, the tripartite system consisting of the partnership of local authorities, of police forces and of the Home Secretary—we strongly support it.
The structure proposed for the two service authorities goes a good deal further in enhancing the role of the Home Secretary than I would have thought, bearing in mind the debates that your Lordships had on the Police and Magistrates' Courts Act 1994. Noble Lords will recall that when we came to debate that legislation there was strong opposition from all parts of the House, not least from well-informed and senior members of the Conservative Party, to the proposals for the Home Secretary to have, for example, the power to nominate the chairman of police authorities; and, indeed, to the way in which independent members of the police authorities were to be selected. Your Lordships persuaded the Government—or at least the threat of Divisions on the matter frequently persuaded the Government—that the role of local authorities in police authorities should be greater than was originally proposed in the Bill. So it came about.
We seem to be going backwards. When you have a National Criminal Intelligence Service and a national crime squad, no one doubts the fact that the Home Secretary has particular responsibilities which ought to be reflected in the service authorities. Therefore, we are not saying that the Home Secretary should not be represented. But if we look at the core service authority for the two bodies, it will be seen that three members are to be appointed directly by the Home Secretary at will; one member is to be appointed by the Home Secretary in his role as the employer of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police; and one member is to be appointed as a Crown servant, also by the Home Secretary. So five out of the 10 core members, as well as the chairman, are to be appointed by the Home Secretary. We think that that is going too far. We believe that the role of local authority members and of chief constables ought to be greater in this authority because, after all—as the Minister rightly said—what is proposed here is not an FBI or, still worse, a CRS. What is proposed is a body which will be acting in support of the operations of local police forces. Surely in those circumstances their role should be very much greater than is proposed in the Bill.
The latter is enhanced by the arrangements which are proposed for funding. At present, the non-statutory National Criminal Intelligence Service is funded by a Home Office Vote. However, it is now proposed that both of the new statutory bodies should be funded by a levy on the police authorities. The Minister went into great detail—in fact, she went too fast for me and I shall have to try to catch up afterwards—into the nature of the funding arrangements and how the budgets will be arrived at.
It appears that these new bodies will be funded fundamentally from the rates, from the council tax and through police authorities with local authority members serving on them. Under those circumstances, I should have thought that, again, the role of local authority members on the core committee and on the separate committees for the two national bodies ought to be increased. We welcome what the Minister said about the

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new bodies being in harmony with the local basis of policing. However as we come towards the Committee stage we shall be looking for assurances that there is local police accountability for these national services.
Particular questions have been raised with the Home Secretary by the Police Federation. I draw attention to them now so as to give notice that they will undoubtedly be raised in Committee. The first concern of the Police Federation is that seconded officers will not fall under the protection of police regulations, in contrast with what now happens with the regional crime squads, and that the service authorities will themselves set terms and conditions for those officers. Secondly, the federation is concerned that the Police Complaints Authority will have control not only of police staff but also of other civilian staff. All I am asking at present is that the Minister should give an undertaking that there will be consultation with the Police Federation before such matters are further determined.
Leaving more detailed consideration on Parts I and II of the Bill to my noble friend Lady Hilton, I move to Part III which relates to intrusive surveillance. Again, our position is as we stated it when the Security Service Act was under deliberation. At that time, we noted that there was no statutory basis for police surveillance either in the form of bugging or of telephone tapping. We believed—and, indeed, we said so—that it should be on a statutory basis. Therefore, we welcome the provision that such surveillance shall be on a statutory basis.
We also welcome the fact that it is the chief police officer rather than the Home Secretary, as is the case with the security services, who is to be responsible for decisions on such surveillance. However, there are a number of questions still arising about the nature of the judicial authority over chief police officers. We hear what the Minister says about the commissioner, who holds high judicial office. That clearly is welcome. We look forward to the publication of the code of practice; and I am grateful for the assurance that it will be available in time for the Committee stage. Perhaps I may push the matter a little further and say that I hope the document will be available in time for us to table amendments for the Committee stage, if necessary. All of that sounds all right.
Nevertheless, there are still nagging doubts. We appear to be setting up a different regime of control for placing bugs in a person's home and for a search for which provision is already made. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Browne-Wilkinson, will no doubt be intervening on that point. However, on the face of it, I can see no reason why there should be lesser control over intrusion to place bugs—to place electronic equipment—from the control which is necessary for searching premises. After the noble and learned Lord has spoken, I hope that we shall have a reasoned reply from the Minister in her concluding speech.
We accept that all those intrusions are necessary, but the principles on which they are based ought to be firmly set out and as clearly defined as possible. I am not certain that the current wording of the Bill is right. The principle of proportionality is provided for in the legislation by saying that there has to be an assurance
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that the surveillance will be of "substantial value" in the investigation or—unfortunately, the exact phrase escapes me—in securing a conviction. The principle of subsidiarity is expressed in the phrase that the objectives,
"cannot reasonably be achieved by other means".
The 1984 Home Office guidelines on the matter went further. They talked about the requirement that other less intrusive means should have been tried and failed or that, in the nature of things, there should be a presumption that if they were tried they would fail. It is possible that it would be appropriate to table amendments in Committee to achieve that objective. Again, looking at Part III of the Bill, we welcome placing these powers under statutory control, but a number of detailed issues will have to be dealt with in Committee.
I move rapidly over Part IV which seems to me, perhaps wrongly, to be uncontroversial. Part V of the Bill is the last substantive element of the Bill. What is being attempted under Part V is, of course, right. It is right that children and other vulnerable groups should be protected as regards people who are put in a position of authority over them or who have regular and unsupervised contact with them. There is a great need to prevent such people exploiting children and other vulnerable groups. In so far as Clauses 101, 102 and later clauses provide that protection—which they do substantially—they have our full support. However, there are problems with Clause 100 which deals with criminal conviction certificates. That clause provides that all individuals should have access to those records. It is implicit in that that any employer, whether or not an employee is to deal with children or vulnerable groups, could be subject to a demand for access to such a certificate.
A number of organisations, notably the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, have suggested that it would be wise for the Government to withdraw Clause 100 in order,
"to secure the effective delivery of a statutory system for those working with vulnerable groups".
The agency will have to provide large numbers of certificates. There could be millions of such certificates, compared with possibly half a million now. I should have thought the Government would wish to give priority to the protection of vulnerable groups by, first, establishing provisions for the full and enhanced certificates which were envisaged in the White Paper. I shall not take a firm view on that matter until I hear the Government's response to that suggestion, but it worries me that Clause 100 could be in conflict with the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. I should like to receive assurances from the Government that it is not in conflict with that Act, and that the balance between the needs of employers and those of the public and the rehabilitation of offenders has been correctly drawn. If that means that there should be further codes of practice, that may be one solution. If it means that there should be amendments to the text of the Bill, we shall consider that possibility too.

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It is not as if our rehabilitation of offenders legislation was more wide-ranging than that of other countries. After all, we already exclude from the possibility of spent sentences any sentence of more than two-and-a-half years' imprisonment. As far as I know, no other nation in Europe does the same. Article 8.5 of the European Union data protection directive requires that there should be specific safeguards as regards discrimination against ex-offenders whose offences indicate no evidence of danger to others. I question whether some of the provisions in the Bill conform to the European Union data protection directive. There are also areas where it does not go far enough. There is no reference here to the private security industry, for example, where clearly it is in the interests of clients of that industry, which include the public sector, that there should be an assurance that the industry is not employing ex-criminals who might be suspect in this regard. After all, these people have access to premises and to personal property. They have access to records which might be sensitive. If there is no assurance that the private security industry is required—not just requested—to take action to ensure that it is not employing anyone who is dangerous as regards the service it is providing, perhaps we are not going far enough. It makes me wonder whether there is a need not just for vetting employees but also for vetting employers, and whether there should be an amendment along those lines.
The Minister has given us better estimates than we have had hitherto as regards the likely costs of the criminal conviction certificates and of the full and enhanced certificates. We are grateful to her for that. However, she will know that many of the organisations which represent the voluntary sector have expressed great concern about the funding of the agency and its need to be self-supporting, and therefore the need to charge for issuing the certificates. The national council of voluntary child welfare organisations, the national centre for volunteering, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the YMCA and NACAB have all expressed great concern about the potential cost to them of being required to obtain certificates for large numbers of voluntary organisations. The Scout Association estimates that it will cost Li; million; the guides estimate it will cost £450,000; the Women's Royal Voluntary Service estimates that it will cost £1.25 million. The Government ought to consider taking responsibility for the costs of the screening, in particular of volunteers.
As I said at the beginning, this is a complex Bill. It contains a number of separate matters, all, I acknowledge, directed to the same end. We yield to no one in our support for an effective and responsive police force and for them to have the tools that they need to do their job. In that sense we strongly support this Bill. Our amendments and our activities in Committee, and in the later stages of the Bill, should not be taken to derogate from that support. What we are trying to do is to help the Government to have the best possible piece of legislation.
3.37 p.m.
Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank: My Lords, I agree very much with what the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, has said; namely, that this Bill has every merit in its intention in that it is designed to help the prevention and detection of serious and organised crime, and as such it should certainly command broad support in this House. However, there is a cause for serious concern in some of its details, and it will be properly the subject of careful scrutiny and, where appropriate, amendment at the Committee and further stages.
I mentioned in a debate on the Address—I hope that your Lordships will not mind my reminding the House of this—that it is important that we continue to give detailed scrutiny to the Bills which come before us, even when there is much to recommend them to the House. We are, after all, a revising Chamber, and if we fail to carry out that function properly, irrespective of the purpose of a Bill, we shall fall short of our proper duty as the second Chamber of Parliament. However, co-operation and a speedy passage of any Bill involves the Government in being willing to make concessions and not simply the Opposition parties ceasing to present their case. As I have already said, there is widespread concern about the need for some of the safeguards in the Bill. That concern has been expressed by outside organisations, as the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, has made clear. I am certainly concerned about the police powers in Part III of the Bill, although I am open to persuasion. There are many points to be considered as regards the availability of criminal records in Part IV. I hope very much that the Minister will be willing to accept amendments even without a Division, and will respond of her own volition to views expressed in the House during debate on the Bill.
As the Minister said, Part I of the Bill has been presaged for some time. I have an uneasy feeling that the present proposed arrangements will not last and will provide only a half-way house to a British equivalent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, said, that is not what we are dealing with at present in the text of the Bill. I do not take a view about the direction in which we should move in future. However, it is important to recognise that the steps in Parts I and II are major and may well lead to further developments. I believe that the two new bodies proposed in Parts I and II are like Siamese twins: they are joined together by a common chairman and a common core membership, not easily separated, but they may not have a long life together. We should bear that in mind whatever their merits may be.
I am concerned about some aspects of the present proposals. First, the two tier membership could lead to first class and second class members. The Minister referred to the strategic role of the core members. I would not dispute that. But if they have a strategic role, it suggests that other members—I call them for convenience second class members—may not share that role. I am surprised at the additional cost to public expenditure. It is put at £1,050,000. I hope that the figure is as low as that. However I hope that that figure will not restrict the two organisations in their proper role. I share some of the anxieties expressed by the

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noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, about the appointment of the membership, including the independent members. If local authority members are to choose among themselves who shall serve on the bodies, it is not clear to me why the independent members should not be allowed to do the same.
I may be wrong—perhaps the Minister will tell me so when she winds up the debate—but I am surprised at the unusual further powers given to the Secretary of State in Clauses 29 and 73 of the Bill. Those clauses refer to the role of the Home Secretary and state that the Secretary of State may require each authority to exercise its power to sack the director general. I find that a highly prescriptive requirement which diminishes the independence of each authority. I am sure that there must be precedents. I should like to know what they are; and what is the significance of the inclusion of those clauses in the Bill.
That leads me to a larger issue which I have not fully understood. In introducing the debate, the Minister referred to the two bodies as bodies corporate. The noble Baroness referred, as I understood it, to their responsibility to their Minister. Will she be kind enough to explain more fully—it may perhaps be for my enlightenment; other noble Lords may understand the position—exactly what is a body corporate. It is not a body within the Home Office; but is it outside the Home Office? If so, are bodies corporate executive agencies? If they are not executive agencies, precisely what are they? Again, I should like to know the precedents for those organisations, and the similarities between those and comparable bodies.
Perhaps I may ask the Minister—I believe that the question has a bearing on status and accountability—whether Members of Parliament will be able to ask Parliamentary Questions about the operational role of those bodies. If the answer is yes, presumably those matters will be addressed to the Home Secretary. Bringing the matter nearer home, to whom should noble Lords address their letters in due course? Should they address them to the Home Secretary, the chairman or the director general? What assurance will we have as regards the possible confusion between policy and operational responsibilities such as we have experienced all too often and unfortunately with the Prison Service? There may be easy answers, but your Lordships deserve to know them.
Part III concerns entry into property, or—to put it more bluntly—police bugging. As the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, said, and it was referred to by the Minister, I believe, the powers now proposed in the Bill are meant to give statutory authority to a long-standing practice. In the debate on the Security Service Bill, there was a general welcome to the statutory backing that would be given to the guidelines. However, that begs an important question. If we are to give statutory backing to the guidelines, we have to be sure that the guidelines are right. In addition, we have to decide whether the stamp of permanent approval should or should not be put on them. It is sometimes arguable that it is better to retain guidelines which are flexible and easily changed than to put something in black and white in a statute.
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I put down this marker. We have to be satisfied with the guidelines and not simply with the statutory powers now being given.
In the debate on the Security Service Bill, in Hansard of 10th June at col. 1534, the Minister stated:
"We are giving careful consideration to the options"
—meaning the options as regards who should authorise the intrusive surveillance operations by the police. I do not say that her present proposals are unacceptable; it may well be that they should stand. But perhaps she will help the house by explaining exactly to which options careful consideration was being given.
Let us not forget how broad the proposals are in Clause 89 of the Bill. Clause 89 states:
"An authorising officer may authorise the taking of such action, in respect of such property in the relevant area, as he may specify".
The clause continues that that subsection applies where the authorising officer,
"thinks it necessary for the action specified to be taken".
Those are wide powers. If we are to incorporate them in statute, we should be absolutely clear that that should be done. The Minister said that she had no doubt about the crucial value of the present surveillance methods. She may well be right, but I should like confirmation that there is firm evidence to justify what is, and has to be seen to be, an invasion into the privacy of the individual. The case has to be made for this part of the Bill. We must not take it for granted.
Like the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, I am tempted to pass quickly over Part IV of the Bill, because I do not fully understand it. But why is there a separate body? Under Parts I and II we already have two bodies. Precisely what is the status of the body proposed in Part IV? The Minister says that it is an executive non-departmental body. But how is that distinct from the corporate bodies set up under Parts I and II of the Bill? If it is not an executive agency but it is executive, how executive is it? To whom is it responsible? Can it be accountable to Parliament? If it is accountable to Parliament, through what route?
I note in passing—it is a matter for Committee stage—that the chairman and members are appointed by the Secretary of State who then maintains an even tighter control over staff appointments. So far as I can see, no such provision has been proposed in the clauses dealing with the NCIS and the NCS. The control by the Home Secretary extends even to the appointment of committees. I should be grateful if the noble Baroness would tell us, if not today at a later stage, precisely why that is so.
I think we all recognise that Part V of the Bill may well occupy the most time in Committee. I do not intend to rehearse again all the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, which seem to me to be valid. In so far as criminal checking applies to the special protection of vulnerable groups, and in particular to children, it is acceptable as an unfortunate necessity. From these Benches we support it. However, beyond that it is deeply disturbing and alarming in its consequences. It is a radical measure to which I am instinctively opposed, and I shall briefly state the reasons.

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It will reinforce discrimination against those with a criminal record who may be trying to go straight. It will unbalance relationships which today are expected to be more equal in a number of very important respects between employees and employers, while giving no protection with regard to the behaviour and record of employers to those who are involved with them in business dealings, especially the self-employed. There is huge scope for forgery and fraud. There will be many false certificates showing nil convictions circulating like promissory notes. There will be huge opportunity for blackmail. There is the possibility, which we must all accept, of inaccurate information causing great damage to both employees and employers.
I should be grateful for advice from the Minister, not necessarily today but at a later stage, as to what redress there will be. Must it be through the courts? How immediate can it be if inaccurate information has caused damage to an individual in a way that may affect his or her employment prospects and involves that person in major cost? As I understand it, those who lose certificates or have them stolen will be penalised. Is that just; is it consistent with the purpose of the Bill; and is it not likely to lead to more difficulties than it removes? Finally—and I regret to say that the list could be a great deal longer—as the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, said, the provisions of the Bill place a financial burden on the unemployed and voluntary organisations that may be very considerable.
The proposals, apart from that which deals very specifically with organisations—for example, those dealing with vulnerable children—are on the face of it cumbersome, slow-moving and bureaucratic, with great room for abuse and error. They are an intrusion into our liberties, and I can see nothing in the Bill at the moment which involves effective and regular parliamentary scrutiny. We heard how likely it is that many hundreds of thousands of certificates will shortly be in circulation. The logic is that half the population will be carrying around certificates in their pockets rather like a driving licence. I suggest to the Minister, with my tongue only half in my cheek, that it might be a good idea to suggest to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nolan, that prospective parliamentary candidates should be included and should be required to produce a certificate on their nomination to Parliament. If the measure is to apply to employees in the private sector, why should it not apply to those who seek in the public interest to serve the nation? I am profoundly unhappy with this part of the Bill as it stands. I shall, however, listen very carefully to the Minister today and on future occasions, and I very much hope that reassurances will be given.
There is nothing, or at least very little, in the Bill that could not have been introduced earlier in this Parliament. Some of the measures are retrospective and give statutory backing to existing practices. I regret that we have to deal with this legislation in an inevitably fetid pre-election atmosphere. However, from these Benches we shall deal with it strictly on its merits. To be fair, the tone of the Minister's remarks and those from the Labour Benches suggest that it will be treated
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in the same objective way. That is how the Bill deserves to be treated. It will be to the credit of the House if our scrutiny fulfils that requirement.
3.55 p.m.
Lord Taylor of Warwick: My Lords, I crave the indulgence of the House for this, my maiden speech. It is with much humility that I rise to speak. I hope that my words prove worthy of the debate. I feel especially privileged to speak on a day when this House remembers the victims of two world wars and other conflicts. I appreciate the warm and friendly reception that I have received from all sides of the House—why, it is just like being in Cheltenham!
I understand that I am one of the youngest Members of this place. My younger daughter is only two, but I should formally deny the story that I asked one of your Lordships whether this House had any crèche facilities, and received the reply: "What, for your daughter, or for you?".
As a lawyer, I have a particular interest in this Bill. Indeed, I once had a client who went to prison for something that he and the police knew that he did not do: he did not wipe his fingerprints off the safe in the bank that he robbed!
I am reminded also of the barrister who said to his client after the trial, "I am sorry I couldn't do more for you". The client replied, "Oh, that's all right. Ten years was plenty!".
Without an effective police force, stopping criminals, especially in the "big league" of crime, is like trying to catch the wind in a net. We have the best police force in the world; but there is always room for improvement. Nothing is harder on our laurels than resting on them. That is why I fully support the arguments of the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, in advancing the progress of the Bill.
The power of an idea can be measured by the people it touches. Ultimately, the people who will benefit from the Bill will be victims of crime. They are central to this debate. Anything that can help victims—by solving crime more quickly, or even preventing it from happening in the first place—must be encouraged. Criminals have a choice; many victims do not.
The Bill targets organised crime such as drug trafficking. That is an increasing threat, so we need to develop a more nationally co-ordinated response to combat it. Too many young people are exposed to drugs, and the bait hides the hook of addiction. Those potential victims need protection. The Police Bill will establish a national crime squad with the police at the helm. It would help if self-confessed drug users such as Liam Gallagher, of the pop group Oasis, were not portrayed as heroes by the media. Surely the young need better role models.
As we heard, the Bill will also build on measures set out in the Security Service Act 1996, which allows the Security Service to support the police. The service has a proven record of providing long-term surveillance, intelligence gathering and analysis. Those are precisely the skills that are needed against organised crime. There are huge amounts of money to be made in the criminal

