Home Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: The work of the National Crime Agency, HC 475
Tuesday 8 December 2015
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 8 December 2015
Members present: Keith Vaz (Chair); Victoria Atkins, Mr David Burrowes, Nusrat Ghani, Mr Ranil Jayawardena, Tim Loughton, Stuart C. McDonald, Naz Shah, Mr Chuka Umunna, Mr David Winnick.
Questions 1 - 90
Witness: Keith Bristow QPM, Director General, National Crime Agency, gave evidence.
Q1 Chair: This is the Committee’s examination of the Director General of the National Crime Agency, as part of our ongoing scrutiny of the agencies and the work of the Home Office. We are delighted to welcome Mr Bristow, the Director General of National Crime Agency. Could I refer all those present to the Register of Members’ Interests where the interests of members of this Committee are noted? Are there any other declarations that we need to hear about?
Mr Bristow, this is your last appearance before the Committee as Director General—
Keith Bristow: It is in this role, Chair.
Chair: It is. Goodness knows what your next job is going to be then.
Keith Bristow: Never say “never”.
Chair: Never say “never”—in this role, I was just about to finish that. When you took over I think the Home Secretary had very high hopes for the National Crime Agency and I think all of us expected you to stay a little bit longer. At the end, you have only stayed 780 days in this very demanding and challenging job. That is roughly two years. Why have you decided to leave the agency at this stage?
Keith Bristow: Chair, I was originally appointed in October 2011 on a three-year contract. I am now in the fifth year of this post because, of course, I was in post for two years before we went live, so I am just in to my fifth year. We are at a key point now for the agency. We have gone through the SDSR and the spending review. We have established the agency. I can point to the many differences that we have delivered very quickly and my sense was that the right time to go would be in my last year, rather than seeking reappointment, so a new Director General with the Home Secretary can take us on to the next level and, on a personal level, the timing is good for me as well.
Q2 Chair: In terms of the timing, in respect of Operation Heterodon and Operation Enderby, your agency has been roundly criticised by judges of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal and, indeed, the Court of Appeal. I am going to quote one of the judges, Lord Justice Davis. He said, “The level of systemic ignorance in respect of basic investigation procedures, on the part of a national agency established to investigate organised and other serious crime—is difficult to believe”. He went on to say, “The approach taken by the NCA to these applications for search warrants” which were quashed “was entirely wrong, and was based upon a fundamental misconception as to the role of the court in such applications”. It does not give this Committee and the public much faith in what was going to be Britain’s FBI, when judges are so critical of what appears to be a level of incompetence in our main organisation that is trying to deal with serious and organised crime. What is your answer to that, Mr Bristow?
Keith Bristow: I think it is right that in two important investigations we fell below the standards that the courts would expect and that we would expect, those being Operation Heterodon—where you have quoted the judge—and also Operation Enderby. Both those operations shared one thing—warrant applications—and what we did on the back of that—
Q3 Chair: Before you go on to what you have done subsequently, you have had to pay damages to those who were involved. I understand that 100 of your officers and connected officers had turned up at people’s homes, in their factories and in their places of work, using warrants that were subsequently quashed. Is that right?
Keith Bristow: We haven’t paid any damages. We were asked by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal to pay costs of £10,000, which we have done, and we are currently going through a legal process where the Chatwani brothers are seeking compensation. That is a live process at the moment.
Q4 Chair: Are there other people who are suing the NCA?
Keith Bristow: There are always people who are suing law enforcement, Chair.
Q5 Chair: Right. So tell us about the NCA. How many live cases are there in respect of people who have taken you to court at the moment?
Keith Bristow: I could not tell you. The legal suits that are taken out against us range from relatively minor things, such as, if we have executed a search warrant and we have damaged the door, people might seek some compensation for damage to their door, right the way through to corporations that might believe there has been reputational damage, so the Chatwanis might be an example. It is a consequence of enforcing the law.
