That this House takes note of the Report of the European Union Committee on Europol: co-ordinating the fight against serious and organised crime (29th Report, Session 2007–08, HL Paper 183).

My Lords, the subject of this debate is a report that was prepared following an inquiry by Sub-Committee F of the European Union Select Committee between March and October last year. It is good to see the noble Lord, Lord Roper, in his place after recent surgery. We are delighted to see him back in full harness as chairman of the EU Select Committee. We took oral evidence between May and July, and I will come to some of that in a moment. For the present, I want to say how grateful we are to all the witnesses who gave oral and written evidence. The bulk of our report gives testimony to the evidence that we received.

I pay tribute to the work of our outstanding clerk, Michael Collon, who did so much to make this report the success which I believe it is. He was ably assisted by Anneliese Baldaccini, our committee specialist. I pay a special tribute to Kevin O’Connell, our specialist adviser who brought all his expertise to assist us in drawing up this report.

Noble Lords may recall that a year ago I asked the House to take note of another report by our sub-committee, of which I was the chairman, on FRONTEX, the European borders agency. In that case, I had cause to complain that the Government’s response, signed by Mr Liam Byrne, who at that time was a ministerial colleague of the Minister at the Home Office, reached the committee well outside the mandatory two-month period and only five days before your Lordships debated the report. I have to say that the removal of Mr Byrne from that position did not cause any tears to be shed by members of our committee, because we had a most unsatisfactory relationship with him.

I am, therefore, very glad to be able to thank the Minister for the fact that the Government’s response to this report, signed by Mr Vernon Coaker—another erstwhile colleague—was received within the two-month period. I am only sorry that circumstances have conspired so that a further five months have elapsed before we could have this debate. I hope I am not to blame for the fact that the Minister who gave evidence to the committee for this inquiry, Mr McNulty, is a third erstwhile colleague. I am delighted that the noble Lord who will answer in this debate—I have already had a go at him this morning—seems to be the one fixed point inhabiting the Home Office ministerial universe. I shall try not to say any more rude things about the Home Office, but the Minister probably knows that I have a satchel full of them if I am provoked.

All of your Lordships know that Europol, the European Police Office, is a vital weapon for co-ordinating the European fight against serious organised crime. However, when in the early 1990s it was first proposed to set up a European police office, there was no legal basis for this to be done under the treaties. The member states therefore concluded between them a convention for establishing Europol. Since the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam, a legal basis has been available. A decision was negotiated allowing Europol to be reconstituted as an agency of the EU; it was signed at the Justice and Home Affairs Council in April this year—six months after it was first on the agenda of the council for signature—and on 1 January 2010, Europol will be reconstituted as an agency of the European Union. This was one of the factors which influenced the timing of our inquiry.

At the same meeting, the Council of Ministers unanimously agreed on the appointment of a new director for Europol. Thereby hangs a story. We took evidence from the Serious Organised Crime Agency, SOCA, on 4 June last year. We were told that its deputy director, Mr Rob Wainwright, was to apply for the post of director when it became vacant. This was news to us, and I have to say it was also news to the director of Europol himself, who first learnt of this when he was reading Mr Wainwright’s evidence. I do not suppose it was particularly good news for the director, but to us, it was certainly good news because we felt that Europol could do with new and vigorous leadership, although we did not say as much in our report. I think we were sufficiently tactful—and as it transpired, rightly tactful—fearing that we might prejudice Mr Wainwright’s candidature if we drew attention to it in our report. Now that Mr Wainwright has been appointed to take up this post, I should like to take this moment to welcome his appointment very strongly, and to offer him the committee’s congratulations. He has got a difficult job ahead of him, and we wish him well in that work.

In its report the committee reached a number of conclusions and made a large number of recommendations, which are currently before the House. I want today to concentrate on three of them: first, the exchange of information; secondly, the governance and management of Europol; and, thirdly, the relationship between SOCA—the Serious and Organised Crime Agency—and the United Kingdom police forces, which supply SOCA with most of its information.

I start with the first of those, which is the exchange of information. After all, that is what Europol is all about—passing information about serious cross-border crime to police forces of other member states, and, conversely, obtaining such information from them. This is not the same as giving other forces information that they have requested. Information is put on the Europol database, to be available to the forces of any other member state which may find it of use. If therefore the information does not reach that database, it will not be available—and this unfortunately is exactly what happens. The national liaison officers at Europol headquarters in The Hague exchange four-fifths of this information between themselves, without putting it on their database. Access to information is thus greatly reduced, and it may be that crimes could have been prevented or solved, and criminals deterred or caught, if this information had been made more widely available.

