I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. To echo the words of my noble friend Lord King, we live in a very dangerous world. I made the point last time that 27 terrorist attacks have been prevented in the last three years.
I absolutely appreciate that it might not be immediately obvious why some public authorities require this power. Again, I urge noble Lords to read the case studies that have been published to reassure themselves about the contexts in which they might seek to use the power. Alongside law enforcement and the intelligence services, some of our wider public authorities have important responsibilities for investigating and preventing criminal activity and protecting the economic well-being of the United Kingdom. We should not underestimate the important role that these public authorities play in keeping the public safe.
To answer the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, I am happy to share business cases with him and other noble Lords, should they wish me to do so—I promise that I shall not give him only 45 minutes to read them.
I think that noble Lords have fully accepted that there will be occasions where undercover operatives play a critical role in providing the intelligence needed to identify and prevent criminality. As organised crime groups increasingly expand into areas overseen by those public authorities, the need for that robust investigative tool is more important than ever.
My noble friend Lord King made a very important point: the list is not an expansion but in fact a reduction. The information about how many organisations have been taken off the list has not appeared, but I can get that number for noble Lords, if it is to hand, before Report.
To answer the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, the officers in the public authorities are experts in their fields and are best placed to take appropriate and proportionate action to tackle the harms caused by criminal groups operating in the areas that they regulate. To answer his other point, they will have received specific training, which reflects the specialist remit in which they operate. I note that having the capability to carry out their investigative work themselves allows the police to focus on their priorities, as my noble friend Lord King and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, noted.
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I shall provide some more detail on some of those public authorities that have been specifically mentioned today: the Environment Agency, the Food Standards Agency and the Home Office. Organised crime groups are becoming increasingly involved in areas that the Environment Agency regulates, such as the waste sector. The agency’s statutory duties include the protection of the environment, natural resources and, of course, human health. As such, it is the investigating authority for offences that create serious risk of harm to people and the environment, such as illegal landfills, the misdescription of hazardous waste and illegal waste exports.
To speak to the point made by my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering on just using the police—notwithstanding the points made by my noble friend
Lord King and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson—the recently established Joint Unit for Waste Crime, which is hosted and led by the Environment Agency, brings together various agencies such as the NCA, the police, HMRC and others to share intelligence in a multiagency way, as quite often happens, and crack down on organised crime groups using the waste sector. I am happy to point out that it has already had a number of operational successes.
I can now give the answer on the reduction in the number of agencies on the list: it is a reduction of 22.
To get back to my point, serious and organised waste crime has been estimated to cost the UK economy up to £1 billion a year. An independent review in 2018 found that the perpetrators are often involved in other serious criminal activities, such as largescale fraud and, in some cases, modern slavery. Just as the police need these powers to investigate crimes such as drug smuggling or child sexual exploitation, so too does the Environment Agency need the appropriate tools to gather intelligence about, and tackle, serious and organised waste criminals.
The Food Standards Agency has a specialist food crime unit and a law enforcement capability within the agency. The unit was established in 2015, following a review of the 2013 horsemeat incident that my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering mentioned, and is responsible for protecting consumers and the food industry from food crime. The presence of substandard food produce within the marketplace undermines confidence in the UK food industry, and a robust approach to policing that is essential. At a time when demand on other law enforcement agencies is high, the Food Standards Agency has the sole responsibility for policing food crime. Customers should have confidence that their food is safe, and that it is what it says it is. The FSA needs the right tools to keep the public safe from consuming products that endanger their health. The ability to authorise an undercover operative to sometimes, where necessary and proportionate, participate in crime will support that mission. I urge noble Lords to read the published case studies for both those agencies to get a sense of how the power will be used in practice.
Noble Lords were interested in the inclusion of the Home Office. Its inclusion relates specifically to the work of Immigration Enforcement, which uses CHIS to collect information and evidence, while maintaining cover, in relation to organised immigration crime, document fraud, clandestine entry into the UK, human trafficking and money laundering.
I can provide noble Lords with a real-life example. Immigration Enforcement investigated the activities of the proprietor of a car wash in West Yorkshire. The subject of the investigation made an unsolicited approach to an undercover operative purporting to be a lorry driver and offered him £1,500 for each person he was willing to smuggle into the UK from mainland Europe. A series of subsequent deployments secured evidence to show that the suspect was intrinsically involved in the organised clandestine smuggling of Iraqi migrants from Turkey through mainland Europe. The subject was later arrested, convicted of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. We know of other such cases that did
not result in some of those poor people getting out of those situations alive. I hope that this reassures noble Lords as to the types of activity that these wider public authorities will be authorising and, indeed, the importance of this capability in tackling these wide-ranging issues that have the ability to impact on us all.
To reiterate two further points of reassurance, an authorisation must be proportionate to the activity that it seeks to prevent, and the Investigatory Powers Commissioner will have oversight of the use of this tactic by all these wider authorities. As part of this, and recognising the concerns of some about the experience of using public authorities, I note that inspectors from the IPC’s Office can identify whether a public body is failing to train and assess its officers to a sufficiently high standard and make recommendations in response to this—again, going to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. I hope that, in setting out the operational necessity of providing this power to wider public authorities, I have also reassured my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering that Clause 2 should stand part of the Bill.
I turn finally to Amendment 70, which seeks to prevent the list of public authorities being amended by statutory instrument. Although the list can be amended by statutory instrument, the addition of new public authorities will, of course, be subject to the affirmative procedure and will therefore be debated in both Houses to ensure that there is proper oversight. I hope that this reassures the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, that this amendment is not necessary.
With those words, I hope that the noble Lord will feel happy to withdraw his amendment.