Q6 Chair: You would not know, as head of the NCA, on a daily basis how many people, organisations, individuals are taking you to court? You would not know that information?
Keith Bristow: That would be too much detail; too many cases for me to have a grasp of on a day-to-day basis but I can quickly find out for you.
Q7 Chair: I am not talking about you knowing every case, but you do not know the number of times? You wouldn’t be told, “Somebody else is suing us. We have 50 cases”, you would not know that?
Keith Bristow: No, but our director of legal would. He sits at the board and he is responsible for overseeing how we respond to those, and where there is particular high risk that would be escalated to me.
Q8 Chair: You do not think that you, as the Director General, would need to know something of that kind?
Keith Bristow: I would need to know when I know but it isn’t the sort of information I carry round on a day-to-day basis.
Chair: Would you write to us and tell us?
Keith Bristow: Certainly.
Q9 Chair: Thank you. Now tell us what you did as a result of this very severe criticism of incompetence by the judge?
Keith Bristow: We decided that—because we are a responsible agency and we want the highest standards—we would review all of our live investigations where there was a similar type of application for a warrant or a production order. We established a team led by an NCA lawyer but with CPS as well, because of course they are an independent agency who decide on prosecutions, and we are in the process now of working through all of our live investigations to see if there are any similar problems to those that we saw in Heterodon and Enderby. We have not come across anything that is similar. We have come across one investigation where there may need to be some remedial action, but we have also taken the opportunity to say, “Even if there are no significant issues, what learning can we derive from going through a substantial review?” So we have picked up on some other issues that we can learn from that are much lower level and administrative in nature rather than the sort of issues that came up in Enderby and Heterodon.
Q10 Chair: Of the 350 operations that are currently being reviewed, as a result of what the judge has said about the systemic ignorance of basic investigatory procedures, how many have now been concluded of those reviewed?
Keith Bristow: There are 350. We have done the majority of those. The review will finish in the new year and, by that point, we will have also examined about 2,000 documents.
Chair: So you have done over half?
Keith Bristow: Yes.
Q11 Chair: You do not think that this is best done by an outside agency? You see the concern of this Committee is that we have already had you replacing the NCA with many of the people who worked for SOCA, and this Committee in the past was quite critical of SOCA, and the judge has criticised the legal advice you have been given because clearly you went to the court to seek a warrant on legal advice that wasn’t perfect. You are using your same lawyers to conduct the review. Don’t you think this should be done by a completely outside body rather than just the CPA and your lawyers?
Keith Bristow: A couple of things I would mention. The first one is we have initiated this review. No one sought a review. We have decided the professional thing to do is to make sure there are no systemic errors, and there aren’t. The CPS are independent. They are an independent prosecutor body. If there were problems, it would be the CPS that we would work through, through to defendants, through disclosure, into the courts to deal with that. The third thing I would say is we should remember that all of our warrants and all of our production orders have had authority from a magistrate or from a judge. We don’t take these out for ourselves. These are judicial authorities that have been authorised.
Q12 Chair: Is there somebody else conducting the review into ELMER, into the database concerning money laundering issues that was in the public domain this morning? We are coming on the criteria of money laundering, chasing, but today we understand that the database that you are using is—in the words of the NCA itself—both ineffective and inefficient. Why is that the case when we are dealing with an organisation that is supposed to be top notch, which is what the Home Secretary is supposed to have created?
Keith Bristow: We host the ELMER database on behalf of law enforcement and financial institutions. It dates back to the 1990s. As far back as the Lander review in 2006, it was reported that the IT that we use—the ELMER system—was becoming increasingly not fit for purpose. In 2000 we had about 20,000 referrals. We think this year we are going to have 380,000. The system was not built to deal with that particular volume. It wasn’t built to deal with internet banking and the way in which the whole disclosure regime has changed. Home Office are conducting a review, which includes the system—
Chair: Another review?
Keith Bristow: —and have committed to improve the system, which does need improvement, but also we need to talk about how we are going to renew the ELMER system that is increasingly coming towards the end of its life.