We concluded that the reason for that was basically a lack of trust—much of this information is highly sensitive, and could lose all its value if it was disseminated too widely. However, once on the database, it is available to all forces of all 27 member states, and to anyone to whom they please to pass it. That of course is the objective, but it is also the reason why liaison officers are reluctant to make sensitive information available, if the liaison officers of even one of the other member states are not thought to be trustworthy. That is one of the problems we face. We did not wish to discourage bilateral exchanges between liaison officers of two member states—far from it, but we did feel that any information exchanged between them should also be put on the database. The Home Office told us in its written evidence, that it was prepared to take the lead, and we invited it to tell us how it proposed to set about doing this. In its response, it told us that SOCA had reviewed its procedures and would routinely copy details of bilateral exchanges to the Europol database. This would be excellent were it not qualified by two words which were inserted in the original small print. Those words were “sensitivity permitting”, which precisely illustrates the point that the committee has been trying to make. We would like to see the structure and make-up of Europol to be such that sensitivity is no obstacle. I should like to hear what the Minister thinks can be done to increase trust at Europol between all officials who are posted there, not just some.

The exchange of large volumes of information depends on the data being uploaded. We were told that SOCA was not yet in a position to use the systems for the automated uploading of data on to the Europol information system. The response told us that the Government viewed the upgrading of SOCA’s information technology systems as a priority and that they hoped this would be achieved “by 2010”. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us what exactly that means. I hope that, when the Government talk about 2010, they do not mean the end of 2010, 18 months away. I hope that, rather, they mean the beginning of 2010, six months away. That is important.

I turn to the second point that I want to discuss—the governance and management of Europol. An organisation based on trust needs an executive that can help to foster that trust and a structure that can allow it to be developed. This is not what we found. The management board which supervises the director has a chairmanship rotating with the presidency, and the result was that Mr Max-Peter Ratzel, the then director from whom we took evidence, had in nearly four years worked with eight different chairmen of the management board. He can hardly be blamed for finding it difficult to build and retain trust between the chairman and the director, and indeed trust within the organisation.

We should have liked to see a system similar to the one to which I referred earlier in my remarks about our FRONTEX report a year ago, where the chairman is elected by and from the members of that board. Instead, under the decision, a chairman will be appointed by and from the three members who happen to be those appointed by the three member states holding the current and next two presidencies. This is scarcely better. It scarcely increases the likelihood of the best man or woman being appointed as chairman. It means that the chairman will serve for 18 rather than six months. That is an advantage only if the chairman chosen from among the three presidencies is better than the one chosen from a single presidency. There is really no guarantee of that in the system.

In their response, the Government, to give them credit, agreed entirely with our view and said that they had proposed an open competition for the selection of an individual who would hold the chair for at least two years. Apparently, a significant number of member states refused to agree to this. Apparently, too, there is no prospect of their changing their minds once the decision is in force. I ask the Minister why that is. Who are these people? Are they doing it just for political reasons? Are so many member states afraid that choosing the best man or woman for the job will mean that one of their national members will never be chosen to do it? Does the Minister not agree that the fight against international crime is far too serious a matter to be left to political bickering? If he does agree, which I feel sure he does, is this not something that should be raised at the highest levels? Perhaps I might suggest that it would be a start if it could be agreed by the Interior Ministers of the G6 at their forthcoming meeting in Birmingham, about which we had some correspondence with the Home Secretary—or perhaps I should again say the erstwhile Home Secretary.

As it happens, I know that we have already experienced political bickering of this type in the appointment of the new director, which I mentioned earlier. Mr Wainwright was agreed on all sides to be the best candidate put forward by any state, so why were there problems and delays about his appointment? If, to take a random example, the best candidate had been a Hungarian, it is scarcely conceivable that the United Kingdom would have objected to his appointment on the ground that it was not Hungary’s turn. I hope the Minister will agree that as the EU moves increasingly into the areas of crime and police co-operation, it is time for member states to show a bit of maturity about such matters.

I turn to the relationship between SOCA and the United Kingdom police forces that supply SOCA with most of their information. As I have said, Europol’s co-ordination role is based on the exchange of information. Those who gather that information are the police forces of the member states. Without the information that they supply, there would be nothing for Europol to do—we should understand that—but the police forces must be told what is happening. From the evidence we received from the Association of Chief Police Officers, it was clear that too often police forces passed information to SOCA without knowing what was going to happen to it; they did not know if it went to Europol; if it did, they did not know if it was useful; and if they received information back from SOCA, too often they did not know if it was information from Europol rebranded, or information originating from SOCA itself. They can do their job properly only if they know these things. If they know, they will have a proper incentive to do better.

We were glad that, in their response, the Government accepted that more could and should be done. They told us that SOCA would act on our recommendations, that it would indicate to police forces which channels of international communication were being used and that it would inform them of the outcome of their inquiries. Does the Minister think that if the Committee took evidence today from ACPO, nearly a year after we last did so, we would be told that things really had improved, that Europol now had a higher profile among UK police forces and that they were now aware of what happened to the information they were dutifully passing on? I hope that he will be able to expand on that when he replies.

Few things are more important than the fight against international crime. Europol is an important weapon in our armoury but it could be much more effectively used, and we think that it would be if our recommendations were implemented. Although we had criticisms of the Government, we applauded much of what they had done and were doing. Our main criticisms were reserved for the international stage. Much of what needs doing requires the agreement of other member states, but that is all the more reason why the Government should use the considerable reputation of this country in the fight against international crime to persuade our partners that things can be improved, if only they can find the will to do so.

I commend the report to the House, and I beg to move.

