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Serious Organised Crime and PoliceAct 2005 (Amendment of Section 76(3)) Order 2007

My Lords, monitoring the finances of convicted criminals is something with which we wholeheartedly agree. Making them report on all their bank accounts, credit cards and other monetary transactions is clearly having a salutary effect on their criminal behaviour. We know that a number of financial reporting orders have been made involving the Serious Organised Crime Agency and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. The new orders build on those in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. It is important to add bribery and corruption, money laundering and revenue offences to the list of qualifying offences in the Act. However, it would have been helpful to have had a little more information about how the introduction of the Act has disrupted these criminal lifestyles. For instance, what has been the rate of reoffending by any recipients of the order? Why are we still waiting for the commencement of Section 281(5) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which will raise the present level of offence for failing to comply with a financial reporting order from six months to 51 weeks? At least that will be better than the six months maximum at present, which seems light enough. Can the Minister tell us how much money has been recovered from convicted criminals who are the recipients of these orders? Is there an understanding of how effective these additions to the financial reporting orderswill be? Finally, I remember commenting on the workof SOCA during the proceedings on the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill and asking what we could expect from the agency. I ask again: when will we get a report from the Serious Organised Crime Agency so that we may judge for ourselves the effectiveness of the powers that it has been granted? Then we will be able to judge whether any new orders adding to their powers are appropriate.