Q13 Chair: As you told this Committee, you have been doing this job for five years. This is the main body that is supposed to deal with serious and organised crime. The NCA was a fresh start. That is what this Committee was told. We supported the establishment of the NCA and, indeed, we welcomed what the Home Secretary was doing. It does not take five years to realise that a system that is supposed to monitor 20,000 suspicious cases now has to deal with 330,000 a year. In this particular case, your officers have been criticised by the Law Society. They have been highly critical. What is the point of telling you about suspicious cases when criminal elements are being tipped off that you are doing this investigation?
Keith Bristow: The system is coming towards the end of its life. It is not within my gift to change ELMER as an agency. It is a complicated system that has to interact with hundreds of financial institutions and 70-odd law enforcement institutions. It is a Government system that we host and we rely on that system to manage some of the risks that you have been talking about. We have continued to invest in it. We have continued to develop the system. It is now at the point where it needs replacing.
Q14 Chair: But the criminal elements must be rubbing their hands with glee. First of all, you have cases—such as Heterodon and Enderby—where you are going to court and courts are criticising a lack of understanding of the system and you have, in your hosting, a database that cannot cope with the number of referrals. People are getting away with criminal activity, aren’t they, because of your agency’s failure to monitor all these cases that come before you? This is what the Law Society is saying.
Keith Bristow: Our conviction rate is 92.8%. We can point to very significant operational successes. Sometimes people will be acquitted and in these two cases—two cases out of many hundreds of investigations—we let ourselves down.
Q15 Chair: No, Mr Bristow, you just told us that the system is not fit for purpose. You have said that you have been looking at it, it needs to be modernised. Who is to pay for this? Is it the NCA under your protective budget? Is it the Home Office or is it someone else? Why is there a dispute over this? Why can’t we just get a new system?
Keith Bristow: The response that I gave you was about Heterodon and Enderby about warrants.
Chair: No, no, I am talking about the database.
Keith Bristow: It is not within the gift of the NCA. It is not for us to fund. Our budget has not been protected. It is at flat cash, so we will need to continue to make efficiencies—
Q16 Chair: Who is going to pay for the new database so we can catch some of these criminals?
Keith Bristow: It will be for the Home Office to decide on what needs to be done. That will be funded by Government. We host it. We have management responsibilities for it. We don’t own it.
Q17 Chair: You see the concerns that my questions are raising? That the public out there may feel, here we are, we are supposed to have created a new FBI but the level of incompetence that has been shown in these cases is a serious worry. The arrival of all these officers at people’s homes with warrants that are not really valid, it is more Keystone Cops, isn’t it, than FBI?
Keith Bristow: No, I don't think that is fair at all, Chair. We are talking about two investigations. We have taken it seriously. I can point to many hundreds, a 92.8% conviction rate, 3,000 children protected. The work that we do, that our officers do, is fantastic. We let ourselves down in two cases. We have taken it seriously. We have gone through our own cupboards with the CPS, with outside counsel, to make sure we do not have a systemic problem. We have not.
Q18 Chair: You are assuring this Committee that these are exceptional cases and this will never happen again while you are still there, at least until January?
Keith Bristow: I am assuring you that, based on the readout I have had of the review so far, there is nothing like Enderby and Heterodon that we are currently dealing with. There is some learning. I can give you some examples of the learning. We want to improve our standards anyway but it is low-level stuff, so I am not aware of any case like that. I can never say to you that something will never happen again, because it relies on the individual competence and the support that officers get from the organisation to make sure they deliver effectively and sometimes mistakes happen.
Q19 Stuart C. McDonald: Mr Bristow, your organisation is slightly unusual in that you are required to report directly to the Home Secretary. How does that affect the NCA’s abilities to deliver on its objectives and would you say it in any way impedes your operational activities?
