Serious Crime Bill [HL]

I shall deal with the noble Baroness’s last question first. The figure that she gave is our current estimate. We have had to ask for advice from the relevant authorities on their reasonable expectation as a result of going through cases and histories to see what is likely. That is their best estimate. The noble Baroness will see from that figure that these orders will not be lightly sought, because they are likely to be limited in number and directed to those cases where the seriousness of the activity is such that the authorities believe it necessary to take this action. It is unusual for such a direct delegation of powers to be made to the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland the Director of Revenue and Customs Prosecutions or the director of the Serious Fraud Office. It is expressed in this way on this occasion because how decisions are made must be more tightly controlled than it would otherwise have been, because these are very serious orders. So the need to express delegation is a departure from the norm. Normally—for example, under the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985—delegation happens automatically by operation of the legislation. The reason we have departed from that and provided express delegation is because we believe that these orders fall into a slightly different category. They will need to be carefully targeted and scrutinised to make sure that the evidence and information on which they are based is sound and in good order to go before the court. The Attorney-General will provide his usual oversight of the director’s functions. He will not look at every case. He is usually invited to look at particular cases that are causing difficulty or on which his support and advice are needed. That procedure will continue to operate. It will not be just the Serious Organised Crime Agency that will apply for these orders. Law enforcement agencies will bring casesto one of the applicant authorities and will workwith specifically trained members of the applicant authority—not all members of those bodies will be so trained—who have had powers delegated to them by the director of the body. If those specifically trained members of the applicant authority consider it appropriate, they will apply to the court for an order to be made. It is because these orders are specialist that we think it appropriate to create this procedure. It is important to recognise that we cannot expect each director to make every operational decision in relation to every order sought by his organisation. That would be impractical. However, these orders will be applied by highly trained and highly qualified members of the three organisations. We believe that that will be a wholly acceptable way to work. The most important thing is that any application should be properly made so that it can succeed. We have created a high benchmark in the tests that have to be satisfied. It would be a great disappointment if the skill and attention needed to make sure these orders go well were not applied, hence this procedure. I hope the noble Baroness will feel content, particularly as it is now 10.02 pm.