My Lords, first I reiterate the interests that I declared in the sub-committee’s report as chairman of the Security Industry Authority and president of the Association of Police Authorities. I want to pay my tribute to the committee’s chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, for all his hard work and his clear focus on ensuring that the inquiry into the changing nature of Europol was conducted thoroughly and rigorously and that the report was comprehensive. I reiterate the thanks of the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, to our committee clerk, Michael Collon, for his help, advice and considerable drafting skills, to the other specialists who served the sub-committee and to our specialist adviser, Kevin O’Connell, for his invaluable insight and practical knowledge of policing issues.

I will speak about some of the issues covered in chapter 4 of the report, on intelligence-led law enforcement and the organised crime threat assessment, and to speak briefly about information exchange and analysis before finishing up with a mention of accountability.

Over the past few years in Britain, the phenomenon of intelligence-led policing has gathered pace. I witnessed its development from my vantage point as chairman of the Lancashire Police Authority and of the Association of Police Authorities. In Britain, it finally resulted in the implementation on a national scale of the national intelligence model to which all forces signed up, under the watchful eye of the police inspectorate. The national intelligence model has been extremely important in the United Kingdom in enabling forces to target their resources on particular areas of activity or on individuals or locations identified by the crime data that they collected and the trends and patterns that have clearly emerged. The adoption of the national intelligence model has also enabled forces in the United Kingdom to work together more effectively, as they are now sharing a common methodology and approach.

Under the United Kingdom presidency of the EU in 2005, there was a drive to establish intelligence-led policing as a concept and as a methodology across member states. That led to the adoption of the European equivalent of the national intelligence model—the European criminal intelligence model. We investigated that as part of our inquiries. It is clear that not all member states in the EU were equally enthusiastic about that move or paid it more than lip service to start with. It has to be said that the doctrine of “not invented here” is not just a United Kingdom phenomenon. To be fair, policing is delivered through very different structures and in quite diverse ways across the European Union. None the less, the concept of intelligence-led law enforcement at EU level has been endorsed and welcomed by the council and has in recent years been an important development from the perspective of enhancing the effectiveness of Europol.

In the course of our inquiry, differences of view emerged about how firmly this new approach has, in practical terms, taken root in different member states. There has clearly been some dragging of feet and some reluctance on the part of policing agencies in some countries to sign up to it in practical terms or even to profess to understand what the term “intelligence-led policing” actually means. Thus the committee felt that renewed energy and focus need to be directed to establishing among member states’ police forces a common understanding of what intelligence-led policing entails and the methodology and approach that underpin and drive it.

We believe that Europol is in a good position to undertake this important task and that it should work with the heads of national units and the European Police College to organise training to encourage the adoption and use of intelligence-led policing as the common working method across Europe. Just as great benefits flowed in the United Kingdom from the establishment of the national intelligence model, so similar benefits are surely there to be obtained from its adoption across the EU. I now understand that the Europol draft work programme for 2010 contains an objective to embed the principles of intelligence-led policing in Europol’s decision-making processes.

I agree with the Government’s assessment, in their response to our report, that there is a role for SOCA in promoting this initiative at the level of heads of Europol national units and for our National Policing Improvement Agency to use its influence at the EU police training college. I look forward to hearing how successful Europol is able to be in relation to that initiative in the next few years.

The organised crime threat assessment was first introduced in 2004 under the Hague programme. A year later, one of the United Kingdom’s presidency objectives in the area of justice and home affairs was to ensure that good intelligence and its analysis would feed through into good-quality threat assessment, which had not existed in this form at EU level before. Europol therefore drafted the first organised crime threat assessment by the end of 2005 and now publishes them annually, giving an overview of the principal threats faced across the EU, allowing Europol to facilitate joint operational responses by member states. According to evidence that we took from SOCA, this is helping to usher in a new phase in the development of Europol and is,

“establishing the agency as a central intelligence base in the EU supporting a range of subregional initiatives around the EU”.

This has clearly been a very important development in the effectiveness of Europol’s role, resulting in the establishment of a centralised knowledge base and information systems to deliver effective operations. We must pay tribute to the British Government and to United Kingdom officials for exporting across the EU and to Europol the concept of the organised crime threat assessment. However, it now needs to be further developed alongside intelligence-led policing. I hope that in time it will bring about important results as well as closer liaison arrangements between prosecuting and investigating officials, improved information exchange and more accurate communication.

Europol also has an important role to play in providing a general information exchange service to enable member states to search a central EU repository for data relating to serious and organised crime. However, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, there is not, at present, enough data coming into Europol. One reason for this is that only five member states are currently using the automated loading system to feed in the large quantities of data involved. I reiterate the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, that it is imperative that SOCA’s information technology systems are upgraded as a matter of urgency so that it can take advantage of the automatic data-loading facilities available. I also welcome the planned introduction of a direct link to police forces in England and Wales via the police national network system. That, again, will facilitate data access and exchange, which is a central function of Europol’s role.