Keith Bristow: Having been a Chief Constable, my experience of the arrangements is it is unusual to account directly to a Secretary of State. But the Home Secretary exercises her responsibility to scrutinise and oversee us with real energy and real focus. She is challenging and intrusive but also supportive, but I am given free rein to deal with the operational aspects of what we do, which is enshrined in the Crime and Courts Act.
Q20 Stuart C. McDonald: Putting aside how you get on with the current Home Secretary, in principle, do you think that is a sensible arrangement or would you prefer in future for a different arrangement, a more traditional arrangement to be put in place?
Keith Bristow: I think this is a traditional arrangement, in that we are a non-ministerial department and the arrangement for a non-ministerial department is we account directly to a Minister. There is a framework document that sets out the basis of that agreement. We are unusual in that my operational independence is enshrined in the Crime and Courts Act and it works very well.
Q21 Stuart C. McDonald: So when we read in the press that there are senior figures in the NCA concerned at the level of control exerted by the Home Secretary in the NCA, either the press is wrong or you come to a different conclusion to your colleagues?
Keith Bristow: I don’t know who said that.
Q22 Stuart C. McDonald: Sure. Another thing that we read in the press—not that we believe everything that we read in the press—is that there are some frustrations that the Home Secretary uses the NCA effectively to fill gaps created by police budget cuts. Would you say that is something that has been happening?
Keith Bristow: No.
Q23 Stuart C. McDonald: For example, tackling child abuse, if you were the Home Secretary would that be something that you would task the NCA with or do you think that would be a task appropriately given to another organisation?
Keith Bristow: One of our priorities is dealing with child sexual exploitation. We inherited the Child Exploitation Online Protection Centre when we got started. It is fundamental to what we do. We do more of that now than we ever have. We have protected 3,000 children in the last two years. That is three times what CEOP was doing the previous two years. It is hugely important. The other bit of work that we do—so Operation Pallial in North Wales, Stovewood in Rotherham—is where there are particular circumstances where people may have lost confidence in a local law enforcement response, we have sometimes been invited by chief police officers to undertake investigations on their behalf, and that is what we have done. I personally believe that protecting children and targeting the people who would exploit those children is fundamental to the purpose of the NCA.
Stuart C. McDonald: That is helpful. Thank you.
Q24 Mr Winnick: It is not a question of just your leaving, Mr Bristow; you have resigned and you are leaving in January, am I right?
Keith Bristow: Yes, you are, Mr Winnick.
Q25 Mr Winnick: Apparently—you will confirm otherwise—the deputy is leaving?
Keith Bristow: He has left. He has just been appointed as the Chief Constable of Scotland.
Q26 Mr Winnick: The information I have is that in fact quite a number of senior people have left or are leaving, apart from yourself and the deputy. The head of the investigation into the Rotherham paedophile scandal, did that official resign recently?
Keith Bristow: There is a media report that seven people have left; senior people at board level at the NCA. In the last two years there is a temporary director who has retired after 39 years’ service. The person who was leading Stovewood, Trevor Pearce, retired after 40 years’ service, Phil Gormley after 30 and me after thirty-two and a half. The other three people: one was on secondment from the Home Office, the secondment ended and he returned; one was on secondment from Lincolnshire Police, the secondment ended and he returned; and one was a temporary member of the board. The idea that all of a sudden there has been an exodus, frankly, has got lost in the reporting. We are all people who have been in law enforcement for a long time—between 30 and 40 years—and some of us are choosing to retire and go and do some other things.
Q27 Mr Winnick: The picture that you want to give us, Mr Bristow, is that in the main, with some difficulties and the decision of the judge quoted by the Chair of this Committee, everything is more or less happy. Is that right?
Keith Bristow: Let me tell you where I think we are. Two years after starting operations we have a better understanding of the threat than we have ever had. Law enforcement works together with—
Chair: Sorry, could you speak up, Mr Bristow, just a little bit?
Keith Bristow: I am sorry.
Mr Winnick: Could you speak up?