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big league. Those involved will seek to hide like a spider behind a web of intrigue, spun around overseas bank accounts, properties and innocent looking business concerns.
I had to represent such a man, who ran a car import/export business. He owned homes and nightclubs around the world. He was very good at buying and selling cars. The only problem was that they tended to be stolen cars. The case was in for plea and directions at the Crown Court. He arrived, asking me whether the hearing would take long because his Rolls Royce was on a meter and his chauffeur was waiting! After the case I stood outside the court at a bus stop, chastising myself for having forgotten my umbrella as the rain was pouring down. A few minutes later a blue Rolls Royce cruised by and the electric-powered, darkened window slid down. As the rain poured down my miserable face, my client cheerily asked me whether I wanted a lift. I declined politely through gritted teeth. The case against that man eventually collapsed because there were technical, albeit important, gaps in the evidence that the police could not fill. I believe that this Police Bill will make it easier for the police to gather evidence required to convict in these more complex cases.
The Bill will also enable employers to check employees' criminal records more easily. That is especially needed to vet those who seek to work closely with children. Preventing child abuse is vital because the damaged child can become the dangerous adult. Echoing the words of John Milton:
"Childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day".
The days of Dixon of Dock Green are long gone. We need a police force which is able to deal with the criminal of the 21st century. That is what this Bill is all about. I support the Police Bill and hope it will continue to proceed in an orderly direction.
4.2 p.m.
Lord Merlyn-Rees: My Lords, I have been singularly unlucky in the National Lottery in that over two years I have won nothing. In the four and a half years that I have been in your Lordships' House I have often wondered when I would have the privilege of being able to respond to, and congratulate, a maiden speaker. This lottery has turned up quickly for me and I am privileged today to have the opportunity to praise the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Warwick, for the content of his speech and the facility with which he made it.
The noble Lord has a background in the media and the law. He is one of those new constitutional beings, a special adviser to Ministers, which the textbooks have not yet got round to. He has been a special adviser to the Home Secretary and Ministers of State. If he had carried on with that, some of the work in this Bill might have been his. In terms of the work that this House is best at—namely, revising legislation—he comes well prepared. On behalf of your Lordships, I wish him well.
I welcome this Bill in general, and my remarks must be taken in that spirit. I shall not attempt to cover the whole of the Bill but shall concentrate on Parts I and II, the NCIS and the NCS.
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I am concerned about aspects of the criminal record agency, about which I have read in correspondence with interested bodies, but I can find no mention of it in the Bill. I am not sure what has happened to that agency. If it exists, is it a different kind of agency from those referred to in the text of the Bill?
The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Warwick, mentioned child abuse. I too am concerned about that. It is much more prevalent than I had thought. I have no doubt that it has been prevalent for years. In so far as this Bill deals with child abuse, I greatly welcome that.
I have for many years been firmly against having a national police force, though I realise that national structures are required as crime reaches out from local and regional areas. I welcome the fact that this Bill does not opt for a national police force but deals with the needs of the situation with regard to crime. For that reason, I welcome what is embodied in this Bill.
There are a number of fundamental questions I should like to ask in preparation for the Committee stage. I often wonder whether briefing papers could be provided in relation to a Bill such as this which will receive general approbation. Obtaining information on this Bill has not been easy. There are aspects of it that I still do not understand. However, I leave that matter there.
The Home Secretary will be a key player when this Bill becomes an Act, as will the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Secretary of State for Scotland. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is Home Secretary for Northern Ireland, and the Secretary of State for Scotland is Home Secretary for Scotland. I do not see the distinction in the Bill, which seems to relate to London and the Home Office. Where does the Scottish Office come in? I shall try to develop that point in the course of my remarks. Where does responsibility lie for the NCIS and the NCS, particularly in view of the fact that those two Secretaries of State are involved? What part will they play? Where will parliamentary accountability lie, particularly as the Director General is to be independent? I am not clear what "independent" means in this context. Will the individual Secretaries of State be responsible to Parliament? Can Members in the other place or we in this House question a representative of the Scottish Office on certain aspects of this Bill? Can the various reports be debated in Parliament? How involved will the various departments of state be?
I particularly welcome the provision for a national crime squad. The staff of that squad will consist of policemen and policewomen and also civil servants. How will the civil servants fit in? I know about the Police Department at the Home Office; it is one of the best departments there. Information will have to be gathered. Policemen know what to do with information that they gather; but what part will the civil servants play? The director general is to be a policeman or policewoman. How is he or she to be appointed? We had an explanation from the noble Baroness about that. However, chief constables in England and Wales are chosen by the police authorities from a shortlist of five or six names drawn up by the Home Secretary. Will the Home Office draw up the list from which the director general is to be appointed? A name will not just come out of the air.

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There have been questions about finance. I am not clear about that; nor was the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank. The NCIS will be able to levy police authorities. Does that mean that the levy can be questioned locally? In West Yorkshire, which I know best, can the police authority question the levy? Police authorities have always been able to question on finance matters. Will Parliament be able to question the levy? Can the matter be discussed by the Home Office Select Committee?
It has taken 20 to 25 years to build the Police Complaints Authority. I understand that the proposed new bodies will work to that authority. Has provision for that been clearly drawn up? Is it only in the legislation? Has the Police Complaints Authority the staff to deal with complaints from these new bodies set up by the Bill?
There is a curious provision in the Bill relating to reinforcement. Reinforcements to the police in various parts of the country have been a feature of police legislation for many years. There was a provision in the Police Act 1964. Clause 23 of the current Bill provides:
"(1) The Director General of NCIS may, on the application of—

(a) the chief officer of police of a police force in England and Wales,

(b) the chief constable of a police force in Scotland,

(c) the Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, or

(d) the Director General of the National Crime Squad, provide constables"—

to go to other parts of the country.
My Lords, why is that necessary? The reinforcement concept has been implicit in police legislation for many decades. Why is it necessary? There are other questions also that we could ask, but it is only on that matter that I wish to speak today. Accountability matters. I am firmly against a national police force because the tripartite system has been tried and tested over time. This Bill may weaken accountability. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, that questioning of the police force is not so much a matter of the actual operations but of policy. I do not wish to get into that curious argument that we had recently about the Prison Service.
It is quite proper for elected bodies to question the authorities—the Home Secretary, the Northern Ireland Secretary, the Secretary of State for Scotland and no doubt others—on the policies that are being followed. Given the delicate nature of the areas into which the Bill moves, it is vitally necessary that there should be such questioning.
I am glad that we have not moved toward a national police force. I strongly support the Bill. There are many questions to ask, but I wished to speak today on that matter of accountability.
4.11 p.m.
Lord Blaker: My Lords, it gives me great pleasure from these Benches to congratulate my noble friend Lord Taylor of Warwick on an excellent maiden speech. He spoke with humour and authority on today's subject. I have the feeling that he will speak with equal humour and authority on other subjects also. His presence adds
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strength to the House as a whole and to these Benches. I look forward, as we all do, to hearing him again and often.
As the only Member of your Lordships' House on the Intelligence and Security Committee, it is appropriate that I say a few words about the Bill. The remit of the committee is to oversee the expenditure, administration and policy of the intelligence services. I cannot speak for the committee, of course. I speak only for myself. I certainly wish to express my welcome for the Bill. I believe that it will strengthen the fight against serious organised crime.
Three parts of the Bill will be of interest to the committee: Parts I, II and HI, dealing with the NCIS, the national crime squad and intrusive surveillance. The committee has taken an interest in the help which the Security Service can give in the fight against serious organised crime since 1995, before the Security Service Bill was published. In its annual report for 1995, the committee concluded that the Security Service could bring a distinct package of skills to that arena.
The committee made the point that in relation to its previous statutory functions, the Security Service is essentially a self-tasking organisation and that therefore any legislation should make it clear that the service, in its work on serious organised crime, would be acting in support of the law enforcement organisations. Indeed, that is what the Security Service Act 1996 does. In addition, that Act gives to the Director General of the Security Service the duty of ensuring that there are arrangements, agreed with the person designated by the Secretary of State, for co-ordinating the activities of the service in connection with the fight against serious organised crime with the activities of police forces and other law enforcement agencies. This Bill makes it clear that the person designated by the Secretary of State will be the director general of the National Criminal Intelligence Service.
So the effect of the Security Service Act 1996 and this Bill is to lay a duty on the directors general of the Security Service and the NCIS in respect of co-ordination between the Security Service and the law enforcement agencies, which include Customs and Excise. The Intelligence and Security Committee will thus, I believe, be interested in seeing how that co-ordination works and how the relationship between the Security Service and the NCIS continues to develop. I believe that it will also be interested in how the service authority for the NCIS fulfils its role. That is a matter which could have a key impact on the activities of the intelligence and security services.
With regard to Part II of the Bill, parliamentary scrutiny of the national crime squad will primarily be the responsibility of the Home Affairs Select Committee. The interest of the Intelligence and Security Committee will be to see that the working arrangements for the squad enable the intelligence and security agencies to pursue their supporting roles effectively.
I welcome the fact that Part III of the Bill makes statutory the authority to grant intrusive surveillance warrants. I believe that is overdue. The Intelligence and Security Committee, in its annual report in 1995, drew

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attention to the difference between the arrangements by which the intelligence and security agencies must obtain warrants signed by the Secretary of State and those applied to the police by which action can be authorised by a senior police officer. Broadly speaking, the Bill perpetuates that difference. It means that it will be much easier for a police officer to obtain an authorisation than for a member of one of the intelligence and security agencies.
The question that I wish to address to my noble friend the Minister is whether that could lead, where the Security Service and the police are both working on a criminal case, to a tendency for it to be agreed between them that the police will seek authorisation in a situation in which it would be more appropriate for the request to come from the Security Service. Might such a bias develop?
The Bill provides for the appointment of a commissioner to review the exercise of the authorisation powers and for the Secretary of State to issue a code of practice in connection with the exercise of the powers in Part III of the Bill. Those two proposals will provide substantial safeguards. But I should be grateful if my noble friend the Minister when replying will deal with what I suspect will be a point of genuine interest to the committee.
4.16 p.m.
Lord Browne-Wilkinson: My Lords, I join with others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Warwick, on his attractive and interesting maiden speech. Obviously, he will have a big contribution to make to this House in the future.
I fear that I may inject for the first time in this debate a less welcoming note than your Lordships have so far heard. I want to address Part III of the Bill, which confers on the police powers to surveil by bugging and to otherwise deal with private property. Let me make quite clear—I hope there is no doubt about it—that I support fully the thinking behind the Bill. The menace of serious organised crime, in particular drug related crime, requires that the police should have powers additional to those which they currently enjoy at law. Against true serious crime they must be able to conduct covert operations.
Moreover, we learn with increasing frankness that the police have been conducting such operations for some time. The Minister employed a euphemism which I think was called "under administrative procedures". If those are administrative procedures that are lawful, I should be very grateful if she could tell me why and how they have been lawful. I shall revert to that point in a moment.
My difficulty is not with the objective of giving the police the powers necessary to deal with serious crime, my difficulty is with the method that is proposed by the Bill for conferring the necessary powers. It has been the proud boast of Englishmen for centuries that they enjoy freedom—an Englishman's home is his castle—and that has been no empty boast. Indeed, this country and its inhabitants have enjoyed freedom untrammelled by executive action. But I remind your Lordships of the foundation upon which that freedom was built.
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We have no written constitution. We do not enjoy specific constitutional rights against the state. Our freedom depends, and depends only, on the fact that no Minister, no administrator and no member of the police has any greater power or any greater right than any other citizen to enter our property or to seize our person. In particular, the state and its officers have no power to enter our houses or workplaces or to seize our property. Such conduct is unlawful and the administrative action which is apparently being pursued has been, subject to any explanation given by the Minister, unlawful conduct on the part of the police.
That basic freedom which we enjoy because the executive does not have power over us has been established by the common law for over 200 years. It is one of the foundations of our freedoms. Until the passing of the Security Service Act earlier this year—a Bill about which at the time I was not enthusiastic—there was only one exception to immunity from police invasion of our privacy; that is, a search warrant granted by an independent court and not by the executive. In relation to matters of national security we tolerated (with our eyes half-closed because it was such an awkward subject) bugging and entering in the interests of protecting national security. But now, following from the Security Service Act, we are sanctioning the entry onto our premises for police purposes not under warrant of the court or under any independent warrant, but under administrative action.
The common law freedoms to which I referred can be curtailed and taken away by Parliament, since Parliament is sovereign. If Parliament enacts, as the Bill proposes, that it be lawful for the police to enter, bug and search our homes, there is nothing that the courts will, in the future, be able to do to protect us from those rights of the state. The bulwark of our freedom will have gone, and not just for the time being but for ever. The powers will be exercisable against us all—the guilty and innocent alike, in any circumstances which fall within the extraordinarily wide words of the Bill. We will be subject to executive inroads on our freedoms.
Although the Bill is presented simply as one step in the battle against organised crime, it raises—I hope your Lordships will consider this fact at Committee stage—issues of fundamental constitutional importance. I hope your Lordships will not allow it to slip into law without a careful examination of what it provides, so as to ensure that it erodes our individual freedoms no more than is necessary to achieve its limited objective.
At first sight the Bill does a great deal more than that. I will not seek to take up your Lordships' time at this stage with a minute section of the Bill. However, perhaps I can point to one or two of the more glaring ways in which our traditional liberties are being curtailed. If the requirements in Clause 89 are satisfied—that is to say, the right of, for instance, the chief constable to make an order—what is authorised is,
"the taking of such action, in respect of such property",
as the chief constable may consider necessary.
We have been talking of bugging the homes of drug dealers, money launderers and serious criminals. But that is not the only matter covered by the words of the