Europol has also developed a number of analysis work files to which member states have access. The UK certainly values the high-quality service of data analysis offered by Europol on issues such as drug trafficking, financial and property crime, forgery and, increasingly, terrorism and organised crime groups. However, while our report supports Europol’s role as an intelligence co-ordinator, we would not want to see Europol facilitating investigations. We make it clear in the report that its role should be to support, facilitate and co-ordinate investigations but not to initiate them. In their response, the Government agreed with that view.

I end by raising the important issue of the accountability of Europol. Europol is an important and growing resource for member states, but it needs to be scrutinised effectively, not just by the European Parliament but possibly by national parliaments in some way. Its work needs to be regularly and systematically evaluated. We need to know exactly where it is adding value, what the obstacles are to its further development and how they can be removed. I know that some of this will begin to happen in the next four years, but I urge the Government to do everything that they can to support a move towards ensuring greater accountability of Europol to the European Parliament and, in some form or other alongside European Parliament scrutiny, to national parliaments.

My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, in saying what a great pleasure it is to see the noble Lord, Lord Roper, back in his place. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, for such an excellent introduction to the report. The report is very useful, not least because it lays out some of the issues that we have heard about this afternoon from the noble Lord, Lord Jopling. It also dispels some myths, the first of which is that Europol is a European police force. That is clearly a dangerous myth and the report makes it clear that Europol is a resource for national police forces. The issues that Europol addresses, and on which it facilitates much closer working, were touched on by the Minister in his Statement this afternoon. They are some of the most serious issues that we face. Cross-border crimes such as terrorism, money-laundering and the trafficking of people and drugs are serious crimes that require cross-border co-operation to deal with.

Surveys show that, even if UK citizens are sometimes unclear about the benefits of Europe, fighting crime is something that they are keen on when it comes to European co-operation. According to Eurobarometer in December 2007, 70 per cent of British people believe that decisions on terrorism should be taken jointly with the EU. The report says a number of things about co-operation against terrorism. It highlights the fact that Europol does not get systematic information on terrorist cases. Although the committee rightly urges caution on intelligence sharing, it is clear that there needs to be, as the report highlights, a lot more discussion on the matter in Brussels and, indeed, here.

I was interested that the report highlighted the two-country rule, under which at least two European countries must be involved before the 2005 decision applies. That seems quite arbitrary when terrorism can take so many forms. Cross-border crime is costing the EU in the order of £20 billion a year. That is the figure quoted, but it must be hard to estimate. Europol is one of the most needed aspects of co-operation in Europe, because criminals regard the constraints on domestic police forces of national boundaries as a great help, so everything that can be done to diminish those constraints is essential.

The report is timely. In January 2010, Europol becomes an EU agency, funded by the Community budget. With this in mind, it is especially important to address the matter of democratic accountability raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, which remains unresolved. We were disappointed that the reform treaty did not address the matter of Europol in as much detail as it should have done. Europol should be subject to full democratic and judicial scrutiny, both by the European Parliament and the European Court of Justice. The decision to strengthen Europol should have gone hand in hand with the reforms introduced by the treaty of Lisbon. Nevertheless, we support strongly the concept of Europol.

We are worried about the Conservative position; I will be interested to hear from the Conservative spokesman in a moment. I know that the Conservatives have a number of reservations, including about Eurojust, the body that helps to co-ordinate prosecutions across Europe and recently led the successful prosecutions following Operation Koala, which broke up a paedophile ring and resulted in the arrests of 93 people and the rescue of 23 victims. Conservative MEPs voted against the EAW, which slashed extradition times between Britain and other EU countries from an average of 18 months to just 43 days and resulted in 920 criminals being swiftly extradited from British prisons to face justice in Europe. Not only is it streamlining the system, but it is also saving British taxpayers’ money. I hope that the Conservatives will feel more enthusiastic about European co-operation.

The noble Baroness, Lady Henig, mentioned the European criminal records information system, which again Conservative MEPs voted against. That was surprising, because it standardises the format of criminal records in Europe and allows streamlining and more efficient exchange between police forces and between employers such as airports. We see that sort of thing as essential to fighting crime.

I thought that the report was particularly interesting on data. It contains a number of lessons. It is essential to recognise that a sloppy, weak or unclear policy on data is not acceptable. While we accept that data exchange is invaluable in the fight against crime, it is immensely important that the corresponding safeguards for those data are excellent. Of course, we have this debate a lot about domestic data and we know how easily data can be lost. We have to be confident that the European system will be sufficiently strong not to undermine public confidence in any country, especially ours, in the operation of Europol. EU countries are now exchanging the data, but the report has some reservations about the adequacy of protection. I believe that the arrangements for transferring data were agreed behind closed doors under the Prüm treaty, which possibly weakens them, as they were not open to adequate scrutiny at the time.

As Europol becomes an EU agency, two aspects concern us most: accountability must be addressed and data safeguards must be adequate. Overall, we see this as a positive move. The report highlights for the Government some helpful areas but, because they were not within its remit, the report did not address a couple of things that should be addressed at the same time. I mention them now because they are critical issues as regards crime and security: the European border security force and a database on illegal immigration. The Minister may want to comment on those.