Keith Bristow: Yes. Law enforcement works together now in the way that it never has before. The capabilities that we have as an agency simply did not exist before the NCA existed, and the operational results I can point to I think are very impressive. But there are two unresolved issues that will be for my successor to take forward. The first one is we need to transform our digital capabilities and our technology. That has been well documented in the HMI report. I said it publicly from day one. We need investment and we have just been given investment through the spending review, so that needs to be done.
The other issue that remains unresolved for me is I would like our officers to feel as positive and proud of the fantastic work they do as I am of them. They have gone through difficult change, at pace—because we wanted to improve what we do very quickly—and the way in which they feel about not the work, they love the work, but the way in which they feel about the agency, in my view, should be absolutely 100% positive all of the time. They are coming through that now. We are seeing that the level of engagement from our officers is improving but it is something that I would like to see much stronger than it is at the moment.
Q28 Mr Winnick: You see I understand what you have just said. I am wondering why a Sunday paper—perhaps most unfairly—nevertheless described the organisation as “National Chaos Agency” and defended the position of its piece by saying that morale has plummeted with, they say, hundreds of staff leaving. That is not true, is it; hundreds of staff have not left?
Keith Bristow: Let’s be clear. We needed hundreds of staff to leave, Mr Winnick. We needed a change in our workforce.
Q29 Chair: What were you saying to, Mr Winnick, you needed them to go?
Keith Bristow: Yes, so—
Chair: Why did you need them to go?
Keith Bristow: Because we needed to change the nature of our workforce. We have offered an early voluntary exit scheme, both just before the NCA started and subsequently, where many senior people have left the agency below board level, because we need new people with new skills while we change the agency and we need to refresh our workforce. That has been a conscious decision to enable some people who have had fantastic careers to leave.
Q30 Mr Winnick: Yes. Then the newspaper continues that instead of seizing large sums of money from Mr Bigs, “instead they have had to pay millions to a jailed tycoon in legal fees”. Does that ring a bell with you?
Keith Bristow: The case that they are referring to is Israel Perry who is a man who was convicted during SOCA’s time—
Mr Winnick: Could you speak up again?
Keith Bristow: Sorry, he was convicted during SOCA’s time of a fraud. Subsequently, it being a SOCA investigation, we were challenged over a legal change and as a result of that there has been a case to pay damages.
Q31 Mr Winnick: Moreover, a watchdog found officers could not even use the internet at their desk. True or otherwise?
Keith Bristow: The technology that we inherited, because we operate in a secret environment, did not allow ready access to officers off the same machine to a secret network and the open internet. We have changed that because we have invested in our technology and our officers now have desktop access on the same desktop for secret material and the open web.
Q32 Mr Winnick: I wonder if I could finally put this to you, Mr Bristow—because obviously in view of the serious allegations you are doing your best to defend what has happened, given explanations as the chief executive, and I understand all that—that a great deal of confidence, as the Chair has said, was put in your predecessor the Serious Organised Crime Agency. It was felt that this would be a novel way of dealing with crime in addition to the police. That did not succeed. There is no doubt that that was not considered a success. Your organisation came in to being and, let us say, it has not been a roaring success. I don't think you would claim otherwise. Is there something about these organisations, yours and its predecessor, that simply cannot replicate what the police are doing successfully?
Keith Bristow: Mr Winnick, you have gone through an article that I think is from The Mail on Sunday. I am not trying to defend anything. I am giving you honest answers to the questions about who have left and why, internet access, paying out damages to people who sued us over an historic investigation that we did not even start. I have given you honest answers. This agency has more to do, but we have come a long way in the time that we have designed, built and launched the NCA, and the public are now safer as a result: 450 tonnes of drugs seized. That is lives saved; 3,000 children protected; 500 guns seized; £100 million worth of criminal assets confiscated. That sounds like success to me.
Q33 Mr Winnick: You are quite happy with your record?
Keith Bristow: We have a lot more to do.
Mr Winnick: I see.