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Bill. The word "property" does not only include land and buildings; it includes personal property. Therefore, the action capable of being taken includes not only the entry onto property and the placing of bugs, but also the searching of property and the removal of documents and other things found there. If an order is made, that can be done—again, subject to an explanation from the Minister explaining why that is not the meaning of the words.
Those powers are exercisable not only against villains. Everything that has been said in your Lordships' House today is on the assumption that we are only entering the homes of villains; that we can be penal against them. I am not sure that that is right anyway. I feel that even villains have certain rights which should be protected. But in my mind that is not the right reading of the Bill. The powers conferred by the Bill, if passed, are exercisable in relation to any property, to whoever it belongs; it does not have to be the property of a villain.
It is clear from Clause 94(2) that it is envisaged at the least that orders will be made authorising the entering and bugging of the employer's premises, because there is a right to compensation linked to it. We are therefore talking about a Bill which, on its face, authorises not just the pursuit of the rogue, but intrusion into the individual freedoms of people who happen to cross the rogue's path. Again, the Bill provides no protection for the confidentiality of the press; it offers no protection for legal professional privilege, which has been treated throughout as one of the major safeguards of individual freedom. Most fundamentally, in my view, the whole procedure under the Bill is activated, authorised and carried out within one police force.
The Security Service Act took the first step down this road in extending powers of this draconian nature to the security services in the exercise of their police functions; but at least that Act required the personal authority of the Secretary of State. It did not involve one police force authorising itself to do these things. All that we have to protect us is the provision for a commissioner, whose powers are extremely limited, to review retrospectively—not prior, but retrospectively—to say whether or not there has been an intrusion on our premises. What is needed, I suggest—it may be that the Minister is able to explain in due course why it is not possible—is prior consent to the invasion of our property such as is required for a search warrant. As I see this case at present, it seems to me that judicial search warrants will become things of the past. Why should not the chief constable grant his own force the right to go in and take action in relation to the property in question?
I do not wish to detain your Lordships more than necessary, but perhaps I can give two examples of the type of thing that may happen as I see it under the Bill and, for the comfort of the Minister, I do not expect her to respond to these examples on this occasion. There may be a later stage in Committee when she can.
Suppose Mr. A is one of a large number of protestors against making a new road; for example, the Newbury bypass. The form of the protest, as in all these cases, is
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likely to involve the commission of a crime; for example, criminal damage to property or obstruction of the police. Such crime will, to some eyes—surprisingly—constitute a serious crime within the meaning of the Bill because it is a large number of persons acting together.
The local chief constable thinks that it is,
"likely to be of substantial value",
in the prevention or detection of such comparatively minor offences if his force can bug and search the house of Mr. A, the protestor. He authorises such bugging and searching and the removal of documents from Mr. A's house. The evidence available to the chief constable before he does that would not be sufficient for him to obtain a search warrant from the court. The chief constable has reason to believe that Mr. A may be operating not only from home but from his place of work. He therefore authorises entry into and the bugging of Mr. A's employer's premises. From the bugging of Mr. A's own premises, he discovers that Mr. A has telephoned his solicitor and he reaches the not unreasonable view that Mr. A's solicitor may be able to cast light on the matter. So he gets an authority to enter and bug the solicitor's office—unhappily, he may be one of your Lordships' solicitors—and then gains knowledge not only of Mr. A's activities but of the activities of one of your Lordships.
As I read the Bill, all such actions will be lawful. Why should they be? Why should it not be a requirement that there should be a prior authority? This is not serious crime at all in that sense. Legal privilege seems to have no protection.
The second example with which I shall detain your Lordships very shortly looks at another matter. Let us consider Mr. X, an investigative journalist. He writes a fascinating article dealing with drug dealing or money laundering which is published in a newspaper. In accordance with normal journalistic practice, Mr. X refuses to reveal to the police the sources of his information. The chief constable, not unreasonably, thinks that if he could find out the source of that information he would advance the police investigation. He therefore authorises the entry into and bugging of Mr. X's premises. He can also perfectly lawfully authorise the entry into the premises of the Daily Post where Mr. X is employed or any other premises in which the police think they may find the source of that story.
I have given these examples—they are not entirely over the top; they are extreme—as illustrations of the fact that the desirable objective sought by Part III of the Bill has been expressed in such general words that it is capable of appalling abuse. What I hope your Lordships will do at the Committee stage is to look at the Bill not with a view to defeating the sense of the proposals but to cutting down the powers to the minimum. If your Lordships or Parliament do not do that, we shall be eroding slowly—and now, if I may say so, fast—the only protection we have from abuse by the state. I hope that at the Committee stage these powers will be looked at closely.
4.33 p.m.
Baroness O'Cathain: My Lords, I am speaking today not from any direct experience of the police, nor with any experience of the working of organised crime, but solely because I have come to realise that for far too long people like me have been unaware of the ramifications of organised global and national crime; nor are they really conscious of the huge resources that are required to deal with it.
Organised global and national crime is one of those great areas that some of us do not want to know about. Anything to do with violence gets switched off on my TV and I usually gloss over any description of organised crime in the newspaper. I put it in the "all too horrible" basket. That is an abrogation of responsibility because each one of us should be both aware of the immensity of the situation and be prepared to support whatever measures are proposed to deal with it provided the measures seem sensible and are the best possible proposals.
At this stage I should like to say that when I looked at the Bill I did not deal with Part III. However, I was very interested in the comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Browne-Wilkinson, and I am sure that when we come to the Committee stage we shall overcome some of these difficult problems.
We cannot know whether the measures proposed are adequate, relevant and workable unless we take some time to try to get to understand the basics of the situation and appreciate the problems facing those who combat crime on our behalf and on behalf of all the citizens of this country. Organised crime is a huge business. Unfortunately, it is a very successful business in terms of growth and profits. Its tentacles reach a long way; its tentacles actually probably impinge even on Members of your Lordships' House—without their knowledge, I hasten to add. Certainly in business circles—I mean legitimate business circles—the tentacles of organised crime have manifested themselves and are likely to continue to manifest themselves.
The police in this country have shown enormous dedication, energy, determination and brilliance in dealing with organised crime. But sometimes their success can be seen to be despite the structures within which they work rather than due to them. The measures contained in the Bill before us are designed to bring greater efficiency of operation in the battle against organised crime. Because of that, and because they seem in themselves to be eminently sensible, I support them wholeheartedly.
The concept in Part I of the Bill to strengthen the National Criminal Intelligence Service is particularly worthy. It is a natural progression from the setting up of the service in 1992. I support the placing of the service on a statutory footing, separate from the Home Office. It really is an umbrella body to co-ordinate activity of the Security Service to assist the separate units of the police, Customs and Excise and other law enforcement agencies. The very act of centralising the processing of intelligence from all quarters which will be accessible to each of the various agencies—the provision of strategic analysis and information and the setting of standards and
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evaluation of national systems—is efficient and desirable. One wonders why it did not happen before now.
On the question of systems, I should be grateful if my noble friend the Minister could give us some assurance that the mistakes of the past have been taken on board and that in future there will be a nationwide computer system for this area—indeed, for all areas of police activity—which, even if not the same in terms of software, is compatible and easily accessed throughout the regions. On the face of it, this might seem an obvious requirement but, sadly, experience has taught me that far too little overall planning in the area of systems has led to monumental problems in large business organisations. I believe that the police have not been immune to this either.
In Part II the proposal to create a national crime squad seems eminently sensible and falls into the category of, "Why didn't someone propose this when the regional crime squads—all six of them—were set up in 1965?". I suppose one answer to that could be that organised crime, although a threat even then, was on nothing like the same scale as it is now. Another answer could be that the initiative of setting up the regional squads was of itself novel and unproved and to have a national crime squad put on top of that could have been seen as yet another administrative layer. But the success of the regional crime squads is universally acknowledged and I see the proposal to set up the national crime squad as a natural evolutionary development which of itself should increase still further the efficiency of all in tackling the serious tasks which confront them. The proposal seems to embody the latest principles of making people on the ground—in this case, in the individual regions—as involved as ever in the battle against organised crime while adding to their knowledge base by the provision of intelligence information on cases where organised crime is operating across regional boundaries. It is therefore eminently sensible.
Although there currently exists a national co-ordinator of the existing regional crime squads, the Bill will give that co-ordination role more teeth. I was pleased to note in Clause 51(3) that the director general of the national crime squad will be eligible only if he or she—the subsection does not give a female option—holds the rank of chief constable in a police force in Great Britain or in the Royal Ulster Constabulary; in other words, professionals leading a co-ordinating body to ensure that there is increased professionalism, a most worthy and efficient objective.
I should like briefly to turn to Part V of the Bill, which is entitled "Certificates of Criminal Records, &c.". Although the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, majored on the question of the application of Part V to vulnerable groups and to people involved with children, he also mentioned the private security sector. I was glad to hear the noble Lord do so because prior to that point it seemed as though he was indicating that the provision should be limited only to the issue of children on the basis that otherwise there could be a requirement for millions of certificates.

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I am sure that the world of business and commerce will welcome the measures contained in this part of the Bill, and particularly the concept of record checks. The proposals will certainly help to improve the vetting procedures for job applicants. An example of where the proposals could prove to be a much better system than that currently in use is at our airports. Currently applicants for a pass to permit someone to work or, indeed, even to venture on foot or by car to what is called "airside"—that is, the area of the airport where the 'planes are parked, loaded and unloaded—have to produce references going back some 20 years. Such references can at worst be forged or at best be superficial, omitting specific problems encountered by a previous employer in the hope that that particular staff member will be taken off that employer's hands by an unsuspecting potential employer. It happens—frequently. Under the proposed legislation there would be an opportunity to remove some of the ambiguity present in the current system—and that would certainly be welcome.
Similarly, in jobs dealing with cash handling, security personnel guarding premises and other what I would call "high risk/high temptation" jobs, the Bill should make it easier for potential employers to feel a greater sense of confidence about their choice.
My only concern on reading the Bill was the question: is every other country embarked on such a systematic uprating of its procedures and processes to try to combat the increasingly sophisticated and deadly business of organised crime? Crime on the scale that has developed knows no boundaries. We all know that drug trafficking knows no frontiers. A major crime can be perpetrated here today and by tomorrow the criminals can be on the other side of the world. Indeed, in less than two hours they can be in another country.
By its very nature cracking down on crime is secretive and it could well be that the measures proposed in the Bill are universally employed in those countries which either export their criminals, drugs and other menaces to us or, in turn, import a similar list of depravity from us—but it would be nice to know. The Security Service Act, which was debated in this House earlier this year, gave some comfort about liaison, but it would be good to know that the evolutionary steps proposed in this Bill are mirrored elsewhere or are likely to be. Global crime must be stamped out, but I am a realist and, if it is not possible to stamp it out, it certainly must be curtailed and reduced from its present level.
4.43 p.m.
Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, when we debated the Security Service Bill I was concerned about the diversion of scarce resources from the Security Service to help the police to fight serious and largely international crime. Although I welcome this new Police Bill, I remain concerned especially about human resources given the significant renewal of IRA activity based on long-laid strategic plans, and the increase in power and status of the KGB's successor services in Russia.
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However, there is no doubt of the importance and value of the task of attacking international crime, particularly drugs. Hit the drugs and you will often hit the IRA which from time to time relies on drugs to finance its operations while simultaneously, and rather cynically, setting up anti-drug "people's militias" to secure the support of the local population at the expense of the police to whom those people should be turning and with whom they should be working.
I welcome the Bill's provisions to bring together regional crime squads, although I think that there could be some danger in too much centralisation. I welcome particularly the Bill's moves to rationalise information systems on criminals so that knowledge can be widely and quickly made available. Equally, the NCIS and the CRA together should make it possible to deal fast and effectively with other national police forces on such cross-border and trans-national issues as paedophilia, drugs and the money-laundering activities of the Russian mafia in particular. Schengen has made their life much easier.
Therefore, I welcome those provisions, although they will presumably call for significant capital spending on equipment which cannot be expected to come from individual forces. I wonder how effective the safeguards will be against hacking by expert criminal gangs into the operational information networks and the CRA; and, a different but equally potent threat, the possible introduction of viruses which could destroy the database.
I realise that those are obvious dangers which the Government will certainly have considered and provided for; I mention them because adequate professional safeguards and back-up systems all cost money and it would be tragic for a sensible new national system to fail because of lack of funds. I raise this in the context of the indication that the NCIS and the national crime squad are to fund themselves through a compulsory levy on police authorities. That is surely running the risk that the whole thing could go disastrously wrong. I was, however, partly reassured by my noble friend's statements and her indication of how the system will work.
I wish, too, that the RUC did not have to be put in the same category as the British Transport Police and users from overseas and be expected, like them, to pay the costs of the services provided by the NCIS and the crime squads through a system of direct charges. The RUC is surely a part of the UK police network like any other. My noble friend the Minister will no doubt point out that there are special and separate financial arrangements in Northern Ireland, but I believe that on so vital a matter as police co-operation between British police forces the RUC should not be treated as a foreign force.
Turning briefly to the proposed criminal records agency, I was uneasy about taking such vital and delicate work away from the police, who are public servants, and creating yet another agency. However, I understood from what my noble friend said today that the agency will be under the Home Office. I hope that it stays there and is not privatised. I hope that there will

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be a careful system of recruitment—unless those who man the agency are to be drawn from the Home Office. Just as experienced criminals are known to have set up or taken over private protection and security firms—a point made by other noble Lords—there is an obvious danger, for which I am sure that the Government have provided, that representatives of organised crime will be tempted to move in and to place their nominees so that they have access to the CRA. I should very much have preferred to see more money being put into the police budget to pay for policemen within the service to do most, if not all, of that most delicate work, but I see that that would remove the advantage of a central agency.
Finally, perhaps I may urge the Government in establishing stringent checks covering those who work with children, which we must all welcome most warmly, to consider the need for similar checks on those who work with the old and the mentally handicapped as they too are very vulnerable. I believe that if choices have to be made between the need to protect civil liberties and the need to protect vulnerable children, old people and the mentally handicapped, those three groups need to be put first.
I see the need for, and the value of, this Bill and I welcome the general intention to equip the police, with the same but I hope not too much help to the NCIS from the Security Service, to fight international crime and particularly drug traffickers effectively. I felt some concern about the points raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Browne-Wilkinson, but they will clearly be dealt with in Committee. At present the NCIS, the police and the Security Service among them appear to be doing rather well against both the IRA and drug traffickers. I hope that this Bill will help them do better still. I have considerable faith in the usual professional and meticulous approach to the Bill that has been displayed, not for the first time, by my noble friend the Minister.
4.50 p.m.
Lord Dubs: My Lords, first I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Warwick, on his excellent maiden speech earlier this afternoon in which he combined ability, insight and humour in ways that suggested that we shall all be anxious to hear him again.
Some years ago I had the opportunity to visit the National Reporting Centre then in operation at Scotland Yard. There seemed to me to be nothing wrong with mobilising the police on a national basis, except that in the case of the National Reporting Centre, because it had allegedly not been established by the Home Office, there was no accountability to Parliament for the way the NRC operated. That criticism has always been levelled against the establishment on an ad hoc basis of a way of helping the police to operate nationally. Therefore, I welcome this Bill which will help to establish a national crime squad and an NCIS in ways that I hope will ensure that the operation of those two bodies will be accountable to Parliament in the appropriate manner.
This afternoon I should like to concentrate on Part V of the Bill which deals with the disclosure of criminal records. I believe that the issue is how best the public
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can be protected. After all, every offender, even someone who goes to gaol, will return to society. Therefore, whether society is made safe depends on the basis on which offenders resume their lives. Anything that makes it more difficult for offenders to mend their ways and behave in a lawful manner in future does not protect society. I am in total agreement with the principle of the need for checks. To that extent, I welcome the proposed operation of the Bill. However, I have two areas of concern. One is the effect of these measures on voluntary organisations that use volunteers; the other is the extent to which the operation of the criminal record system makes it more difficult for former offenders to get jobs, and therefore society is endangered to the extent that I believe—this view is widely shared—unemployed ex-offenders are more likely to re-offend than ex-offenders who find their way into work.
I deal first with volunteers. Some years ago when I was with the Refugee Council and not in this House I attended an interesting presentation by the Home Office about an initiative to encourage greater use of volunteers throughout the voluntary sector. It was a good initiative which pointed the way to many organisations that had not already adopted that particular path. I have been approached by a number of bodies, in particular the National Centre for Volunteering, who are concerned that the checks under the Bill will impose serious financial burdens on organisations that employ reasonably large numbers of volunteers. By their very nature, volunteers normally represent a higher turnover of people than paid staff. Therefore, the costs of getting checks on volunteers can be disproportionately high.
My noble friend Lord McIntosh has already quoted some of the figures, but I should like to say a little more about them. On the assumption that the cost will be £10 per check for people who work with children—I believe that the Minister said that for enhanced checks the cost would be between £8 and £10—the Scout Association with its 110,000-odd adult volunteers may well have to pay up to £500,000. On top of that, the scouts use perhaps three million regular helpers and supporters who may themselves be subject to checks. The figures for the Guide Association is a little lower. But on the basis of £10 per check, the estimated cost is £450,000. My noble friend Lord McIntosh mentioned the WRVS. That organisation may have to pay £1,250,000 for the checks on its volunteers. There are smaller bodies. The Abbeyfield Society has 12,000 to 15,000 volunteers; the Duke of Edinburgh Trust has 60,000 volunteers. These checks represent very large sums indeed. They could be penal on those organisations that enlist a large number of volunteers to work on local and national projects. We shall deal with this matter at Committee stage. However, one wonders whether it is possible to consider exempting registered charities from payments, not the checks. Nobody argues that these checks should not take place. When people work with children, one needs the strongest possible safeguards. I welcome what the Bill does in this respect, but I am worried about the financial implications for charitable organisations which use volunteers in a purposeful way.

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I turn to my concerns about ex-offenders and whether this Bill will make it more difficult for them to get jobs than is now the case. The Minister has already referred to the three categories of check. I shall refer to the details in a moment. The figures relating to offences committed by young people are quite frightening. Thirty-five per cent. of men and 8 per cent. of women under the age of 35 have some kind of criminal record. One is talking of a substantial part of the population. The pattern seems to be—one does not like to use the word "normal"—that a large proportion of young people who offend get over it and do not re-offend. That is typical of those who have some kind of criminal record. It is important to ensure that we make the circumstances for returning to work such that these people are not prevented from getting into employment. I understand that according to the Apex Trust, a body that deals with ex-offenders, ex-offenders without suitable work are three times more likely to re-offend than those in work. I believe that society is much safer if those who have indulged in criminal behaviour end up getting jobs and are helped to become law-abiding citizens. It is good that the present hotch-potch practice is to be replaced in the Bill by a proper system for reporting records. The present system is a combination of Home Office circulars, legislation and case-by-case decisions by the police. That is an improvement.
I should like to deal with my concerns about getting ex-offenders into work. First, the important concept is whether the offence that has been committed is relevant to the job being sought. Where it is, it is important that the relevant information should be available; but where the offender has committed an offence that is not relevant to the job being sought, I hope that the code of practice will be tough enough to prevent discrimination. The bottom line in all this is that where an employer has the choice of a number of employees all equally capable of doing the job and one of them has a criminal record—no matter how unrelated to the job—and the others do not, it is more likely than not that the employer will say that he does not want the applicant with the criminal record. No matter what the code of practice says, it is all too easy for an employer to say that he will not be interested in that particular applicant. I do not say that it will happen in all cases. I express a concern.
My second concern is whether the information will be accurate. One knows of instances where the information is not accurate, particularly where one is dealing with information that is less tangible than actual criminal convictions. One wonders what safeguards there can be for a job applicant should the information not be accurate.
My third concern is about the code of practice, which in principle I welcome. Why can it not be applicable to all categories of check? I understand that the code of practice applies only to full checks and enhanced checks, not basic checks. I believe that it would be more sensible if it applied to all of them.
My fourth concern is that cautions are now to be brought in. Cautions are not convictions but admissions without legal representation and advice, possibly by individuals who do not understand their long-term
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implications, which will be much more serious if the Bill becomes law in its present form. Moreover, cautions are not covered by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. I wonder what we can do to make the position with regard to cautions more acceptable than it now is. At the very least, if we are to proceed in that direction, when anyone is to be cautioned they should be alerted by the police as to the longer term implications under this Bill if it becomes law in its present form.
My fifth concern when we are dealing with untested information—possibly acquittals or other sorts of information—which the police may have on their records, relates to how it will be used. At one level every employer wants the maximum information about a future employee. That is why employers take up references from previous employers about their experience of an individual. But I am worried that information that has not been tested, information which may be based more on rumour or hearsay—properly kept by the police, I accept—might debar a person from obtaining a job.
Those are a number of concerns. Perhaps I may conclude by saying that it is my fear, as I said earlier, that where an employer has an equal choice between employees, being human the tendency will be to say that the person with the criminal record, no matter how remote from the job under consideration, is better not employed. My fear is that that will do enormous damage to the prospects of young offenders of getting into employment and helping them, as it were, to lead lawful lives. I wonder whether there might be some way in which the information could be vetted or monitored by someone or some body independent of the employer as regards the relevance of the conviction or the offence to the job in prospect.
I do not want to set up new structures in a Second Reading debate, but that might mean that the potential employee could have the matter referred to an independent body which would say to the employer, "No, that is not relevant. You can consider this potential employee along with all the others", or, "Yes, that is relevant. You need to have all the information".
The Bill has a large number of good points. I have expressed a number of concerns, because I believe that if we deal with them we can make the Bill a better one before it finishes its passage through this House.
5.3 p.m.
Baroness Seccombe: My Lords, I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak in this Second Reading debate on the Police Bill—a Bill which is at the forefront of the programme to tackle serious national and international crime. I should like to spend a few moments on organised crime. Organised crime is an international growing and increasingly sophisticated menace to our society. In the UK it is centred principally around drugs. However, fraud, money laundering, counterfeiting, illegal immigrant racketeering, arms dealing and vehicle theft are also major avenues for organised crime.