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Jopling for initiating this debate and congratulate Sub-Committee F on this comprehensive report. Perhaps I may also associate myself with remarks made by other noble Lords about how pleased we are to see the noble Lord, Lord Roper, back in his place.

Let us first look at Europol’s successes in the 17 years of its existence. They include the disruption of a network of people smugglers which spanned six countries, the dismantling of a large international cashpoint skimming operation and, impressively, Operation Koala, which resulted in customers ordering videos showing child abuse being arrested in 19 countries following an investigation which began in Australia.

I am sorry that the performance of my Conservative colleagues in the European Parliament has drawn criticism from the noble Baroness. Had she given me prior notice, I might have been in a position to address that. But let us give credit in this debate to Europol for what it has achieved; that is, real, tangible successes. However, the report has highlighted a number of shortcomings, which have been addressed in this debate. The sub-committee concluded that attempts to tackle crime across Europe are being hampered because police intelligence is not being shared effectively. In the early years of its existence, there was a lack of trust and fear of leaks, which is understandable where matters of intelligence are involved. But we hope that these are lessening as the agency matures.

A subsidiary, although important, but more easily rectifiable, problem has been the SOCA IT system, which is not compatible with that of Europol, as my noble friend mentioned. In comparison with other problems, this surely can be addressed with reasonable dispatch and we hope that the end of 2010 does not mean what he suspects it might mean. We will welcome the Minister’s assurance on this point, with my noble friend’s trenchant comments ringing in his ears.

A more fundamental problem arises from the system of liaison officers from member states. This again has been highlighted by the sub-committee and by my noble friend. These liaison officers are, I understand, housed in the same building as Europol. It is hardly surprising that much of the intelligence is shared in person between liaison officers, thus bypassing Europol. As my noble friend said, the Home Office said in its evidence that it was a matter of concern that up to 80 per cent of bilateral engagements are shared in this way. The sub-committee was unequivocal in its criticism. I will quote it; it is significant and to the point:

“For Member States to share information in a limited way through liaison officers is the antithesis of the purpose of Europol, which is the enhancement of the already existing combined effort of the Member States’ competent authorities so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Limited sharing of information will not achieve a common approach to crossborder cooperation against serious crimes”.

This says it all.

The liaison system has much to recommend it, not least the rapid exchange of intelligence at the personal level. This is an example of unintended consequences—in this case, the bypassing of Europol. I am pleased that the Government’s response following the Home Office’s concerns states that, on this matter, the Government are prepared to lead by example. Yet in their response to the report they have failed properly to address the bypassing issue.

I am sorry that one of the weak links is a domestic issue within the United Kingdom and not directly concerned with Europol. Again I have to thank my noble friend for raising this. It is the poor liaison between SOCA and the police forces in the United Kingdom, to which the report has drawn attention. As your Lordships will be only too well aware, the creation of SOCA took up a huge amount of parliamentary time and resources. It was launched in 2006 as the UK’s first dedicated enforcement agency responsible for tackling drug trafficking, organised crime, money laundering and identity theft. My party has previously been critical of SOCA’s poor performance. Despite a budget of £894 million over two years and 4,000 staff, the agency achieved only five more convictions in 2007-08 compared with 2006-07—276 against 271. The agency missed three of its five asset-recovery targets.

We have a further problem with SOCA. The liaison between Europol and national authorities takes place through what is known as the national unit. In the United Kingdom, this national unit is SOCA. The report highlighted the fact that SOCA has no counterterrorism unit. That is why it is all the more important that SOCA should work closely with the Metropolitan Police and other forces which have such a remit. The report recognised that, while the relationship between SOCA and Europol was good, the relationship between SOCA and the UK police forces left a lot to be desired. In other words, in the chain “UK police forces-SOCA-Europol”, it is the domestic link that is weak. That must be a potentially serious handicap to the United Kingdom’s leadership in Europol.

The disappointing performance of SOCA that the report highlights has implications stretching far wider than this debate. The Government have made a robust defence of the present arrangements, emphasising in particular the close liaison between SOCA and the Met. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that this good relationship is being extended to all forces in the United Kingdom? In the Government’s reply they also state that UK forces are engaged regularly and directly with Europol on counterterrorism. What role, if any, does SOCA have in this liaison?

The report has highlighted two areas where the United Kingdom can be said to be leading the field: intelligence-led policing and organised crime threat assessment. I am pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, concentrated on this and gave us such good background. Both these concepts can be said to have been exported by the United Kingdom to other states. I do not want to be denied the privilege of sharing with the many noble Lords in this Chamber that “intelligence-led policing” means moving resources away from retrospective crime investigations to pre-emptive operations based on analysed intelligence. The two areas are recognised by the Government in their response. I would welcome an assurance from the Minister that these important initiatives, which reflect so well on this country, are being maintained and built on.

The expansion and increasing sophistication of organised crime never sleeps. Europol has the potential of being just the right vehicle to deal with this. The report has provided a valuable service in addressing not only the challenges facing this organisation and some of its shortcomings but also some of its potential. A huge amount of work has gone into the preparation of the report. The House will be grateful to my noble friend, his committee, its clerk and its advisers for this important document.

