Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (References to Financial Investigators) (Amendment) Order 2009

I noted the point made in questions and will answer it in due course, if I may. I think that £1.3 billion in 2006 represents a considerable amount of criminal gain. As I was saying, we have added four new bodies and will add only another six. We do not anticipate that there will be a great expansion in the number of AFIs beyond that. There may be changes in that local authorities or other agencies may increase or decrease their AFI staff, depending on the areas of their involvement and what they are dealing with. I should add that we required the Intellectual Property Office to be included because it has a supervisory role to handle international and complex cases and needs investigative powers to perform the function. The order provides it with powers so to do. It will investigate cases that have passed the relevant local authority for prosecution, so there is an overlap. The IPO deals with the bigger cases that often go beyond local authority or even national boundaries. I hope that that helps the noble Lord. As I was saying, there are some 1,282 AFIs, the vast majority of which—almost 80 per cent—are within the staff of the police and Serious Organised Crime Agency. Many of the posts in other bodies are held by former police officers. It is the Government’s view and those involved that any withdrawal from accrediting investigators would be a serious step back in the outstanding progress we are making to drive up the amount recovered in the past six years. In 2001-02, £25 million was recovered and £148 million in 2008. It is also important to note that there is proper judicial oversight.