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All crime is wrong. All crime ruins lives—those of the criminals, and, more importantly, those of the victims. It is timely that we are debating crime today, the date of the AGM of Victim Support, the organisation which does so much to help victims around the country.
There is something deeply sinister and dangerous about organised crime. Where the forces of law and order do not have the right powers and means to combat organised crime effectively it grows, it spreads, and its tentacles reach across frontiers, across cultures, and, of course, across police force areas.
Organised criminals trade in misery. They enrich themselves by peddling poison to addicts and by exploiting the naivety and curiosity of our youth to whom they sell drugs in clubs and schools up and down the country.
As I said in the debate on the gracious Speech, many of our communities are threatened more by the poison peddled by drug dealers than they are from the missiles or tanks of another country. As a matter of urgency we need to co-ordinate as effective a national strategy against the drug menace and menace of organised crime as we have done in the past to combat the external foes who have threatened us. The Police Bill, following the Security Service Act, will help to do that. It will create a national crime squad so that we have a more effective national response to organised crime.
We have a tradition of local policing in this country. Across police force area co-operation is at present based on voluntary co-operation through the six regional crime squads that exist at present. Last year 3,180 people were arrested and drugs worth over £252 million at street value were seized, thanks to their efforts. Those results could be even better and with a national crime squad should be.
To catch serious criminals law enforcers need good intelligence. To convict them, they need to have solid evidence. In 1992 NCIS was set up to gather and disseminate intelligence on criminal activity for law enforcers, such as the police and Customs. So far it has yielded some impressive results; for example, last year 1,378 major criminals were arrested thanks to its work. Its role should be strengthened. The Bill will do that by putting the service on a statutory footing and by allowing it to develop separately from the Home Office of which it is currently a part.
A more effective NCIS will mean more effective intelligence and therefore more evidence to convict more perpetrators of organised crime. Organised crime is the opposite of opportunity crime. It is well planned and deviously carried out. To fight it law enforcers often have to play a game of cat and mouse. Their investigations often involve months of careful vigilance and surveillance. Intrusive surveillance is an essential element of the work of our law enforcers. It often provides the vital intelligence or the crucial piece of the jigsaw to catch and convict organised criminals.
I am aware that there has been some concern about the lack of statutory control over intrusive surveillance operations. The Bill will rectify that. Intrusive surveillance operations will in future be based on a statutory authorisation by chief constables. I welcome
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that move, because it will establish a sensible balance between the need for proper accountability and police effectiveness.
I welcome also the Bill's proposal to establish service authorities along the lines of police authorities to manage the national crime squad and NCIS. I support the Bill's proposals to enable employers to check prospective employees' criminal records more easily by creating the three categories of criminal record checks. There are many professions, particularly in the private security industry, where there is a need for greater examination of an employee's past.
The Police Bill will give our law enforcement agencies such as the police and Customs, the structure they need to step up the heat on organised national and international crime. We need the Bill for that very reason. I welcome it, and I encourage your Lordships to support it.
5.8 p.m.
Lord Vivian: My Lords, I welcome the Bill and believe sincerely that the steps outlined in it are needed urgently if we are to win the battle against organised crime. I am concerned that the proposals in the Bill have not been the subject of legislation before. The police forces of England and Wales to which it relates are to be congratulated on the many successes they have achieved to far.
It is hoped that this new legislation will make all police work against organised crime even more efficient. There is an urgent need to fight these criminals with up-to-date methods if we are to bring about successful prosecutions.
The Security Service, about which we have heard today from many speakers, will now support the police and the Customs and Excise, but it is not a law enforcement agency. The organisation will be a great help to the police and to the Customs as it is expert in long-term intelligence gathering and analysis, which should release some in the police to undertake other vital tasks.
I shall not speak on many aspects of the Bill but limit my remarks to Part I, which deals with the National Criminal Intelligence Service; to Part II, which deals with the national crime squad; and to Part III, which deals with the provisions of authorised entry and interference with property, among other subjects.
I start with the National Criminal Intelligence Service, which is playing an increasingly important and successful role. Its tasks are similar to any intelligence service and include the gathering, analysing, storing and timely dissemination of intelligence, among other roles such as co-ordination and the strategic analysis of the threat from organised crime.
No campaign can be carried out effectively without the best possible intelligence service, and I believe that if we are to be successful in our fight against organised crime the police must be able to co-ordinate it themselves. Important aspects of the Bill will also make the National Criminal Intelligence Service responsible for co-ordinating Security Service activities in support

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of the police, Customs and other law enforcement agencies, and to put that on a statutory footing independent of the Home Office.
The proposed national crime squad, which has been in operation since 1965, will bring together the six regional crime squads in a single body to investigate national and international organised crime. This national squad will complement local policing, and members of the public will still report crime to their local police force. The organisation will have much improved flexibility and quicker response, provided by the integration and co-ordination of the greatly enhanced systems of communication and up-to-date computerisation. The Bill will set the Police Information Technology Organisation on a statutory footing. As we have heard, the national crime squad will not be a type of FBI and it will not end the tradition of local policing, which is an important point.
Speed of reaction in the campaign against organised crime is vital; otherwise criminals can be several steps ahead. We can no longer afford the niceties of the six regional crime squads working on the basis of voluntary co-operation between police forces. It is essential to have a nationally co-ordinated and properly resourced national crime squad which will speed up reaction and put those involved in organised crime on the defensive. Part II of the Bill will enable that to happen.
I turn to surveillance, which can involve entry into property and interference with property or telephones for the purpose of detecting or preventing serious crime, but here I bear in mind the concerns of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Browne-Wilkinson. However, a great deal of intelligence is gained from such surveillance. Without it the NCIS would not be an effective organisation and without an effective intelligence organisation there will be little hope of defeating organised crime.
In reality, what is happening is that the very carefully controlled and authorised current surveillance operations will be given greater democratic safeguards, as this Bill will place them on a statutory basis, providing greater parliamentary openness and accountability. Having worked in an intelligence service many years ago, I cannot impress strongly enough on your Lordships how frequently a vital piece of information to solve the puzzle stems from these covert operations. They are essential, but of course they must be properly controlled. I am convinced that chief police officers are the right people to authorise surveillance operations, and in order to protect the system it is a wise and necessary move to establish an independent commission to review authorisations and investigate complaints.
In conclusion, organised crime is becoming more and more sophisticated daily. It has virtually unlimited funds at its disposal and uses up-to-date technology, which is for ever being improved. If we are to overcome organised crime and bring successful prosecutions against these evil people, many of whom have an outward respectability and live very comfortable lives, the police and the Customs and Excise must be given the fullest support. They must be fully resourced and
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established; given an organisation and structure which will function well; and be provided with legislation which is applicable and workable.
I wish to pay tribute to our brave and courageous police officers who operate daily without concern for their personal safety and who provide a magnificent service to the general public. It behoves us in your Lordships' House to provide them with all the support and help that they need to defeat and overcome all criminals. I strongly support the Bill.
5.16 p.m.
Lord Rix: My Lords, in a previous existence I appeared in many a late night charity show. I was often late on the bill and had to listen to all the previous acts to ensure that when I went on I did not repeat much that had been said. I fear that such a fate befalls me today as 13th speaker in your Lordships' House. Much of what I wanted to say and many of the figures that I wanted to quote have been spoken to by the noble Lords, Lord McIntosh and Lord Dubs, and therefore I shall do my best to avoid repetition.
I wish to speak only briefly on the Bill and in particular on the criminal records agency and access to the criminal records of those who wish to work with vulnerable children and adults. I wish to highlight two areas of concern but perhaps I may begin by saying that I welcome the creation of the criminal records agency. The measures on police checks are a marked advance on what has gone before.
However, I am concerned that vulnerable adults will not receive as much protection as children. At page 11, the White Paper, On the Record, states that enhanced police checks will be available for prospective employees, trainees and volunteers who have regular unsupervised contact with children and young people under 18. No mention is made of vulnerable adults. The most severely disabled people acquire adult status after their 18th birthday but they retain from their childhood the same need for personal care and support and the same vulnerability. To the extent that they are not supported exclusively within families, they may be heavily dependent on both professional and other formal carers and on unpaid volunteers.
One of the sadder learning experiences of recent years has been that people who are clearly more vulnerable to abuse than their non-disabled peers actually suffer that abuse; that is, emotional, financial, physical and sexual. I believe that at the very least the Government should be ensuring that there is equal protection for these vulnerable adults. The case reported last week from Scotland proves that point only too well and I welcome the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth, in this regard.
I turn to the issue of costs, which was touched upon by the noble Lords, Lord McIntosh and Lord Dubs. We all understand that the criminal records agency will be self-financing and will therefore levy a charge for each check undertaken. As chairman of MENCAP, I am only too well aware of the valuable work that the volunteers undertake in a wide variety of settings and of the number of volunteers who work with MENCAP.

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Gateway, which is MENCAP's leisure and recreation service, alone uses 20,000. Even a small charge will have large budgetary implications, and of course there will be substantial additional administrative fees.
I hope that I and other noble Lords have illustrated that the Bill in its present form, excellent though it may be in many aspects, will create a further major obstacle to volunteering at time when the Government are seeking to encourage it through their "Make a Difference" initiative. Furthermore, it could well divert money and resources away from the development of good practice which is essential over and above criminal record checks.
Lord Cullen's report on the public inquiry into the shooting at the Dunblane Primary School on 13th March 1996, noted in paragraph 11.43 that the costs of his proposals for protecting children should be kept within the limits of what organisations can afford and should be subsidised by government if necessary. I hope that the Minister will accept that recommendation but apply it to those for whom MENCAP is concerned—tens of thousands of vulnerable adults. Even though I am the 13th speaker, I hope that I shall be lucky and I look forward to the Minister's response.
5.20 p.m.
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, in rising to welcome this Bill, I have in mind a consensus view which I recall hearing a while ago that international criminals expressed the opinion that if they were caught, the country in which they would prefer to be caught is the United Kingdom. That was not because of the, shall we say, rather good level of aftercare which they might enjoy if convicted. Rather, it was because they felt that because of the complexities of court procedures in this country, they had a better chance of getting away altogether. Had the provisions of this Bill been in place, I wonder whether the car-dealing client of my noble friend Lord Taylor, whose maiden speech I applaud, might not have found himself enjoying that level of aftercare which seemed to me to have been rather more appropriate than what actually happened.
Crime today is more organised but not only that, it is more mobile, as we all are. Two hours on the motorway will take you 150 miles away from where you have committed a crime. If you are prepared to commit a fairly serious crime, the speed limit is not much of a deterrent. Three hours and you can be on the mainland of Europe from many parts of this country. If you are prepared to use the airports, six hours will take you to a continent beyond Europe. And crime is organised to take that into account. We need to organise our criminal fighting services to make sure that they can also recognise that reality.
In particular, I welcome the establishment of a national crime squad because it builds on what exists already. As I understand matters, when the national crime squad comes into being, police who are currently involved with the regional crime squads, which are drawn from the existing local police forces, will be transferred immediately to the national crime squad. The future basis of manning for the national crime squad will draw on existing police services.
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That guarantees the continuation of local police force involvement, which is the basis of British policing. Not only that, it guarantees also a continuation of local police forces because it puts in being an organisation that is created and established to deal with crime as it is today in the wider sphere, which of course the local traditional forces are unable to handle. But, nevertheless, they are very important to us.
In addition to that, the National Criminal Intelligence Service comes out of Home Office control and in effect is established with the national crime squad as another separate police authority. Each of those two new service authorities will operate under a chief constable. He may be called something else but, in effect, he will be a chief constable. That maintains the traditional tripartite interest, with the Home Office representing the national interest, the service authority representing the community interest and the service itself being responsible for and taking care of operations. That is a system which has served this country extremely well and it is good to see it continuing.
Having said all that, I have one or two constitutional questions which come to mind when looking at the way in which the service authorities are established. In Schedule 1, among the core members of a service authority I find included two chief constables. I believe that that is the first time when one chief constable has, so to speak, been invited to sit in superior judgment as an administrator above another who is responsible for operations. As far as I am aware, where that situation is likely to arise, normal practice is that the chief constables would be present on another authority in an advisory capacity. That may be a small point, but I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in her reply to the debate as to the justification for that.
Beyond that, I find also in the constitution of the service authorities a classification called "Crown servants". I am not quite sure what a Crown servant is, but if that is a device whereby someone from Customs and Excise, or indeed the Security Services, can sit on the service authorities, perhaps that is a justification. Again, I look forward to clarification. It may be that a Crown servant is simply a civil servant. I find at paragraph 14 of Schedule 2—and this deals with eligibility to vote—that a member appointed under paragraph 6, 7(f) or 8(1)(h) of Schedule 1 (who are all Crown servants) shall not be entitled to vote at any meetings of the authority or its committees. It may be that such members are there in an advisory capacity; I do not know. But I find it slightly odd that one should take the trouble to appoint a full member to an authority of this nature and then deprive him of the right to vote on its decisions. I ask myself what the poor dears have done wrong. But, again, perhaps the Minister will provide me with an explanation which will put my mind at rest.
I shall have to listen to what the Minister says about financial arrangements because I read the Bill fairly carefully and I must admit that I am not completely clear about them. I understand well enough that the Home Office is to deal with the matter of the establishment costs for these new authorities. That is straightforward. But the matter of the running costs

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seems to me to be over-complex. As I understand it, there will be discussions, first of all, in the service authority and then subsequently between the service authority and the other police authorities and the Home Office to reach agreement as to what the service authority's budget should be.
That will then be parcelled out in the form of levies to all of the police authorities across the country, which will then, having received the levy, send back the appropriate check. I wonder whether a different practice, which is used in other areas of local government, might not be more appropriate in this instance; namely, top-slicing. I wonder whether it would not be better to have the service authority's funding top-sliced from the Home Office grant, which I believe is still 52 per cent. of police relevant expenditure, to be paid to all police authorities so that instead of 30 or 40 cheques going backwards and forwards across the country, after agreement is reached, one cheque could go from the Home Office to the service authority. That seems to me to be a much more streamlined way of doing business, provided of course that agreement is reached in the first instance.
The Bill is thoroughly welcome. As I said, it moves our police services forward to meet the changing nature of criminal activity. I am glad that the Bill is here. I wholly support it and look forward to hearing the response of my noble friend the Minister.
5.30 p.m.
Lord Milverton: My Lords, the Bill seems to have a sure and good basis and foundation which brings some sound sense in enabling a coherent whole of information to be at hand. That can then be passed on to the various forces rather than each force having to gather material for itself. It may even help the regional bodies at the same time. As I understand it, those provisions apply particularly in respect of Parts I, II and IV of the Bill.
Those provisions will enable the police, and the law, to keep ahead of the criminal. People would like to see the screw tightened on those who are a law unto themselves and who seem to have no respect—and, indeed, show no respect—for people be it a girl, a boy, a man or a woman. That is why there has had to be so much legislation on law and order. Many of us admire the Home Secretary's courage on the subject. The Bill as a whole seems very practical in its other details and in its thoroughness with safeguards.
As has been mentioned, protecting the vulnerable is important. But that should not prevent measures being taken to catch the highly sophisticated criminal who uses modern high technology. However, there are times when we must be prepared to have our freedom encroached upon if the police are to catch the criminal with our help. I remember reading a book written by a professor from Edinburgh University in which that point is mentioned. It is entitled Conditions of Liberty and it is a book to which I often return.
Bugging is the business, for example, of records being available. If we really want to help this new body, and thus enable it to do its work—and, indeed, the police
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forces and the regional bodies—then we must be prepared for such things as bugging, especially as regards records being available. Why should we be fearful of such procedures? Any honest person should not be fearful. As has been mentioned, perhaps a way could be found to assist voluntary organisations in respect of such fees.
Finally, I should like to say how refreshing and lovely it was to hear the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Taylor of Warwick. Behind the simplicity of his speech was great depth. Indeed, often true depth is found in simplicity and I believe that that came forward from his speech. As has been said, I am sure that we will often hear from my noble friend in the future and that will be a great help in our debates.
As I said, I wholeheartedly support the Bill. If any amendments are put forward by noble Lords opposite or even from these Benches provided they are good enough, I may support them. However, they will have to be far better than anything my noble friend the Minister proposes. I am thoroughly behind the Bill, my noble friend the Minister and, indeed, the Home Secretary. May this Bill have a good passage.
5.34 p.m.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: My Lords, we have had an interesting debate and one which was enlivened by an agreeable and thoughtful maiden speech from a new Member to this House, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor. As my noble friend Lord McIntosh said—as, indeed, did other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank—we welcome the broad objectives of the Bill. In particular, we welcome the provision in Part I of a statutory framework for the National Crime Intelligence Service, which has been operating effectively without legal authority since 1992.
As several speakers have said, there are serious crimes, such as drug dealing which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Park, pointed out, have helped finance the IRA in Northern Ireland, the Russian mafia and the forces currently fighting in Afghanistan. There are also other offences such as paedophilia, money laundering and serious fraud which transcend not only the boundaries of the police forces in this country but also national and international boundaries. Moreover, modern means of transport and communication mean that crimes can be planned and executed across great distances. Football hooligans, as well as drug dealers, are now international travellers. It is, therefore, essential to have prime intelligence systems that integrate and disseminate information throughout this country and will mesh effectively into other intelligence systems both in this country and abroad. Even within this country, relations between the police and Customs and Excise, for example, have not in the past been remarkable for a smooth transition system of information. Now we all hope that the regular grinding of gears and total stalling of relations will be a thing of the past and that they will be characteristics of outdated, earlier models of co-operation.
It is also to be welcomed in Part I of the Bill that Clause 2 will enable the National Crime Intelligence Service to act as the national liaison body for Europol.