My Lords, I, too, welcome the noble Lord, Lord Roper, back to the Chamber. It is very good to see him, as everyone has said.

Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, that I have a marvellous, crafted response from the Box on FRONTEX which says: “We recognise there were some issues a year ago but these have been addressed by the Home Office. Performance improved significantly. We are delivering 79 per cent”. We are getting better, but I have to say that I agree entirely with the noble Lord. The delay of which he spoke was outrageous and completely unacceptable, and it came within a whisker of being an insult. I was rather irked by it. I take his point completely. We have learnt the lesson; we are doing better in the Home Office.

I agree that my colleagues seem to be falling like flies. I feel rather like Admiral Collingwood on the quarterdeck of the “Royal Sovereign” at Trafalgar. The only difference is that I am not munching an apple as they all fall by the side of me. There is an element of that.

The Government welcome the European Union Committee’s report following its inquiry into Europol. Rather like other speakers, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, and his committee for conducting such a thorough and wide-ranging review. I join him in thanking all those involved in producing it. The importance of the review should not be underestimated; Europol is a vital element of the European Union’s fight against serious and organised crime. As was said by the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, and a number of other speakers, there are not many things more important to us than that.

An awful lot in the report was positive, and it is always encouraging to have confirmation where things are working well. However, the inquiry also identified a number of issues which the committee felt should be addressed in order to improve Europol’s capacity and capability to support our law enforcement officers and those of the other European Union member states in their fight against serious and organised crime and terrorism. In their written response to the committee in January this year, the Government acknowledged the findings of the inquiry and, for the most part, fully agreed with the recommendations. It will be useful to update your Lordships on the progress being made on implementing those recommendations, not least to get it in Hansard so that we know exactly where we stand.

Europol is facing an exciting and challenging time. It has a new director whose immediate priority is to ensure that the organisation is fully prepared for the introduction at the beginning of next year of the new Europol council decision. I am pleased to say that this preparatory work is on schedule for completion by the end of this year. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, shares our pleasure at the success of Rob Wainwright—his appointment was a very good move and I am delighted that he is there—who was the previous head of the international department at SOCA. Mr Wainwright gave evidence to the inquiry. It will be helpful and valuable that he will have in mind the committee’s recommendations as he approaches his new job. Even though he has been in post for just two months, we are already receiving reports of a more open and engaged approach by Europol to its stakeholders and partners.

Europol continues to provide significant support to our law enforcement authorities, and there are a number of cases where violent and dangerous international criminals have been brought to justice with Europol’s assistance. The noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, quoted some real successes. A typical example is an operation targeting an armed and violent Eastern European gang which committed around 20 armed robberies against high-quality jeweller’s shops in this country and more than 200 similar attacks across the European Union. In an action co-ordinated by Europol, officers from three UK police forces visited Estonia and, with the support of local authorities, seven suspects were arrested. With further support from Europol, UK police then identified offenders in 16 cases in this country and were able to bring prosecutions in 11 of those.

I mentioned Europol’s new legal base in my opening remarks. The Government believe that the new council decision will introduce a number of benefits when it replaces the Europol convention on 1 January 2010. While negotiation of this new legal instrument was lengthy and sometimes difficult, we are broadly pleased with the outcome. For example, we feel that we have achieved a good balance between extending Europol’s mandate so that it could support investigations into very serious crimes where there was no obvious organised crime link but also limiting Europol’s involvement to the extent that the investigation had to be cross-border in nature and involve at least two member states. It will be helpful that Europol will not now have to prove that a crime was “organised”, which can sometimes take one into rather technical areas of definition. It will be able to contribute its expertise to serious crime, such as multiple murders affecting several member states, but, equally, it will not see its mandate being diluted by being drawn into crimes that are more appropriate to national police investigation.

The Government are also pleased to see a strengthening of the rights of the data subject to gain access to personal information held about them in Europol’s systems and to have personal data deleted where prolonged storage cannot be justified. We note that Europol’s data protection standards exceed those that were envisaged by the data protection framework decision. However, we will continue to press for the highest standards of data security and data protection.

Another important aspect of Europol’s new legal base is the effect it will have on the roles and the relationship between the Europol management board and the Europol director. We have long believed that the management board has tended to become too involved in the day-to-day activities of Europol, the result being that it could be seen that the position of the director was being undermined. At the same time, the management board has had less time at its disposal to develop its strategic thinking. We believe that the new council decision will be helpful in providing more clarity about the roles as well as a clearer demarcation of responsibilities. In general terms, we expect to see the new director become more responsible for the day-to-day operation of Europol with the management board holding him to account for delivery of his objectives.

We also felt that the rotation of the chairmanship of the management board every six months with the presidency of the European Union was unhelpful in two respects. First, six months did not give sufficient time to develop an effective working relationship with the director; and, secondly, with such a short tenure, the chairman of the board had little time—and possibly little incentive—to start to develop a long-term strategy for the organisation.

