---

Organised Crime (Northern Ireland)

I welcome the report and how the Committee decided to launch it. In his speech, the Committee Chairman, the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack), said that the future in Northern Ireland is not what it used to be. The Committee of this Westminster Parliament was able to launch a report on organised crime in Armagh, the seat of much of the organised crime that it describes. There are fuel laundering plants there, and one of the biggest markets of counterfeit goods was recently closed down at Jonesborough in County Armagh. Many of the godfathers of the mafia gangs that run organised crime scams are located in south Armagh. The fact that the Committee was able to go to south Armagh and launch its report there was therefore very significant. Only 10 years ago, a Committee of the House of Commons would certainly not have launched a report of that nature at that location. Having said that, the report highlights the fact that there is still a massive terrorist problem. We have to be careful not to divorce organised crime from the terrorist activities and organisations of the past. As I pointed out in an intervention, one of the descriptions given of organised crime in Northern Ireland was that terrorist crime had turned into paramilitary crime. We have to bear in mind that many of the gangs are run by people who were previously engaged in terrorist activity. All the evidence that we were given by the police and others was that those people use the same skills, weaponry, tactics, personnel and intimidation methods as they used in their terrorist activity. Organised crime is an extension of the terrorist campaign of the past; we cannot divorce the two. Many would say that the terrorist gangs have simply moved over to criminal activity. Paragraphs 77 to 81 of the report contain many of the comments made by people who gave evidence. Tom Wilson of the Freight Transport Association said that in the past ten years there had been considerable organised crime activity—in fact,"““more so than ever before””." Val Smith said that current levels of criminality were higher and"““worse than…during the troubles””." The Confederation of British Industry said that racketeering and extortion were continuing"““at a very high level””" and that fuel smuggling, fuel laundering and counterfeiting ““continued to get worse””. The head of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs said that counterfeit alcohol was being produced on an alarming scale. Hugh Orde said that Northern Ireland was a ““major player”” in intellectual property crime and that last year the PSNI had"““seized more counterfeit goods in Northern Ireland than the other 43 police forces””" across the United Kingdom. The problem has got worse: terrorist gangs are moving into criminal activity and that affects Northern Ireland’s economy because it affects businesses. Business leaders gave us a lot of information about that. Crime put their costs up, they had higher insurance costs, and it affected their employees. One of our most poignant visits was to Val Smith’s transport company, where we interviewed drivers, some of whom had been held up at gunpoint; the families of some of them had been held up at gunpoint. One driver described being held up and his life being threatened on five occasions. As Val Smith pointed out, that has an immense impact on the morale of employees and their ability to carry out their work. The criminality affects where businesses can locate. During some deliveries of alcohol and tobacco, scout cars had to be sent ahead of lorries to ensure that the routes were clear and that any patterns of behaviour showing that a hold-up was likely could be identified. Sometimes former policemen were employed for that task. Businesses had and have to work in that climate, and it is important that we tackle organised crime, if only for businesses. However, such crime affects communities as well. Again, we received evidence about the activities of paramilitary groups—they are all at it, loyalists and republicans. They may simply be touting drugs to young people in their communities. That causes social problems: it trickles down into petty crime, which affects pensioners, shops and householders who are burgled as people seek to finance their drug habits—habits made possible through the organised crime gangs who supply the drugs.