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Our relationships with European police forces have in the past been made more difficult because of our lack of a clear national focus. This should now be remedied. In Part II of the Bill the setting up of the national crime squad is a rational extension of the role of the NCIS. Although regional crime squads individually have done very good work, the fact that they are now being drawn together into a national organisation will, I am sure, make them a much more effective crime fighting squad.
Many people—my noble friend Lord Merlyn-Rees referred to this—are uncomfortable about the establishment of any form of national police service that is centrally directed. But, in this particular instance, I believe that we are in a state in relation to certain crimes where such a national force is inevitable. Serious crime is now more mobile and technologically proficient—major criminals use mobile telephones, the Internet, offshore bank accounts and executive jets—and, therefore, that degree of sophistication has to be matched by a similar sophistication on the side of the police service.
Part III of the Bill is clearly one of the more controversial aspects as it deals with electronic surveillance. It is to be welcomed that the use of electronic bugs will now be given a statutory framework as opposed to secret Home Office guidelines. However, I share the qualms of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Browne-Wilkinson, about the breadth of the provisions. I await the code of practice with interest. Moreover, I am concerned that the complaints mechanism against the unlawful placing of electronic devices in one's home or other properties only allows for appeal to a commissioner. There is no provision for appeals to go beyond that commissioner to any court. I feel that there should be some judicial overview in the ultimate regarding appeals against the unlawful bugging of one's home or property.
Part IV of the Bill deals with the uniformity of supply and procurement of police equipment and technology. That is something which I have been advocating for the past 15 years, both within and without the police service. Therefore, I particularly welcome this part of the Bill. I am sure that it will make the police service of this country much more effective and more able to combat crime.
Part V of the Bill has been extensively discussed by a number of noble Lords. The noble Baroness, Lady Park, and the noble Lord, Lord Rix, pointed out in particular that vulnerable groups other than children are not dealt with under the provisions of Part V, which seems to apply only to children under 18 and not to the old and those with disabilities.
My noble friend Lord Dubs raised concerns about that part of the Bill. I share a number of those. I am concerned about the possible bar to the rehabilitation and employment of ex-offenders who may have only minor convictions and may not perhaps be able to obtain jobs and lead an honest and upright life if they have to produce certificates. I am also concerned about the problems of keeping criminal conviction certificates up to date. People who are unemployed for a long time may have to make many applications for jobs as they may be
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unemployed for many months. They may have to keep applying for an up-to-date certificate of their criminal convictions or non-criminal convictions. That will constitute a considerable cost to jobseekers, some of whom will be on low incomes, and to those who are on benefit. The unemployed who are genuinely seeking jobs will be constantly asked for an up-to-date certificate by prospective employers. That is a serious problem in the way of people obtaining jobs.
One or two noble Lords have referred obliquely to the problem of forgery of these certificates. I am quite sure that sophisticated criminals, and the paedophile rings about which we are so concerned, will soon establish a trade in forged certificates. That is a serious problem and I am not sure how it can be overcome. It is not a reason for not having certificates but it undermines to a large extent one of the major objectives of establishing this system. The problem of the organisations that employ large numbers of volunteers has been dealt with by a number of noble Lords. I, too, have received communications from a number of those organisations. Even if the costs do not fall directly upon them, they are conscious that pressures from insurance companies, trustees and parents may well require them to seek certificates from all their volunteers. That may in itself be a considerable deterrent to volunteers—some of whom may have minor convictions—from working as volunteers with many of these organisations. Although the costs—except the bureaucratic, administrative costs—may not fall directly upon the organisations, nevertheless the provision may constitute a disincentive for the many thousands of people who do good work for various organisations up and down the country.
I am also concerned about the provision on information which is not on the level of a conviction, for example cautions—not all cautions are administered to the same standard—and other information that in an officer's opinion might be relevant. That seems to me such a broad category that it would allow almost anything to be included. It would be much better if there were some standard of proof, or some level of information which should be supplied; namely, that it should be evidence which could tend towards a conviction, and not just be local gossip about someone. However, my overall feeling is that in the end there may be too much reliance upon these certificates.
Paedophiles in particular often do not have previous convictions. They have often worked with children and have perhaps been sacked from a variety of previous jobs, but without anyone being willing to make a formal record of why they have been required to leave. Unless job references are taken up efficiently and thoroughly in relation to work with children, the fact that someone can produce a certificate, possibly a forged one, should not be a substitute for proper employment practices and the pursuance of references for people seeking jobs not only with children but also with other vulnerable groups and with the aged. Nothing substitutes for good employment practices. I am concerned that people may rely upon a bureaucratic piece of paper when employing people for those sorts of jobs.

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Overall, I have a general worry about the centralisation of power. I do not have such a great concern as regards the establishment of the squads. However, as in previous Bills that we have dealt with concerning the security services and in the previous police Act, I am concerned about the extent to which the Home Secretary will have a controlling role. He will appoint five out of the 10 core members of the authorities. I was slightly puzzled to hear the Minister refer to those members that the Home Secretary appoints as being independent members. They are perhaps independent of the police service but they are not in any sense independent of the Home Secretary. It would have been agreeable if members of the new service authorities had included some of the independent members of the police authorities and not just the local authority members. They would then have been genuinely independent and representative of the local community and not just representative of the Home Secretary.
I am also concerned about—and view with my usual trepidation—the fact that the Home Secretary will set objectives for the new organisations and will also set performance indicators. I realise that it will not be possible for a draft order to be put before us because written onto the face of the Bill—which I welcome—is the provision that the Home Secretary will have to consult a large number of people before he sets those objectives. Clearly, until these organisations are set up, the Home Secretary cannot consult with them. Therefore we cannot ask to see draft objectives or draft performance indicators. However, I am concerned that the Home Secretary is reserving for himself such a large element of control in the running of those organisations.
I am also worried about a matter which may constitute a total misreading on my part. I rely upon Second Readings of Bills to instruct me in what Bills are about. Clauses 6(5) and 51(5) provide for the director-general of NCIS and NCS to be sworn in as constables. That implies that the director-generals of those two organisations may not be serving police officers. If my reading of that provision is correct, I believe it may open a back-door for NCIS to be run by an MI5 officer and for the national crime squad to be run perhaps by a retired senior Army officer. I wonder why there is this curious provision for swearing in as a constable the director-generals of those two organisations. If the director-generals are serving police officers, they will already have the powers of a constable. Therefore I am disturbed by the provision that appears to be on the face of the Bill. I should be grateful if the Minister can enlighten me on that point. I believe there are serious principles involved here as regards democracy. I do not believe I am speaking in this regard merely out of partisanship for the police service. If those organisations were run by people other than police officers, I believe that would constitute a serious democratic point. I hope the Minister will enlighten me on the provision concerning the swearing in as a constable.
5.48 p.m.
Baroness Blotch: My Lords, first, I wish to congratulate my noble friend Lord Taylor of Warwick on an excellent maiden speech. It was superbly delivered. All of us who have been through that ordeal know that it is not the easiest thing to do in this House. The speech was excellent and was delivered with good humour and wit and revealed the experience of the noble Lord as a professional in legal matters. We look forward to hearing more from him on other issues. I know that he has much wider interests than just legal issues and we look forward to hearing more from him in our debates.
We have had a full and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton, said, interesting debate on a Bill which deals with matters of national importance. In opening the debate I sought to provide your Lordships with a summary of the Bill's main provisions. There have been many helpful contributions made in response. No doubt many further matters will be raised as the Bill proceeds to detailed scrutiny by this House. I believe it is fair to say that the Bill has been generally welcomed. I shall address as many of the individual points as I can that have been made during the course of the debate. I promise to furnish to the House written replies on those that I miss. I shall make them available to all Members of the House.
In opening, the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, was concerned about the Home Secretary appointing three independent members, including the chairman of the service authorities. He referred to the Police Federation's anxiety about police regulations and procedures for complaints and discipline. We fully accept the need to preserve our local basis of policing. The new service authorities are modelled on local police authorities so far as possible. Police authorities and independent members will be in a majority on both service authorities. But these are important national services and we believe that it is reasonable for the Home Secretary to appoint the three independent members including the chairman. Even so, we recognise that there is room for more than one point of view on these matters. I shall consider the views expressed today as we move towards the Committee stage of the Bill.
We understand the concerns of the Police Federation, although the Bill provides a number of safeguards including a role for the Police Negotiating Board for the United Kingdom. I can assure the House that there will be full consultation with the Police Federation and others before the Bill is implemented.
The noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, asked about the precedent for the Home Secretary's powers to direct the removal of the director-general, and why that was necessary. He also referred to the distinction between a body corporate and an executive agency. The Home Secretary can require a police authority to require its chief constable to retire in the interests of the efficiency and effectiveness of the service. That is a long-standing power, and we are making the same provision for service authorities. I believe that the Home Secretary has had that power since about the mid-1960s. It is a power of last resort to be exercised in the interests of policing efficiency and effectiveness. The body

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corporate status means that service authorities are legal entities. They will be able to employ staff, purchase property and enter into contracts. Police authorities, on which the service authorities are closely modelled, are bodies corporate. The service authorities, as are the police authorities, will be free-standing bodies outside the Home Office. In the normal course of events, Members of Parliament and noble Lords would write to the service authorities about management issues and to the directors-general about operational matters. That mirrors the arrangements for police authorities as they now are. Members of Parliament will be able to ask questions of Ministers in the same way as they can ask questions about police authorities at present.
The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, and other noble Lords, referred to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. The noble Lord asked whether criminal conviction certificates are in conflict with the Act. We would say that they are not. The criminal conviction certificate will contain information only about offences which are unspent under the Act. We hope that that will bring to an end the practice of enforced subject access in which employers require applicants to make a request under the Data Protection Act 1984 for access to information on police computers. That elicits details of spent as well as unspent convictions which is not in keeping with the spirit of the Data Protection Act and may mean that spent convictions are considered, contrary to the provision of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.
The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, referred to the criminal conviction certificates and asked whether they should be withdrawn in order to have a satisfactory system for a full and enhanced check. We intend to consider phasing in the work of the agency with full and enhanced checks first, followed by criminal conviction certificates. In passing, the noble Lord spoke of possible phasing. The commencement provisions will take account of that.
The noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, asked whether people with lost certificates would be penalised. A criminal conviction certificate will not normally be reissued within a certain period after one has been issued. That is designed to protect individuals from being required to obtain them too frequently. That point was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton. There will not be a penalty for losing certificates.
The noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, also asked where there will be scope for fraud and forgery of certificates. Again the point was reflected by the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton, and others. Clause 109 creates new offences relating to fraudulently obtaining or forging certificates. Criminal conviction certificates and enhanced criminal record certificates will go to the employer as well as the individual. That will reduce the possibility of fraud. For criminal conviction certificates we anticipate taking precautions to prevent forgery by using special paper or other security measures as are used, for example, for passports.
With tongue in cheek, the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, asked whether the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nolan, should recommend checks on prospective parliamentary candidates. I remember that at the time the noble and
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learned Lord was sitting, listening intently to what he said. I am somewhat attracted to the suggestion. However, it will be open to selection committees to require prospective parliamentary candidates to produce a criminal conviction certificate; and I suspect that that will help to keep short lists rather shorter. I believe that it has a relevance for all political parties.
The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and other noble Lords, asked whether the need to produce a criminal conviction certificate will disadvantage ex-offenders. Ex-offenders will retain the protection afforded by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. That means that after a rehabilitation period, convictions become spent provided that the person has not offended again, and provided that he did not receive a sentence of not more than 30 months. Spent convictions do not have to be disclosed in most circumstances and criminal conviction certificates will not show spent convictions. This point was made by the noble Lord. I am responsible for the Probation Service and for many of those people who are making their way back into the main stream. It is important that after a period of time there is a clean slate, and, as long as that remains so, that the individual gets back into work uninhibited by the publication of spent convictions. A criminal conviction certificate will serve only to confirm that job applicants are being honest about their applications.
The noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, asked what scope for redress there was for a person who is not given a job because of incorrect information. It is an important point. Clause 104 makes provisions for a new certificate to be issued if information on it is incorrect. Unlike the existing system, the proposals will ensure that save in the most exceptional circumstances—I set those out in my speech—the individual will know what is on the certificate and can challenge it.
The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, referred to the private security industry. He asked whether there should be a requirement to check. We shall shortly issue a consultation paper. One of the issues that we shall address is whether parts of the industry should be made exceptions to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. We believe that the introduction of criminal conviction certificates will be welcomed by the private security industry as a way of checking on employees. Companies using private security companies could also seek them from owners or even directors. That point was again made by the noble Lord.
The noble Lords, Lord McIntosh, Lord Rodgers, Lord Rix, and others had worries about the voluntary sector and the unemployed being charged. Voluntary organisations and private sector organisations have sought access to criminal record checks for many years on the same basis as exists in the statutory sector. Our proposals open up checks to meet this need. I must stress that the only way in which it is possible to expand and widen the availability of criminal record checks is by introducing charges. The increased work will cost a considerable amount of money. If it were left on the existing basis with the police, it would mean—I am sure that none of us in this House would wish it—that resources had to be removed from core policing activities. I believe that the charges, which we estimate

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at about £5 to £6 for a criminal conviction certificate or criminal record certificate, and about £8 to £10 for an enhanced criminal record certificate, will not act as a deterrent either on volunteering or on the ability of an unemployed person to obtain work. The alternative to the individual paying would be to require organisations to pay and, as has already been pointed out, that could amount to a considerable sum. The only other alternative would be for the taxpayer to foot the Bill. That does not seem to us to be the best way of widening access to ensure an efficient service.
The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, referred to the financial burden on voluntary organisations. I understand that there are estimated to be between 8.5 million and 24 million volunteers in this country. It is simply not possible to provide free checks owing to the cost on the public purse. Costs will be minimum and will be necessary only to recoup the cost of the service. Many individuals will pay for their own checks. There is no requirement on the voluntary sector to meet this cost. In addition, much of the voluntary sector will have recruitment processes which will obviate the need for checks in many cases.
The noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, was concerned about accountability and some detailed aspects of NCIS and the national crime squad. We fully share the noble Lord's desire to preserve our system of local policing and tripartite accountability. That is precisely what the Bill seeks to provide. Many of its provisions mirror the arrangements for local police authorities and forces. For example, the director-general of each service will be independent in the same way as chief constables but generally accountable to the service authority. The director-general will be chosen by a panel of the service authority from a list of candidates prepared by the panel and approved by the Secretary of State. That mirrors the procedures for local police forces to which the noble Lord referred. The civil staff will be employees of the service authority, not Home Office staff. NCIS and the national crime squad may need to provide mutual aid to each other and to police forces. Again, the provisions reflect the arrangements for local forces. We have not yet decided on the arrangements for complaints and discipline. There may be a role for the Police Complaints Authority, but it will be one that is entirely consistent with existing procedures.
The noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, asked me why there was no mention in the Bill of the Criminal Records Agency. Legislation is not required for government departments to set up an agency.
The noble Lord also asked about arrangements for Scotland and Northern Ireland. I mentioned them fairly frequently in the course of my main presentation. Except for the national crime squad, in relation to which there are already satisfactory arrangements in Scotland and Northern Ireland, the key parts of the Bill apply throughout the United Kingdom. In line with established constitutional practice, the Bill refers to the Secretary of State. In many cases, as I was reminded many times by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, "the Secretary of State" can mean any Secretary of State in any department in Whitehall. The Home Secretary will normally take the
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lead, but as I mentioned in my opening remarks on the specific topic of the objectives of NCIS for example, the Home Secretary will act in consultation with the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Northern Ireland to reflect their roles as heads of the home departments of their jurisdictions.
To give another example, it will be the Secretary of State for Scotland who will exercise the powers in Part V of the Bill in Scotland because there are separately administered criminal record organisations in Scotland. I give an assurance now that any questions asked about Scottish and Northern Irish aspects of these matters will be answered by the relevant territorial Minister in this House.
The noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, asked what is the status of PITO; why is it different from the status of NCIS and the national crime squad; and why are there so many controls by the Home Secretary, for example in relation to appointments. PITO will be an independent statutory body separate from the Home Office. It is not a Next Steps agency. The arrangements for PITO are similar to those for many other non-departmental organisations. Other Home Office examples include the Police Complaints Authority and the Gaming Board for Great Britain. As befits their status, it is the norm for members of those bodies to be appointed by the Secretary of State, although in the case of PITO a number of members will be nominated by the chief officer and police authority associations. NDPBs are accountable to Parliament through the responsible Secretary of State; but it would be for PITO and not the Home Secretary to answer for its decisions, as befits its independent status.
I was asked why PITO is being established as an NDPB. The model for PITO was agreed with both ACPO and the police authority associations. The service authority structure was designed to meet the particular circumstances of NCIS and the national crime squad. As with police forces, it is important to vest operational independence in the directors-general. PITO, in contrast, is a provider of support services to forces. It has no direct operational functions. The NDPB model allows the organisation to benefit from a hands-on executive board on which all the tripartite partners are represented.
My noble friend Baroness O'Cathain referred to the need for effective information technology systems. PITO's remit will extend to NCIS and the national crime squad, as it does to police forces. Part of the role of PITO is to ensure the delivery of national information technology systems and co-ordinate developments and the delivery of local systems to ensure comparability and compatibility, and to derive benefits from economies of scale. If NCIS needs a particular information technology system it may look to PITO to develop and procure that on its behalf. I think my noble friend will agree that compatibility will be very important within police forces.
My noble friend Lady Park of Monmouth, referring to criminal record checks, was concerned about their being taken away from the police. Police forces cannot meet the increasing demand for checks within existing resources. We did not think it right to ask forces to