We share the disappointment of the members of the committee that we were not able to get agreement from a majority of member states during the negotiations to appoint a board chair by open competition between Europol members. Noble Lords can be assured that we tried very hard. We agree with the view expressed in the inquiry report that there is no logical connection between the nationality of the person best qualified to become the board chair and the country holding the presidency. However, we take some comfort from the compromise that the chair will be identified from among the trio of presidencies to serve for 18 months. This is an improvement on the current situation and we will push to reopen the discussion on the selection of the board chair by open competition when an opportunity to review and amend the legislation next arises. But, of course, any future success will be contingent on a change of attitude by the vast majority of member states. As the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, quite rightly said, it is very wrong that something so important should descend into political, nationality-type bickering. I fear that that sometimes happens in these international organisations; I have seen it happen at times within NATO. We will keep pushing, because it is important to go down that route.

The noble Lord, Lord Jopling, also spoke about the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, as did the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, my noble friend Lady Henig and the noble Baroness, Lady Miller. I would like to touch on the role of SOCA, which has a pivotal role to play in developing and maintaining an effective connection between Europol and our law enforcement agencies. It is the home of the United Kingdom’s national Europol unit, which is connected to Europol by secure communications links for speedy and secure exchange of intelligence material. From within the national unit, SOCA provides a focal point for UK law enforcement agencies to access Europol. We believe that there is already an efficient network of contacts between the Europol national unit and police forces. Each force has an international liaison officer who is the local source of expertise in dealing with international police co-operation and these liaison officers maintain close contact with SOCA.

The noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, spoke specifically about this area and we accept that more could be done to improve awareness of police force links with SOCA and about links with Europol in general. More can be done, in particular Europol’s involvement in resolving requests for help submitted to SOCA. We need to do more domestically to promote Europol. SOCA has already started this process through keynote speeches and workshops in its annual international liaison officers’ conference, which is attended by representatives of the ACPO forces and key law enforcement partner agencies. Ongoing regional awareness and training events hosted by SOCA are also providing an opportunity to publicise Europol and its capability to a wider audience at the grass roots level of policing the United Kingdom, which is a point specifically raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman.

Another network that is essential for exchanging information between member states, and between individual member states and Europol, is the network of liaison bureaux established at Europol’s headquarters in The Hague. The 10 UK liaison officers include experts from SOCA, HMRC, the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency and the Metropolitan Police Service. SOCA has a very close working relationship with the Metropolitan Police Service and for the last four years a senior officer from the Met Terrorist Command has been seconded to the UK liaison bureau. This has ensured effective contact with UK police counterterrorism units and other agencies. It ensures that there is full and direct access to Europol’s counterterrorism activities.

A significant benefit of having a liaison bureau for every member state is the opportunity for bilateral and multilateral information exchange. Your Lordships can imagine how convenient it is to simply walk a few yards and to have access to counterparts from all other member states who can provide information and support to aid our criminal investigations. The Government accept that the vast majority of the interactions simply bypass Europol. The information gathered from these bilateral exchanges is rarely entered into Europol’s systems and the opportunity for collecting potentially useful intelligence is lost. The issue is one that affects all member states to one degree or another, but we have taken a lead and SOCA now routinely copies details of its bilateral exchanges, sensitivity permitting. The noble Lord, Lord Jopling, mentioned the sensitivity issue but it is extremely difficult sometimes. We cannot see how we can arrive at a position where we can totally share all data. There will always be some issues that are so sensitive that you have to get approval from a bilateral partner who you got it from. If they do not give that, it is extremely difficult to do that. While ideally it would be lovely to share everything, it is quite difficult in some of these intelligence areas.

Europol has established a front office which can receive such information even where it does not fall within one of the existing analytical work files. This, allied to our initiative, is increasing our engagement with Europol. The UK at the level of heads of national unit meeting and at the Europol management board has actively promoted these steps and received considerable support from the other member states.

A key function of the Europol national unit is to provide information to Europol’s information system. This is essentially an indexing system enabling law enforcement to find data obtained by member states. Europol information system has the potential to link individuals who have been arrested or are under investigation and once these links are identified then traditional international police co-operation can take over. The noble Lord, Lord Joplin, quite rightly focused on information sharing and your Lordships will appreciate that the information system will only realise its potential if member states send their material in large volumes to Europol. As we have heard, the UK is one of the many member states that is not yet able to upload large volumes of data to the Europol information system. What information that is currently transmitted by SOCA is of high quality but it has to be input manually and this is resource intensive. In order to use the automatic data loader facility SOCA has to replace its legacy database system.

Progress has also been made on connecting police forces to the Europol information system. The Metropolitan Police are now connected via the secure police national network. Europol experts visited the UK in April to provide the necessary training and they will return in July to provide further training.

SOCA has revised its policy of rolling out access to the Europol information system to individual forces in favour of a regional approach. Plans are well advanced for the creation of regional intelligence units and these will be linked to the Europol information system as a priority. This will extend the reach of the system to police forces far more quickly and in a more focused way. Following the rollout of this regional approach, SOCA will review further connectivity once the impact of linking the Europol information system to the regional units has been assessed.

In its deliberations, the committee also took a close look at Europol and made a number of recommendations for improving that organisation’s capability. An initiative of the United Kingdom presidency in 2005 was the introduction to Europol of the concept of intelligence-led policing principles. I thank my noble friend Lady Henig for her strong support of what has been done there. It was mentioned by a number of other speakers as well. SOCA manages a national intelligence framework to support inter-agency activity against the main serious and organised crime threats to this country.