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divert resources from core policing activities and looked for an alternative way of dealing with the increased demand for checks. Both ACPO and the Police Superintendents' Association supported our proposals. Criminal record checks are not being privatised. I give my noble friend that assurance. The Criminal Records Agency will be staffed by public servants. I assure my noble friend that the same recruitment procedures will be followed as for other civil servants.
My noble friend Lady Park of Monmouth was also concerned about the RUC being charged directly. I fully accept that the RUC is part of the policing system in this country. We propose that a direct charge should be made in respect of the RUC and Scottish forces to reflect the funding arrangements in both parts of the country, just as English and Welsh arrangements in Clause 17 affect circumstances there.
My noble friend Lord Blaker referred to intrusive surveillance activities as between the intelligence services and the police services. The Security Service will contrive to seek ministerial authorisation for small numbers of operations in serious crime carried out to support law enforcement agencies. It is our view that it would quickly become apparent to the Security Service commissioner and surveillance commissioner if authorisations were being improperly given under the wrong authorisation process. This matter will have to be watched carefully as annual reports are made to Parliament.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Browne-Wilkinson, made some very important points. I will consider his remarks very carefully. However, perhaps I may make some preliminary comments. First, current administrative arrangements are not satisfactory. That is why trying to put operations on a proper statutory footing, mirroring what happens at the moment, is our intention.
In answer to a question by the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, we considered the option of judicial warranting; that is, prior authorisation, but ruled it out. We do not believe that it is right to involve judges at the early intelligence gathering stage as regards the prevention of crime as well as the investigation of crimes that have taken place. There is the danger of the judiciary becoming too closely involved in the investigative process and of its impartiality being called into question. There is a distinct difference between sensitive surveillance and the requirement for search warrants. Warrants come at a much later stage, when police can show to the judge evidence to suggest that crime has been committed. A warrant is needed to show to owners and occupiers of premises before the search for and seizure of evidence to support prosecution. Intrusive surveillance is used at an intelligence gathering stage and may never produce evidence sufficient for prosecution. It may also be important to conceal that it has ever taken place. Therefore we do not believe it is a role for judges to be involved. We realise that there are per se intrusive powers but we believe that there are sufficient safeguards and independent scrutiny by the commissioner to ensure that these powers are used responsibly and indeed sparingly. There is no evidence to suggest that chief officers abuse the system. We are
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confident that they will not be so irresponsible as to abuse the system in future and that provision exists to prevent them from doing so. There are a number of safeguards set out in the Bill. No doubt we shall discuss those in more detail as we move into the later stages of the Bill.
I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, what other options were considered for intrusive surveillance. I have already mentioned the judicial one. Ministerial warranting was also considered. Again we believe it is unusual for Ministers to be so closely involved in these operational decisions.
The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, asked why cautions were included. He was concerned about untested information debarring individuals from jobs. Criminal conviction certificates will not include cautions. These will be available for posts exempt from the provisions of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. We recognise that they are not convictions; nevertheless, they are admissions of guilt. A caution is a response to an admission of guilt and may therefore be relevant. Information untested by the courts will only be included in enhanced certificates and individuals will for the first time see this information and be able to challenge its accuracy. There will exceptionally be reasons why they will not in fact see the enhanced certificate.
The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, also referred to discrimination against ex-offenders and asked why the code of practice was not applied to criminal certificates. Guidance will be provided to employers registering with the agency on employing ex-offenders, including the importance of considering the relevance of offenders' offences to the job in question. The demand for criminal conviction certificates is uncertain but could be high. There will be no register of employees seeking access to these certificates and compliance with the code could therefore not be monitored effectively. However, we shall consider issuing guidance for employers on the use and issuing of certificates.
The noble Lord, Lord Rix, referred to vulnerable people. I recognise, and have some sympathy with, the arguments put forward on extending enhanced checks to those caring for other vulnerable groups than children, such as frail elderly people and adults with learning difficulties. I believe we are right to make criminal record information available for the first time on those working with these groups, but the case has not been established for the need to extend enhanced checks to them. Apart from anything else, the demand for checks on those working in this area is untested but could be very large. It is important to remember that no criminal record check is the complete answer to safeguarding vulnerable people, whether adults or children.
I was pleased to hear the remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton, on this point because these checks will not be the complete answer to protecting children and/or vulnerable people. In employment practices, checking gaps in career histories and taking up references will be equally important. Careful supervision of new recruits is also needed. In addition, the demand for checks on those working with vulnerable people is uncertain but could be very high and there is

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a danger that the agency and the police might be swamped if enhanced checks were available. However, once the new arrangements have settled down, we should of course be prepared to look at the matter again if there were evidence to suggest that the checking arrangements, when combined with proper recruitment procedures, were inadequate.
Big-time criminals go to great lengths to employ the most sophisticated techniques. The most advanced technologies are used in pursuit of their evil activities. We must respond by outwitting them, catching them and offering greater protection to innocent victims. Although this Bill has a national focus, it nevertheless builds on existing local policing arrangements. In the tripartite traditions of British policing, it will put the use of essential surveillance techniques on a statutory footing and ensure that the police have the best information technology facilities. The proposals to give employers better access to the criminal records of potential employees will help to protect the public. We shall consider carefully all the points that have been made in the course of this debate.
Above all, the Bill will provide real and practical help to the police and other law enforcement agencies in the fight against serious and organised crime. I look forward to further detailed examination of the Bill at Committee stage, Report and Third Reading. I commend the Bill to the House.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Great Lakes Region, Africa: Humanitarian Relief
6.15 p.m.
Lord Judd Lord Judd rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what humanitarian relief they have mobilised for the Great Lakes region of Africa following the recent deterioration in the social and political situation there; and what action they are taking together with other members of the United Nations to secure the well-being of victims of this disaster.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I should make clear to the House that I work, both professionally and voluntarily, as I have for most of my life, in the non-governmental sector in the spheres of humanitarian affairs and international security.
It is no exaggeration to say that we are faced with potentially one of the worst human disasters in the history of the world. Thousands are dying—many, far too many—as we debate this evening. While not a few are undoubtedly themselves stained with the blood of past Tutsi victims, very many are weak, sick, fragile, broken people—men, women and children—innocent victims of a terrifying and bewildering nightmare which has overtaken them; people frightened of war, frightened of disease, frightened of starvation and frightened of the bullies who herd them hither and thither as hostages for their own survival; above all, people frightened of death as they struggle even to suck moisture from the roots of plants to keep alive.
There has been a welter of pontificating about morality, ethics and values inside Westminster and outside it during recent months. There is a real danger that history will condemn us all for sanctimoniously indulging in hollow rhetoric about right and wrong while we dither in indecision about how to respond to this immense humanitarian challenge. Our morality will and should be judged by the firmness and decisiveness with which we consistently turn it into action to meet the human crises which confront us. My Lords, just imagine: if it were Iraqi forces massing on the Kuwait border, would the West be wondering whether we could really spare troops for intervention? Or indeed did the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, lose time wondering whether a post-imperial Britain could really mobilise a force to take back the Falkland Islands? Any hesitation to act—to play our part—when the need is as irresistibly clear as it is in the Great Lakes Region will undermine the social fabric of our own society here at home. What kind of example would it be to our young about what decency and civilised values demand? By contrast, if we engage rapidly and effectively, we can help our nation to rediscover itself, to hold its head high as we approach the millennium ahead.
My message today therefore is one of support for resolute action by the Minister and her colleagues if they are prepared to take it. But time is desperately short. We must never forget that when genocide threatened in Rwanda in 1994 the calls for intervention by those who knew the situation were ignored. Indeed, we reduced the UN presence. The genocide happened, with consequences which are central to what confronts us now. We must not make the same dreadful mistake again.
We therefore look to the Minister to reassure us with a convincing action plan. This must, above all else, cover, first, the logistics of the relief operation and how the supplies will be delivered to all those in acute need: what are the implications of the dispersal of the refugees into remote areas, how will they be located, and what will be done to try to reach them?
Secondly, there is the return of refugees to Rwanda. How can we ensure that their return is genuinely voluntary and at the same time that all who want to return are able to do so? What will be done to guarantee their safety on the journey and their security and well-being when they get back; what external guarantees will there be? What additional assistance will be provided to Rwanda to help with successful resettlement? What will be done to screen out the militias and those known to be responsible for genocide so that those who return will be seen to be "clean"? What of those refugees who do not wish to return or who are not yet confident enough to do so but who are not accused of acts of genocide? What will be done, and where, to provide them with a secure haven and will it be at a suitable distance from the border? At the same time, what support will be made available for impoverished Zaireans themselves? They have sometimes seen Hutu refugees materially in a relatively advantaged position.
Third, and basic to future stability, is the need to bring to account those responsible for the genocide and atrocities in the past. What are now to be the procedures

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for identifying them? What are to be the arrangements to ensure that there are adequate resources for the expeditious and convincing administration of justice? What will be the support for internment systems for those awaiting trial and for those convicted?
Fourth, we all know that Kinshasa has become the hub of the arms-smuggling network stretching from South Africa to eastern Europe. What will be done to monitor and control the arms flow into the region? Incidentally, what has happened about the UN request to the United Kingdom to provide information about a British-based company suspected of helping to ship weapons to refugee camps in East Zaïre? What of the arms alleged to be flooding into Zaïre from France and Egypt in preparation for an all-out attack on Rwanda in the near future?
All the measures will of course have to be policed. We welcome the news of one small convoy today but in the anarchic hell which much of the region has become there is no way that civil action alone will suffice on the massive scale that is necessary. To suppose otherwise is dangerously self-deceptive.
What, then, is the latest news about the proposed Security Council authorised presence? What will be the balance between African and other forces, and what will we ourselves contribute? How far advanced are we on all that? What is being done to avoid the unforgivable delays which hampered the military response following the genocide two years ago? Are we all moving as rapidly as we should be? If not, why not? How many more must die while the world prevaricates? Why on earth is there an 11-day delay at the UN? What are we doing to encourage President Clinton to turn his victory sentiments into substance? Will the military presence have United Nations Charter, Chapter VII, powers? Will the military be empowered to use necessary minimum force to enable them to be effective? Surely, we cannot have troops standing by in agonising frustration—as happened in Bosnia—while killing and wounding goes on around them. What is more, we cannot have troops in an international force passively at risk.
But the military mandate must be clear. It must be to enable the humanitarian and political objectives to be fulfilled. What therefore will be the co-ordinated civil and military command structure within the UN operation as a whole, and how will the non-governmental sector be expected to relate to it?
The plan for which we look is for immediate action to fill the political vacuum and to stem the bleeding. It is not and cannot ever be a substitute for a political settlement. It is the peacemakers who have the biggest and most important task of all. We look to hear from the Minister about the role for them and the way that she sees them taking their task forward. The objective must surely be to find those people within the total situation upon whom the future can be built, and to work with them and support them in taking the reins themselves. They must be empowered and neither directly nor indirectly disempowered. That will, it seems to me, require imagination. They may not always be the most obvious people in conventional political terms. Wider civil society may well have a key part to play.
In the region there are in reality four conflicts which could all too easily converge into an apocalypse. There is the conflict originating in Rwanda with the genocide of Tutsis by Hutus, a conflict which two years ago moved over the border into Zaire with, at one point, 20,000 Hutu refugees an hour crossing the frontier as the Tutsis fought back and took control in Rwanda. Those refugees in their refugee camps right on the frontier became a running sore for the continued destabilisation of Rwanda as the armed Hutu militia took control of them.
There is the closely interrelated and intensifying conflict in Burundi. There is the conflict in eastern Zaïre as Zairean troops and Hutu extremists from the camps fight against threatened Zairean people of Tutsi ethnicity who seek to secure their safety. And there is the ominous developing conflict as various Zairean opposition groups form up to fill the vacuum of power as President Mobutu's sinister dictatorship loses its grip. It is essential that we look to the issues of the region as a whole and devise a comprehensive political strategy. It will be interesting to hear from the Minister what work is being done on all this and by whom, in the European Union, the OAU and the UN.
If there is one lesson from the bloody mess with which we are faced, it is that we must once and for all take the concepts of early warning, conflict resolution and pre-emptive and proactive diplomacy out of the realms of political rhetoric and put them at the centre of our political processes. Humanitarian commitment demands that. Economic common sense demands it. We cannot afford the exorbitant cost of repeatedly failing to act in time. It needs a sensible co-operative approach, properly serviced, to strive for shared foreign policy objectives in the European Union. It means a renewed commitment to the United Nations with the strongest possible secretary-general and secretariat operating in a supportive climate of international goodwill towards timely proactive peace-making initiatives. It means standby, earmarked forces for the UN, ready to go into action at short notice if it proves necessary, not least in support of humanitarian operations. And it requires more careful and accountable regulation of the arms trade.
Today, we look to the Minister for news of the Government's immediate plans. But we also look to her to indicate that the long-term lessons are being taken seriously and acted upon. In that, I can assure her, the Government will have our goodwill. If we want the status of one of only five permanent members of the Security Council, we have to shoulder the leadership responsibilities which go with it.
6.26 p.m.
Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, no one doubts that there is a human tragedy going on in Zaire. It is natural that people, moved by the humanitarian crisis, should be urging the immediate dispatch of British troops. Their record in Bosnia, in Angola last year and on a previous occasion in Rwanda is a splendid one. They are a trained and disciplined professional Army and that is their strength. But they are also an Army which is clearly grossly overstretched and

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recruitment, particularly in the infantry, has fallen dangerously. Meanwhile, they acquire more commitments.
The Armed Forces have been subjected and are still subjected to constant change and constant cuts. There is no time for training and no time for roulement. In those circumstances, the Government must be absolutely right not to move one step to commit British troops to yet another foreign adventure without absolutely clear rules of engagement—as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said—agreed beforehand, which allow them to defend themselves and those they are sent to protect, and a defined task and time-scale.
Moreover, we are right not to accept a command structure for a military operation in which military decisions are made not by force commanders but by UN officials. That is the untenable situation in which our troops had to operate in Bosnia before the creation of IFOR. It must not happen again and the UN must accept that.
I hope too that our intention is to enable all the refugees to return to Rwanda and be safe there. Then the world can provide aid and funds for reconstruction and require the Rwandan government to ensure their safety. I feel deep sympathy for the unfortunate Zairois left in the Kivu, but that is a civil war and an internal war in which neither we nor the surrounding African countries have any standing, alas, to intervene, except with aid on agreed terms. If anything can be done on that basis, I should strongly support whatever my noble friend the Minister, with her immense experience, advocates. It is not unlikely, at least while President Mobutu is alive, that the French, for reasons of francophony, may intervene militarily and unilaterally to restore order, as they have done before. But that is a matter for them and for Zaire.
For the sake of the stability of the region, where neighbouring Uganda is trying so hard to recreate a relatively stable and prosperous country and where Tanzania and Zambia respectively need and deserve peaceful neighbours, we have a proper interest in restoring the refugees to their own country in conditions of continuing safety. What we must not do is accept an open-ended, undefined commitment to a goal of bringing peace to the Kivu Province of Zaire. Especially, we must not re-establish or sustain, I suggest, any refugee camps within Zaire. The unfortunate villagers of the Kivu have suffered enough, first, from seeing the Hutus—not just the women and children but also the murderous militia who kept them there—fed and cherished by the UN while they had nothing; secondly, from seeing the hostage-taking, the killing and the destruction of their entire world.
I served in Zaire, and that included the Kivu, in the years 1959 to 1961 (the year before independence and the 18 months afterwards) when the UN was there in great strength. We need to understand and recognise the size of that vast country, the appalling lack of roads and other communications, the difficulties which the rains will bring and the absolute lack of law and order for any effective infrastructure. There will be no one to
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negotiate with who has the power to deliver anything for more than a few hours, and that is probably true of the president himself.
Sadly, Zaire is not a product of colonialism but of the absolute failure of the Belgians to prepare the country for independence. Robert Gardiner, the great Ghanaian who was the last and greatly respected head of the UN operation in the Congo and who became head of the Economic Commission for Africa, always reminded Africans that the British brought the rule of law and ended the power of the witch doctors and the slave traders.
Very soon after the Congo became independent, three of Lumumba's ministers came to me to ask to become a British colony; and I was once summoned to Stanleyville as the consul three months before independence to face a group of ex-EOKA terrorists from Cyprus who had settled there and who demanded that Britain should take over the Congo before it collapsed into anarchy.
I say those things, first, because the state of Zaire arises from the fact that it entered independence with—though it had primary education—not one trained Congolese civil servant, lawyer, doctor or other professional infrastructure and with an army with not one black officer. The Congo was not a colony; it was a fief of the Union Minière and it has paid dearly for those beginnings. But, alas, it is an independent African country. We cannot intervene internally, tragic though the situation is, except to return the refugees to their own country with the consent of the government.
Therefore we are asked to commit our troops, scarce and valuable as they are. May we expect those same people who are calling for the use of British troops—in my view, quite rightly in the circumstances—but who cannot understand why a penny should be spent on defence to fight for more money and resources for defence? Supporting humanitarian tasks has proved to be yet another of the Army's remarkable skills, but it must be paid for. I urge the House to care for the suffering that is happening, but to keep cool heads; to support practical measures and measures that are reasonable and right. I am sure that we can rely on my noble friend the Minister to do all that needs to be done; she is a Minister of experience.
6.32 p.m.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, everybody knew what was happening in eastern Zaire. The crescendo of violence against the native Tutsi population had been reported by NGOs, by the UN Special Envoy Raymond Chrétien, by Human Rights Watch/Africa and by the media. Yet no attempt had been made to disarm the Interahamwe and the remnants of the FAR in the refugee camps. As the noble Baroness said, we fed them and brought them back to strength so that they could resume the genocide in Rwanda and perpetrate a new genocide on their immediate neighbours in Kivu.
We knew about the copious flow of arms into the region, yet we did not insist on stationing observers at the airports and on the borders between Zaire on the one hand and Rwanda and Burundi on the other. That must

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be done now, and vigorous measures must be taken against those supplying the weapons, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said. There has been abundant evidence not only of the supplies he mentioned, but also of Russian involvement, and many allegations against other clandestine suppliers, such as the report which appeared in the Belgian daily De Morgen on Saturday, that the Belgian armaments group FN is supplying ammunition from a factory in Kenya to the Interahamwe.
The noble Baroness said that we had no standing to intervene. But do the Government consider that the crisis in Zaire is a threat to the peace? If so, will they help to formulate a resolution in the Security Council under Article 40 of the Charter to,
"call upon the parties concerned to comply with such provisional measures as it deems necessary or desirable"?
That would have to be done, under Chapter 7, as a preliminary to any intervention which did not have the approval of Zaire or Burundi. The Zairean authorities would have to be asked to agree to stop their forces collaborating with the Interahamwe and the remnants of the FAR, and indeed to use their best endeavours to disarm their forces on Zairean territory. They would have to agree to stop the floods of arms and ammunition passing through Kinshasa. The leader of the Zairean armed alliance, Laurent-Desire Kabila, which now controls large areas of Kivu province including the main towns of Bukavu, Goma and Uvira, would have to be asked to agree to a cease-fire.
With those provisos, a UN force could undertake the task of protecting aid agencies operating in eastern Zaire. The object would be to establish a safe haven in the areas under M. Kabila's control, to be precisely defined, through which refugees could return to Rwanda in an orderly fashion, screening them in the process and facilitating the arrest of any persons accused of having taken part in the genocide.
The immediate task must be to bring help to the half million people now gathered at Mugunga, many of whom are already dying, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said. As the Defence Secretary, Mr. Portillo, said on BBC radio this morning, the UN has to table a plan and we can then contribute on the humanitarian side certainly, and perhaps with troops as well, though I agree that the force must be African-led. If the South Africans are unable to offer more than logistical help, perhaps the United Nations would consult ECOWAS about the possibility of diverting some of the additional forces that were being sent to Liberia, as a temporary measure. Chad has now offered to contribute troops, and President Pasteur Bizimungu says that Rwanda has wholeheartedly accepted the recommendations reached at the Nairobi regional summit last week, including the formation of a neutral force in eastern Zaire to enable the humanitarian aid to reach the refugees.
The Zairean prime minister, with whom the noble Baroness had discussions only a couple of weeks ago, met the UN representative to the Great Lakes region, Raymond Chrétien, on Saturday. He said that he was in favour of a multinational force being sent to the region, though he made no comment on the Nairobi proposals
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that a neutral zone should be created in eastern Zaire. The forced contribution of 1.6 million dollars from business in Kinshasa to finance what is described as the,
"war effort against the eastern invader",
by the radio Voix du Zaire does not auger well for the restoration of peace in Kivu and I hope M. Chrétien will tell the authorities in Kinshasa that the cease-fire means an undertaking not to try to recover territory now controlled by the rebels.
If a UN force is sent in, as everybody agrees, it must have clear objectives and those must be compatible with the long-term political settlement of the region's problems. Horrendous ethnic conflicts have occurred in Rwanda, Burundi and now in eastern Zaire, and the legacy of fear and enmity makes it virtually impossible for everybody to return to their towns and villages and settle down together as though nothing had happened. The UN Commission which investigated the assassination of President Habyarimana of Burundi on 21st October 1993 and the massacres that followed, reported in August that acts of genocide had been perpetrated against the Tutsi minority, and that the Tutsi army and civilians indiscriminately murdered Hutu men, women and children. Since then Burundi has teetered on the brink of further explosion. The events in Rwanda, which resulted in the death of perhaps a million Tutsis, also constituted genocide. Now, in Zaire, a third tragedy is occurring, mostly out of sight but within the knowledge of anybody who reads the newspapers or listens to the radio.
In 1859 the then Foreign Secretary, Lord Malmesbury, said that Ministers took their stand on,
"the territorial arrangements of 1815, which have ensured the longest peace on record".
We take our stand nowadays on the territorial arrangements that followed the peace of 1945, ignoring the fact that boundaries have always changed throughout recorded history and will continue to change. The only question is whether they do so by violence or by orderly, peaceful means. It may be extremely difficult to separate the disparate ethnic groups in the Great Lakes region so that homogeneous states may be created; but I believe that may be the only reliable way of preventing the nightmare of megadeath every 10 years.
6.40 p.m.
Lord St. John of Bletso: My Lords, the horrific genocide in Rwanda in 1994 will remain a permanent scar on the face of the African continent. Now, two years on, fears are mounting, as many noble Lords have mentioned, of an equally horrific genocide; this time in retribution for the slaying of so many hundreds of thousands of Tutsis.
I have spent most of my life in South Africa and have seen and experienced much of the suffering there as well as in Angola and Mozambique. Therefore, my feelings for the plight of the hundreds of thousands of refugees in eastern Zaire are almost those of an African. We have heard this evening of the desperate calls for concerted international military intervention. We have also heard

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recently on the news of NGOs expressing the hopelessness of the situation there and warnings by the Tutsi leaders against international military intervention.
Last week Time magazine carried a two-page article aptly headed "Death cries of a Nation". The beginning of the article quoted Ernest Hemingway in 1954, soon after he visited Zaire, when he wrote,
"lake Kivu is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen … it is certainly much more beautiful than Lago di Como and I am quite sure that it contains less dead bodies, of human beings at any rate".
Now, almost 40 years later, caught in the crossfire between Rwanda and Zaire, almost a million Hutu refugees are in squatter camps along that same lake, and on the move. The refugees are almost entirely cut off from emergency relief and have no food, nor clean water, nor medicine. In the words of Time magazine:
"As for Hemingway's lovely lake, the expected epidemic of cholera will certainly adorn Kivu's shores with a necklace of corpses".
Those are emotional words, my Lords.
The Question of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, asks what humanitarian relief Her Majesty's Government have mobilised for the Great Lakes region of Africa and what can be done, with other members of the United Nations, to secure the well-being of the victims of this horrendous disaster. The deterioration of the social and political situation in the region has been apparent for many months and, to make a rather gross analogy, has been like a boil about to burst.
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, has, in a very poignant manner, described the crisis and the desperate calls for international assistance. He also asked many searching questions which will need to be answered. What is clear, however, is that time is not on our side and that there are no quick fixes to this crisis. The reality of the many civil wars of Africa has been that food aid has so often been used as a weapon by warring factions, thereby denying such aid to those at whom it has been targeted.
One of the major problems which is apparent in this crisis is the inability of the so-called Tutsi rebels to prise out the Interahamwe militia, a point that has already been made by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. They are immersed among innocent refugees. It is an impossible task to prise them out. Who, if anyone, has a solution to this problem? Moreover, if there is any chance of negotiating safe corridors for aid to get to the refugees, there will have to be safeguards to protect international peacekeepers where it is apparent that rebel Tutsi leaders cannot control their followers. As a spokesman from Médecins sans Frontières explained on the news this morning, aid workers need not just safe corridors to get the aid to the refugees, but more importantly need to assess those needs before the aid can be distributed and targeted.
With limited reliable information on the plight of the refugees, one of the most reliable and useful sources of gathering information has been the broadcasts of the BBC World Service. In the foreign affairs debate following the gracious Speech there were many calls for Her Majesty's Government not to make any further cuts to this invaluable service. I hope the Minister can give us some encouraging news on this point.
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So what can practically be done to address this crisis and what are the major objectives? Although the Prime Minister indicated in a recent interview that Her Majesty's Government may be prepared to send a military taskforce to assist in securing a safe corridor for aid, in reality this seems unlikely unless an international taskforce includes American troops. The recent experiences of American troops in Somalia may deter them from sanctioning this action.
I believe that there has to be a short-term, a medium-term and a long-term solution if this exercise is to be effective. There have been many calls for a special African crisis reaction force. This initiative was promoted earlier this year by the United States. The establishment of a 10,000 strong African crisis reaction force had financial backing from the United States and commitments had been made by Britain, Canada, Ireland and Belgium. However, Nelson Mandela has made it quite clear that he does not want South Africa to be the policeman of the continent, but will respond to a call from the United Nations. The Tutsi rebel leaders have indicated a far more willing approach to an all-African crisis reaction force than an international one. Although President Mobutu has promised his support in trying to achieve a political settlement, can he be trusted? I doubt it. Many cynical observers say that this is an African problem and that therefore we should leave it well alone and let the Africans resolve their own problems. I find that view galling and beyond belief.
The medium-term solution must be to encourage the refugees to return to their homes in Rwanda and to ensure them some protection when they get there. If Her Majesty's Government are to send a military force, we shall need to determine and agree an exit strategy if it is successful in its objectives. The noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, has played her full role in seeking to address the many international crises that have erupted over the past few years. I hope that in her winding-up speech the Minister can give us some encouragement of what measures Her Majesty's Government intend to take. I do not profess to have any answers, but simply caution that unless immediate international action is mobilised, we are on the brink of another horrific catastrophe.
6.47 p.m.
Lord Desai: My Lords, we are all grateful to my noble friend Lord Judd for raising this subject. My noble friend asked a number of questions. Some were of immediate consequence while others were of a longer-term nature. I want to concentrate mainly on the longer-term question but I wish to say a few words about the immediate situation. Yes, there is an urgent need for humanitarian relief, but humanitarian relief is not a matter of food alone. When one provides humanitarian relief, one needs someone to ride "shotgun", otherwise the relief cannot be provided. It is not at all clear to me that British, French or American troops are the best troops to do this job.
The talk of a multinational African taskforce has to be taken seriously and encouraged as much as possible. We often feel, perhaps because of past colonial guilt or feelings of omnipotence, that if there is a crisis we have

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to solve it. We may not be the best people to solve it but we may be the best people to help other people to solve it. Therefore, the long-term solution not only of this crisis as it unfolds but perhaps of future crises may be to set up an African taskforce or a force under UN leadership of various regional bodies which is ready to intervene whenever necessary. The great powers can provide the material support and the money. I know that they could provide troops, but I am not sure that troops are necessarily the right answer.
As many noble Lords have said, what we are witnessing is a crisis which was not unanticipated. It could perfectly well have been foreseen long ago. It is partly due to the general collapse of the state across Africa. This is not the only such crisis. There have been similar crises in Somalia, the Sudan, Liberia and Sierra Leone. There have been civil wars in many countries. Indeed, the Zairean civil war has just started and it will continue for a long time. Any longer-term solution must consider the question of how sacrosanct are boundaries in Africa. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, referred to that. We must also consider which combination of African and other nations will guarantee that, as the economic crisis deepens in Africa, the political crisis there will not take too many lives. I am not an optimist on that score. I think that lives will be lost and we must do something about it.
The crucial problem is that last year, the 50th year of the United Nations, we failed to do anything fundamentally to reform that body. Although we all know of the problems of crisis intervention, we have not set up any machinery to deal with them. We have not been able to strengthen the humanitarian relief agencies with a military arm. Furthermore, the finances of the United Nations continue to be in a parlous state. The United Nations, to which we all look and to which we shall all continue to look, does not have any capacity to react immediately to crises. Vital time is always lost before the UN can act. Given the structure of the UN—perhaps we pay too much respect to national sovereignty—it cannot act unless with the consent of many nations, including that of the state where the intervention is to take place. If the Zaireans do not want United Nations troops, the UN will be crippled.
In the medium term, we must find a different way of thinking about global humanitarian crises. We need the UN to have the power to intervene in a crisis without invitation in the needs of humanity. The United Nations is not only a union of nation states. It must have something to do with humanitarian problems anywhere and everywhere and regardless of the country which has caused them.
One of the problems in the present crisis is that many Rwandan refugees do not want to return to Rwanda. They do not believe that the Rwandan government can give any guarantee of their welfare. Indeed, they have run away precisely because they have not given them such a guarantee. We think in terms of Rwandan refugees returning to Rwanda and of refugees from Burundi returning to Burundi, but that is not the solution because people there do not think like that. They do not come with national labels—and if they do, those labels are no guarantee of their welfare.
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We are not used to thinking in such terms. We think in terms of a nation state taking care of its people. Sadly, it has been shown in Africa in the past 10 years that the nation state is not the best guarantor of the welfare of its own citizens. Therefore, the United Nations, which is hinged on the sovereignty of the nation state and which thinks through nation states, is not well prepared to intervene. I am sorry to have to raise this, but there will be more crises in Africa and we have to think now of how to solve the next crisis and the next but one.
6.54 p.m.
Viscount Waverley: My Lords, going over my notes at the weekend of a trip to the region two years ago I came across a section on refugees. "Destabilising factor", I noted, and in brackets "powderkeg—must be addressed". I say that only to illustrate that the refugee crisis has been long brewing. The broad criticism levelled at regional governments has been their inability to create an environment suitable for a return. But what aggravated the crisis can be summarised in one word: fear—fear caused principally by the militia groups taking refuge within the camps and spreading misinformation. Word had it, for example, that once inside the transit camps the returning refugees would be lined up alongside a pit and shot. That is not much of an incentive. A return of refugees would have exposed the militia and led to arrest.
The UN organisations must be commended, however, for doing what they could. Onward transportation was supplied from the transit camps and they provided the raw essentials to enable a fresh start—agricultural tools, seed and protective clothing.
There are, and always should be, lessons to be learnt from what has gone wrong, but they should not come at this stage. We are where we are and the questions can only be: what are we going to do about it now, and, how in reality is a pluralist society going to evolve? We must consider the longer term. The refugees and the local people of Zaire urgently deserve assistance. The priority is to convince the government of Rwanda, the leaders of rebels in Zaire and the government of Zaire to allow NGOs, or at least a number of them, to reach camps in Kivu. That authorisation should be extended to UNHCR and the World Food Programme. That would relieve the immediate situation.
I now turn to the question of any role for a military presence and in doing so wish to offer a cautionary note. It must not be forgotten that there are 500,000 refugees from Rwanda in Tanzania with no problem because the government of Tanzania are in full control of their territory. That is not the case in Eastern Zaire, almost a terra nulla. In consequence, military intervention should be decided upon only as an option of last resort due in large part to the absence of a front line. Indeed, a large foreign presence could exacerbate tensions and aggravate the crisis as it would give hope to Hutus that they will regain control of Rwanda and impose their views in Burundi. At the same time, it would have the effect of making the Tutsi more paranoic. Only extremists on both sides would gain from a military presence.

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The following questions should be carefully considered before any UN-led force enters the region. For how long would a military presence be maintained? What would be the criteria for return if a crisis breaks out after departure?
What we must all do is turn to mechanisms to bring about peace, reconciliation and stability in the long term. Military intervention will not achieve that. It is my belief that the people of the region, Hutu and Tutsi, should be told without ambiguity that it is they who must find the way to peace. The international community can only help in facilitating the process of reconciliation.
I wish to propose that the following be undertaken after helping the refugees in Zaire. First, there must be assistance for the peaceful return of Zairians to their villages and refugees to Rwanda with an assurance as to their safety. Secondly, a credible effort must be made to separate armed Hutu extremists from the innocent refugees. Thirdly, a press campaign for reconciliation should be undertaken by the government of Rwanda targeting innocent refugees. Fourthly, funding should be made available for the Arusha Tribunal and the reconstruction of Rwanda. Fifthly, political issues such as constitutional reform and institution building should be devised in a 10 to 15-year programme to achieve a peaceful cohabitation of both communities. Sixthly and finally, one of the principal causes of the crisis is the absence of effective government in Kivu. The succession of President Mobutu, if he is really sick, should be anticipated and planned for; if he is to return, he must be made to commit to equitable, responsible and firm leadership.
In conclusion, Hutus and Tutsis have shared the same territory for centuries in comparative peace. They share the same religion, language and culture. The need for Rwanda and Burundi to adopt a similar approach on political, security and economic matters should be understood. A useful long-term objective could be joint integration into the East African Association or an enlarged SADCC. Only then will a world of peace with opportunity prevail.
7 p.m.
Lord Rea: My Lords, I share with other noble Lords the concern that Nero-like we are fiddling while Rome burns. I looked up that reference in my encyclopedia and discovered that Nero was not fiddling but reciting one of his own poems of which he was particularly proud. It seems to me that that is more like the hollow rhetoric that has been referred to by my noble friend.
As the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, has said, in the past 24 hours there has been some good news. Both Zaire and Rwanda have said that they will allow aid agencies to send some aid convoys through to the refugees, if the refugees can still be located. However, it is right that they should be protected by some kind of miliary presence, as the Security Council has agreed. I understand the difficulties that this presents. I would much prefer to see an African-led force. If that were so, I would adopt the suggestion of my noble friend Lord
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Desai that we should provide the finance. We are rich and African countries are exceedingly poor. They are in debt.
France has stated its immediate readiness to go in as part of a UN force. Interestingly, Spain has said the same. We have shown a rather more guarded readiness. The noble Baroness will be aware that there are problems about French intervention. Clearly, they have a highly effective military presence in Africa, with an almost non-nuclear force frappe ready to go. They are familiar with the area, having occupied part of Rwanda after the 1994 genocide. While that exercise possibly saved some lives, it also allowed some of the Interahamwe, the perpetrators of the genocide, to escape. Since then it has forcibly taken control of the refugee camps inside Zaire and used them as bases from which to re-equip. They have boasted openly of plans to re-conquer Rwanda and have discouraged, and even actively prevented, ordinary Hutus from returning home. My noble friend and others have said that the camps have been a running sore on the borders of Rwanda.
I believe that a close parallel can be drawn between these camps and those of the Khmer Rouge and their allies on the Thai/Cambodia border just out of reach of Cambodian government forces. The difference is that Zaire, which has allowed its territory to be used by the Interahamwe while tolerating the Hutu refugees, is a weaker and less integrated state than Thailand, so that Rwanda, with its fellow Tutsi ethnic brethren on the other side of the artificial border, in Banyamulenge in Zaire, have lost patience and gone on the offensive.
By permitting elements of the previous genocidal regime in Rwanda to regroup and re-arm in the camps in eastern Zaire we have allowed the present tragic situation to develop. That theme has prevailed throughout all of the speeches today. I do not necessarily blame this country alone. Although we have given quite generous aid, we have chosen not to listen to the urgent warnings of representatives of the United Nations and many aid agencies about the growing arrogance of the Interahamwe and other unrepentant revanchist Hutus in the refugee camps. I agree that it would not have been easy to go into the camps and disarm these dangerous groups, but it would have been possible to do it with a small military commitment organised by the United Nations if the will had been there at a much earlier stage. Logically, the French might have been the leader of such a force, but it appears that they have another agenda—and a very much anti-Tutsi agenda.
I do not wish to go on record as implying that all in the Tutsi garden is rosy and all in the Hutu garden is murky. Over the centuries, particularly since the Belgians became the colonial power, Tutsis have exerted an arrogant dominance over the Hutus both in Rwanda and Burundi. This was encouraged by the Belgians, perhaps because of the vacuum which was created by the failure to train local people to take responsibility, so that when they left there was chaos. Old scores in no way excuse the blood bath of two years ago. As my noble friend has said, the first step to normality and the return of innocent refugees to Rwanda must be to bring the perpetrators of that crime to justice. We know that many are in Zaire and some have fled

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further afield. As I mentioned in a Starred Question on 31st August, some have ended up in the francophone commonwealth.
How can the problem be overcome? It will be very difficult to mount an external operation which specifically excludes the French, since they made the first offer to go—some might say too eagerly. I suggest that this is a case for careful diplomacy. I should like to pick up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Park. We have a reputation for bringing law to colonial territories. Let us go back and adopt that role again. In our attempts to screen those in the camps and those who have left the camps we must bring these people to justice so that we end up with the right solution; that is, a regional conference to re-examine the entire structure of the nations in the Great Lakes region.
7.8 p.m.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, before I address the question I remind your Lordships that I have an interest in this matter in that I am involved in an NGO which is operating in Rwanda at the moment. Further, a British military deployment may also present me with personal opportunities.
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, is to be congratulated on introducing this Unstarred Question so promptly. He referred to the consequences of delayed action. Last year time and again the Rwandans asked me where the international community was during the genocide. I could not provide a satisfactory answer. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, and others have referred to any UN mandate and the rules of engagement. The rules of engagement of UNAMIR were very limited. But there is also a problem about interpretation of a mandate. The differences in interpretation within the UNPROFOR contingents prior to NATO and IFOR were noticeable. The manifestation of this was the difference in protection provided to NGOs in different sectors of Bosnia.
The noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, referred to the BBC. I echo his comments. How was anyone, including governments in Africa, to understand what was happening without the BBC?
The noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, referred to misinformation. At one point the infamous Radio Mille Colinen was transmitting inside Zaire. Such a situation can be countered by the neutral BBC World Service.
The situation in Zaire is clearly one of chaos. However, it is important to remember that Rwanda is stable thanks to the efforts of the Rwandan government, the international community, and, not least, the Minister's Overseas Development Administration.
Over the next few days the situation will become clearer and we shall be better able to see what needs to be done. There is no point in making any military or other deployment if the requirement for it is not fully understood.
One of the past problems is that since 1994 the international community has sustained hundreds of thousands of refugees close to the Rwandan border. In fact one can see Rwanda from the camps. The camps should be at least 50 kilometres away from the border.
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That would have solved many of the problems caused by the Interahamwe crossing the border and causing mayhem within Rwanda. The Interahamwe and former government forces have been mixed in with the refugees. Their mission has been to destabilise the Rwandan government.
One of today's problems is that we do not know where the refugees are, but they will certainly appear wherever there is food and safety. We need also to determine the situation of the Zairians themselves, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said. On the food side, the local produce is not being moved to market, but that situation may change rapidly. There is bulk food in the region, but, as always, the difficulty is getting it to where it is needed.
One of the limiting factors is the rate at which refugees can be processed back into Rwanda. The aid machine can accommodate a maximum of 10,000 refugees a day. There are well over 1 million refugees to be repatriated. What can be done? The opportunity for large-scale repatriation can now be seized. The Rwandans and Zairians do not want refugees to be sustained inside Zaire. That implies moving the refugees to Rwanda and then separating the Interahamwe or former government forces. It is vital that the refugees cannot take any weapons into Rwanda.
For there to be voluntary repatriation, the refugees need to be confident that they will be treated properly. An international military force may be able to do that in co-operation with the RPA. The Interahamwe and others are unlikely to enter Rwanda, but they must not be allowed to stay near the border. They must not be sustained there by the international community, as it has done in the past. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, referred to the need for voluntary repatriation. However that needs to be tempered with the need to resolve the refugee situation.
A further difficulty will be the real estate needed for huge transit and screening camps. The physical relief in the area around Gienye makes it extremely difficult to locate suitable areas for such camps. Indeed, the camps in and around Goma were less than ideal.
As for the use of a military force, as always one must be clear about the mission and its duration. Many noble Lords have referred to that point. There are three possible roles. The first will be to secure humanitarian aid corridors. We should note that they should largely be one way; that is, refugees back to Rwanda. The second role would be to provide logistic support, but to who, bearing in mind that the UN already has a large system in theatre? However it is an easy role and relatively risk free. It would be easily time limited. The third role would be to manage the separation of the Interahamwe and former government forces from the genuine refugees. That is a rather more risky role and could take a long time. If there is to be a deployment, I should be interested to hear the Minister say what that role might be.
As for who is to provide the troops, the most important point to understand is that any French or Belgian troops would not be acceptable to the Rwandan government. Again, many noble Lords have referred to