There are three key elements to this approach—an intelligence gathering process; a threat assessment; and a control strategy. Europol has embraced this concept in the form of the European criminal intelligence model and the most obvious manifestation of this approach is the production by Europol of the third annual organised crime threat assessment—or OCTA—which was approved by the Council in July 2008.

The European criminal intelligence model includes an intelligence-gathering requirement used by Europol to collect information from member states and EU agencies and organisations. It is the collection of this core information that we feel needs to be further developed. The model is still in its infancy, but we are optimistic that we can go forward in this and we are working hard to develop it. Last year, at the request of the Council, Europol drafted a threat assessment on the impact on the EU member states of Russian organised crime—the so-called ROCTA—and this represents another step in the application of the European criminal intelligence model.

Following the development of the organised crime threat assessment, Europol drafts specific threat assessments which support political decision-making. It is very encouraging that Europol’s draft work programme 2010 contains at least two objectives that promote the use of intelligence-led policing.

It is a source of optimism to the Government that the new Europol director was responsible for the introduction of the intelligence-led policing concept to Europol when he chaired the management board during our presidency in 2005. I am confident that the future of intelligence-led policing is in the best hands and Europol will continue to be promoted across the European Union.

We recognise that Europol can function effectively as an information exchange agent only if its partners are willing to share information. As the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, said, confidence is an important issue. We have heard concerns voiced by some member states about Europol’s ability to keep secure data. Some member states feel that Europol is a bit distant and disengaged from them. However, we are confident that Europol has very stringent data security and data protection rules and compliance is overseen by internal and external oversight functions. But we shared the concern voiced by the committee when the then Europol director said in evidence that he delegated overall responsibility for security to one of his deputy directors. Noble Lords can be assured that the current Europol director takes his security responsibilities extremely seriously and has indicated that he does take personal responsibility for security. We absolutely support that line.

Another security issue that emerged from the inquiry was the time taken by some member states to respond to security clearance information requests from Europol when their nationals take up employment contracts with the organisation. Until they are security cleared, such staff have only limited access. Apart from that being an inefficient use of the resources that could be at its disposal, we would acknowledge that the suggestion of staff being at Europol without security clearance will not engender confidence in the minds of the users of Europol’s service. I am pleased to say that that issue is currently being considered by a working group and along with a number of other member states we are taking a firm line on improving the situation.

I hope that I have painted a picture that shows a positive response to the recommendations made by the Home Affairs Sub-Committee. There is a way to go, but not all the solutions lie in our hands. We can and are getting our house in order but of course the United Kingdom is just one of 27 member states which use Europol’s services. Through our seat on the management board we can encourage our partners to increase their engagement with Europol, and of course we are doing that.

Europol itself has a very critical role to play in promoting awareness of its services. I am extremely heartened to note the objective in the current Europol work programme that aims to enhance the trust and confidence in all those involved and to improve the exchange of information with Europol national units and liaison bureaux.

There are a couple of other points that I have not answered yet. The noble Lord, Lord Jopling, talked about the problems in delays in appointing Europol directors. Part of the problem is the selection process, which did not provide sufficient evidence of the strengths of the candidate to rebut claims from candidates who are not proposed for appointment. The selection process has already been revised and is in place for the current selection of deputy director, which will be a lot better.

The noble Lord, Lord Jopling, also asked about ACPO. If ACPO was asked now, it would say that things have improved a great deal but that there is also still much to be done, especially in linking forces with Europe. Your Lordships have heard what we are doing to try to achieve that. My noble friend Lady Henig and the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, talked about accountability. We agree that Europol should be held accountable. There is a role here for the European Parliament and national parliaments. We will continue to push for greater accountability in that area.

The noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, said that SOCA had not achieved what it had hoped to achieve and that, indeed, perhaps it was not achieving very much. The formation of SOCA was highly complex, pulling together five national organisations. It is now beginning to function properly and is moving forward. There is no doubt that the big, serious criminal groups are very concerned about SOCA. However, the noble Viscount is absolutely right that the liaison between the police and SOCA in this country is not as good as it should be. A small part of this is turf warfare, people saying, “We did that; you did that”, or whatever it might be. It has to be made better. I am absolutely sure that we are going down the right track and that it will get better. That SOCA has such a good link with Europol can perhaps help the disjointedness that it has in working with our own police force, which is absolutely the way forward.

I hope that I have covered the majority of points. I have gone slightly over my time. I apologise if I have missed anything. This has been a useful and valuable debate. I thank everyone who was involved in it. It is important to get these matters into Hansard and to get people talking about them. The Government thank the noble Lord and his committee.

My Lords, I and, I am sure, the committee, will be grateful to the Minister for his very comprehensive summing up and his clear answers to many of our questions. These are hugely important matters, as the bogey of international, and domestic, crime seems to get worse rather than better. I am particularly grateful to those of my colleagues who have spoken in the debate, especially to the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, who is a member of the committee.