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that point. I like and admire the French, but I do not believe that they should deploy to the Great Lakes. The USA is fearful after its Somalian experience, but its air logistic capability would be invaluable. The British Army's reputation and experience of such an operation are now second to none. Even now the staff will be planning for a number of possible missions in the region, although they will not admit to it.
The noble Baroness, Lady Park, referred to the British Army's manning problems. The problem is that the British Army already has about 30 per cent. of its strength on operations, preparing operations or recovering from operations. We were told by the Chief of the General Staff 18 months ago that he had 20 per cent. of the Army so employed. It is now 30 per cent. We clearly cannot sustain 30 per cent. indefinitely. However, there is room for just one more operation. We should clearly understand that any more operations will increase the already heavy burden on our forces.
We all have great faith in the Minister's ability to understand the situation and react accordingly. It will be interesting to hear her response to the Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Judd.
7.16 p.m.
Lord Dubs: My Lords, some time ago I was looking through a book of historical political cartoons. I came across one which had, as it were, an epitaph to the League of Nations. It read:
"Here lies the League of Nations which died of a surfeit of doing too little too late".
There is a lesson in that for the UN.
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Judd for giving us an opportunity to have a short debate on this issue. I appreciate that events in the Great Lakes region of Africa have moved quickly recently, and it is possible that the Minister will be able to update us when she responds. However, what is clear is that an enormous disaster has taken place and is taking place. The question is whether action can be taken in time to prevent that disaster from becoming even worse.
We owe a debt of thanks to the television crews who have gone in there and given us the news to alert us to what is happening. We owe an even greater debt of thanks to the staff of the many development agencies who, at grave risk to themselves, have been working in the region. Even if some of them had to withdraw for a time, they are brave people and deserve our thanks for what they have done, not for us, but for the people in the region.
I appreciate that we are wrestling with an issue with which we have wrestled on a number of occasions, and one with which I fear we shall go on wrestling; that is, what is the basis for intervention by other countries when there is a crisis of such dimensions that many thousands, if not millions, of lives are at stake? What do we do about that when it is taking place in another country which is not our own? Can we intervene or run the risk of being accused of interfering in the internal
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affairs of other countries? Can we establish some basis whereby countries can intervene to prevent enormous disasters?
We have had a number of examples of that over the years. We have had the example of interventions in Iraq, in Somalia, in Bosnia, perhaps in Liberia and in other countries. There are different lessons to be learnt from them all. At some time we have to pool all our experiences to see whether we can find a principled basis for intervening to save human lives in other countries.
Some of the things that have come out of these experiences are clear. It is important that the UN takes a clear role in whatever happens, but we have to avoid one of the problems which occurred in Bosnia. I spoke to military people there who told me that they were constrained by UN orders. There was a crisis which was not expected or anticipated. They needed help on a Saturday and the UN was closed and there was no one there. We have to avoid such a situation as described to me vividly by a British military person who had served in Bosnia.
We must do everything that we can in Africa to involve OAU troops of some kind. We cannot have only white western armies involved. We must learn the lesson of Somalia: that our aims must be limited and we must not try to establish a sympathetic political leadership in these countries. That is not on for outsiders—a costly lesson which the Americans learnt in Somalia when they went further than their initial remit.
We must also do what we can to secure the support of local governments. I understand that both Rwanda and Zaire have moved a little way towards that position. We must try to gain their support, which I appreciate is difficult. Above all, we need clear, limited aims and objectives in whatever is to be done. First, any military forces which we send to the area must be there in order to deliver humanitarian aid. Secondly, we must enable any refugees who wish to return home to do so. Thirdly, we must protect civilians from intimidation and worse. Fourthly, and perhaps the most difficult, we must find a way of screening all refugees to see who has been implicated in genocide and intimidation. That is difficult, as recent experience in Bosnia suggests, but we must have a principled way of dealing with the situation. If not, we shall be accused of protecting the very people who committed genocide a year or two ago.
I appreciate that there are no easy answers and that slick comments made in this House do not have the same pressure and reality as they have on the ground in Rwanda. But I believe that we must do something. We must have a limited form of intervention, because if we do nothing the disaster will become even worse. We must not simply sit aside and do nothing or act so late that the disaster will have become immeasurably worse.
7.22 p.m.
Lord Redesdale: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Judd, for initiating this timely debate. Although the Question is difficult to answer because the situation is so fluid, it is split into two parts; relief aid and action to be taken by the Government. As regards relief, it

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would be unfair not to recognise the substantial amount of money which the ODA has already contributed to the relief effort in the region. I too recognise the work of the NGOs in the area in such difficult and dangerous conditions. However, I stress the fact that there is a desperate need to continue our relief efforts and to supply aid to the camps not only in Zaire but in neighbouring countries such as Tanzania and Uganda. Today I was fortunate enough to meet the President of Tanzania. He described the camps at Kigoma, which I visited when I monitored the elections in Tanzania. I was surprised to hear that since the troubles began the camps at Kigoma, which were already stretched to capacity, have received an additional 15,000 refugees who had taken the dangerous route by boat across Lake Tanganyika.
As regards government action, the Liberal Democrat policy is that we need to supply humanitarian aid supported with a military mission if that were considered necessary. However, we echo the attitude of the Government, and that expressed by many Members, that such a military mission could be undertaken only if it were clear, its duration defined and was international in nature. Obviously, that would include the United States and many of the African nations. I was surprised to hear from many ambassadors from East Africa how they view participation from countries such as France, which they do not consider to be neutral. I believe that the only way to avoid the problem would be to make a military mission truly international.
Due to the short length of time available I shall focus my attention on some of the questions raised. The problem with the debate is that there are many more questions than answers. The first question relates to the refugee camps and is significant in its complexity. We have heard how the refugee camps came into existence, but it is ironic that the present crisis is as a direct result of the formation of the refugee camp at Goma. As was pointed out by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, that camp, which was brought about by the short-term humanitarian needs of the time, was set up too close to the Rwanda border.
Furthermore, from the first day the camp appeared to be a permanent fixture and that had major implications for the local environment. The effect on the environment can be shown by the events at Kigoma. I was shocked by the devastation that the camp had caused. The president underlined that by stating that when he first visited the camp one year ago one had to walk seven kilometres to find firewood, but now one has to walk 15 kilometres. Of course, the major problem which underlies the present crisis is the lack of any significant policing of the camps. That situation has allowed the Interahamwe and the former Rwandan Army to rearm themselves and to launch offences into Rwanda.
It is ironic, therefore, that the camps must be reformed to supply humanitarian aid. That brings me to the major problem of the military option, which is a military corridor. I have significant reservations about such a corridor. As was pointed out by the noble Baroness, Lady Park, there are significant difficulties not least of which is the fact that Eastern Zaire, although a ceasefire is in place, is a war zone. If troops were sent
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to the area they must have the ability and authorisation to use force. As was shown in Bosnia, it takes only one man with a Kalashnikov to stop an aid convoy. Troops in Africa must be given the political backing and firepower to offset that threat and in a shooting war those troops would face an undisciplined force. That must be understood before any such decision were taken.
Furthermore, an international force, depending on how long it stayed in the area, might undergo a transformation from being a saviour to experiencing tension among its troops. It might end up on Zairian soil being fired at from all sides. If a military option is undertaken arms control must be examined. I was shocked to read in the press allegations made about a British company supplying arms to the camps. Can the Minister indicate whether investigations into those reports are taking place?
In the long term, the solution to the problem can only be political. There is no realistic attempt at a military solution. The refugees must be dispersed from the camps and moved back into the areas from which they came. I believe that the international community has an obligation to ensure that that can take place and that the refugees will be safe on their return. On an international level, it is up to local leaders to ensure that pressure is brought on all the parties involved to secure a lasting and sustainable solution. It is ironic that as East African countries become closer with the recently signed trade agreement, Central Africa appears to be breaking apart. It is also extremely important that respect should be maintained for existing frontiers. The problems in eastern Zaire could lead to the break-up of Zaire itself. If that happens, it may well be that the horrific actions which have taken place in east Zaire will pale into insignificance compared with what may happen in the future.
I have no answers as regards what should happen. I know that the Minister will do all that she can. I know that I counsel caution but in the past, for the international community, caution has meant no action. In this case, I do not believe that that is the right course.
7.30 p.m.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I welcome this discussion of your Lordships' concerns about the deep crisis which confronts the Great Lakes region of Africa. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Judd, for tabling this Unstarred Question.
Perhaps I may be allowed to update the House on the extensive political and humanitarian preparations which are taking place. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Rea, was rather unfair when he intimated that nothing is being done. That is simply not true. I hope that I shall be able to convince him of that.
Let no one be in any doubt—the Government are deeply concerned by the current crisis and determined to act effectively and as quickly as possible. The influx of well over 1 million refugees into Kivu province two years ago exacerbated the existing economic and political tensions between the Banyamulenge and the

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Banyarwanda and the local population. Life was not very good before they arrived there but that made it so much worse.
The Hutu refugees who fled from Rwanda after the genocide in 1994 included much of the former Rwandan Hutu army and the Interahamwe, the militia groups primarily responsible for that terrible genocide in 1994. The population in eastern Kivu has rapidly become a major source of political and military instability in the region as a whole. But the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, was right to say that it is not just eastern Zaire which is unstable. There is instability in many other parts of Zaire at present. There has been for a considerable time but it has gone unremarked, perhaps because journalists are not there. But there is no doubt that that is a very unstable nation.
This is a regional matter. As the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, underlined, those political and security problems have been long brewing. They lie at the heart and the root of the situation today. That is why the noble Lord, Lord Judd, was quite right to say that the long-term need is for a political solution, but I add to that that it must be a political solution which comes from within the region. No one can impose a political solution on this or any other region from outside. In discussing that with my European Union development colleagues last Thursday, I found that they were very much in agreement with that view. I am glad to say that many British NGOs are similarly in total agreement with that.
The past few days have shown us in no uncertain terms how essential it is to reduce the tension within Zaire but also between Zaire and Rwanda. I underlined that in the discussions that I had less than two weeks ago with Prime Minister Kengo of Zaire and Foreign Minister Gasana of Rwanda. I also took the opportunity to talk to President Bizimungu of Rwanda on the telephone. Nobody is in any doubt that, when dealing with the practicalities, a reduction of tension is essential over and above any of the other things which need to be done. Just two hours ago I was talking with President Mkapa of Tanzania about the need to resolve this matter through an immediate ceasefire. That is obviously holding in some ways at present but one never knows for how long. But that is essential.
The establishment of safe corridors for humanitarian assistance and for voluntary refugee return are just as important and, if necessary, it will have to involve the deployment of a neutral force to help that return as well as to help the humanitarian aid.
But, above all, as has been underlined by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and so many others in the debate, there is the urgent need to separate the intimidators from the refugees. That was something that was tried at the beginning but without any wholehearted support. We are now left with this situation. Therefore, those are the priorities.
I must say that I have been very impressed by the way in which those aims are being pursued by the European Union Special Envoy Aldo Ajello. His
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efforts have been outstanding. We now have the new UN Special Envoy, Raymond Chretien, who is equally active in the region.
On Saturday, the Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1078 which authorises planning for a possible multi-national force to ensure safe delivery of emergency relief and the orderly, voluntary repatriation of refugees. That planning is under way. Another resolution would be required before actual deployment. We have not ruled out a contribution to the force, but the noble Lords, Lord Avebury and Lord Dubs, were right when they spoke of the need for at least African representation, if not an African-led force.
My right honourable friend the Secretary of State said at the weekend that if the operation is to help and not hinder it must be well planned. That lies at the heart of what is going on at present. We must know what will be the aim; what are to be the rules of engagement and the leadership and command structure. As the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, made quite clear in his interesting remarks, we must know what the exit strategy will be. Those are the key questions to be answered if a force is to operate effectively. But it is also crucial to address the important question which the noble Lord, Lord Judd, raised about how to screen the militia from the refugees. That is why urgent planning and discussions are already under way in London, Washington and other European capitals on those points.
We must stabilise the situation and reach the hundreds of thousands of unfortunate and innocent victims involved in the violence. That is why targeted, well co-ordinated international humanitarian intervention is much needed. The humanitarian agencies share that analysis for which I pressed hard with others in Brussels on Thursday. A European Union troika mission of my fellow development Ministers is in the region at present.
The problem which we face is a lack of reliable information on the numbers of refugees and displaced persons and their location within eastern Zaire. We know that many of them have fled deep into Zaire. They are seeking refuge in one of the most inhospitable places in the world for aid agencies to operate. It is probably the worst part of the rainy season for the aid agencies and, indeed, for the poor refugees themselves. Access into and within the region has always been extremely difficult. The recent fighting has made it much more so. Those are the difficulties which confront us when we ask ourselves what we can do to help.
We are in close touch with the Humanitarian Co-ordinators Office in Kigali. There are already substantial food and non-food stocks available in the region—WFP has food available for two months as it clearly demonstrated to us in Brussels last Thursday. Therefore, the urgent need is for transport and logistics assistance. However, I have to inform your Lordships that even those needs are unclear and will remain so until we get fuller access than, fortunately, was gained today. The UN and the NGOs have crossed into Goma to assess the situation. It is good that the process has begun and that small quantities of supplies have already been delivered. But we have to make this a start of a regular supply route. It is not clear whether Bukavu has yet been reached.

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Many questions were asked during the course of tonight's debate. The noble Lords, Lord Dubs, and Lord Redesdale, both made reference to the work that we have done within Rwanda to try to make it the place that the refugees will want to come back to. I was grateful for that. I can assure those noble Lords that our efforts will continue. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, and others, talked about African peacekeeping. It was the United Kingdom African peacekeeping initiative which focused on helping Africans to help themselves in the field of UN peacekeeping. That work has been going on for over two years. You cannot suddenly put people into a situation of peacekeeping when all their training, except for a small amount in the past two years, has been of a very different nature.
The noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, mentioned the African crisis response force suggested by the Americans. Quite apart from the fact that that builds upon what we and the French have been suggesting, we shall need time for the training forces if that is likely to be at all effective in the region.
The question of accusations regarding arms going into the area was raised. I should tell the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that we are well aware of the allegations of Britain being involved in the supply of arms to eastern Zaïre. Her Majesty's Customs and Excise has investigated all the reports. But, at this stage, evidence has not been found to support criminal proceedings in the UK. However, that is not the end of the matter. I can assure the noble Lord that we are keenly watching what goes on.
The noble Lord also asked me about the international tribunal and about the likelihood of it taking action against organisers and ring leaders of the genocide. That work is proceeding but there are appalling conditions to cope with. We are doing all that we can and have provided considerable support to restoring the Rwandan judicial system to Rwandan prisons. I should point out that one of the problems is that often the evidence is weak and to ensure speedy trials of those against whom there is sufficient evidence means being quite selective. It also means that not all those who are probably guilty of genocide can be picked up. Nevertheless, the work is proceeding.
Some very wise words have been spoken during the course of the debate, none more so than by my noble friend Lady Park of Monmouth. The crisis in the Great
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Lakes, which has raised the gravest possible concerns throughout your Lordships' House and in another place, is one which has not suddenly happened, not even just as a result of the events of the past two years. The crisis actually goes back centuries. That is one of the problems that we are seeking to help answer. But, as my noble friend said, it is an area of extreme difficulty and it remains so. We have been a major provider of assistance to the region. We have committed more than £130 million in the past three years. We are the fourth largest bilateral donor to the region this year alone, and that was before the start of the current crisis. Our priority throughout has been to support activities which will enable refugees to return voluntarily to their countries of origin.
Our programme of rehabilitation assistance to Rwanda has been worth about £13 million in the past two years. That is really at the heart of encouraging that voluntary repatriation. We are also very aware that special plans have to be made for those who do not return. I wholeheartedly agree with the noble Lord who said that the camps to which those people go must be further away from the border area. It is very dangerous to have those who clearly wish Rwanda considerable ill literally breathing across the fence into Rwanda from Zaïre.
The human rights monitors whom we have supported will have an enhanced role to play in creating the confidence for refugee return, whether it be through safe corridors or by some escorted means. But we have to put our immediate concerns at the top of the priority list; namely, the security and the well-being of those who have fled the conflict in eastern Zaïre. We shall continue to play a central role in pressing for a regional settlement and for the development of an international framework which will enable us to give effective, targeted relief. That is beginning to emerge. We cannot possibly tackle all these problems on our own. I have urged my colleagues in the European Union to work with us; we are ready to support the political negotiations in any way possible. But, first and foremost, we shall contribute as we have already done for the past two years to the effective use of humanitarian assistance which is so urgently needed in the region.
House adjourned at a quarter before eight o'clock.