Keith Bristow: We need to transform our capabilities. We now have the investment that we need, and there will always be challenges in an agency that takes on the most difficult criminals. There will always be challenges, but our officers have done a fantastic job in the last two years to really move on the UK’s response and I reject any suggestion that this agency is not succeeding but it has more to do.
Mr Winnick: As you said twice, more to do.
Keith Bristow: Yes.
Mr Winnick: I think we would agree on that.
Q34 Chair: Indeed. Can we check that figure? You said, in your five years as Director General, you had seized assets of £100 million. Is that right?
Keith Bristow: No, in my two years of actually running the agency we have confiscated £100 million of assets.
Q35 Chair: But the budget you received in those two years is £1 billion.
Keith Bristow: It is about £900 million, yes.
Q36 Chair: Right. Okay, let’s not argue over £100 million here. You received £900 million but you have only seized assets of £100 million.
Keith Bristow: Chair, you and I have had this debate on numerous occasions—
Chair: We have had these conversations. Well, not just me but the whole Committee.
Keith Bristow: The whole agency is not set up as an asset confiscation agency. It is one of the tactics that we use to tackle organised criminals.
Chair: Of course, but the Committee has made it very clear, especially when you were set up, that we felt that benchmarks need to be in existence and £100 million seized on a budget of £900 million does not sound like good value for money.
Keith Bristow: Well, it depends what we are set up to do and confiscating assets is not solely what we do. Let me give you another figure. In our first year we had £22 million of cash seizures. This year we have had £49 million. We have more than doubled it, so our performance on denying assets to criminals—that is, civil recovery, taxation, and asset confiscation and cash seizures—is improving very quickly—
Q37 Chair: You are going up by £20 million a year, so we will have to wait about 15 years or so until your confiscation is equivalent to your budget?
Keith Bristow: Chair, if the way in which you and the Committee are going to judge the performance of the NCA is we must confiscate the same value of assets as our funding, I suspect you are going to be disappointed because that is not the job that I am being asked to do by Government.
Q38 Chair: There is a big article in The Evening Standard with a rogues’ gallery, which presumably you co-operated with—
Keith Bristow: Yes.
Chair: —where you are saying you cannot find this £50 million owed by major crime bosses and you have asked the public to help you find it.
Keith Bristow: Yes.
Chair: Why should the public help you find it when you have a budget of £434 million a year to do this? Why are you asking The Evening Standard to ask the public to help you find money that you could not find with all that expertise that you have in your possession?
Keith Bristow: Because law enforcement and policing, whether it is tackling terrorism, organised crime or domestic violence, relies on the co-operation of the public, and the public—whether it is through Operation Captura or bringing fugitives back to the UK—being witnesses, and amidst what I think is an innovative approach to say, “These people owe the state” can be hugely helpful in telling us whether they know where these people are, where they live, what sort of lifestyle they have; in fact, engaging the public.
Chair: Indeed. It is like a neighbourhood watch for the Mr Bigs I suppose, is it?
Keith Bristow: That is not a bad description, Chair.
Q39 Mr Jayawardena: Mr Bristow, just following up on the number of workers that have left the NCA, I want to question—and I will ask it all in one go to save time—is there a morale problem? Because so many more people are applying to leave than are leaving under the scheme: 375 against 262 last summer; 280 against 173 in a more recent round. While it might help in terms of repurposing your organisation, does that high level of turnover also create a threat to your organisation in its ability to carry out its responsibilities, given the potential loss of corporate memory?
Keith Bristow: The reason that we have needed people to leave—who are mostly exceptionally good people—is that we had too many senior people who were probably of my generation in law enforcement and law enforcement and crime have changed. We need more crime fighters who are digitally hugely competent, more people who can write code, and more people who are expert in how banks operate, so we needed different skills. As for the reason that a lot more people applied than were able to go, it has to be an economic decision. I have to justify giving someone compensation for going early to show that it makes sense that they do that. For many people who saw it as an attractive scheme, I could not justify that to Government so they were not able to go. Most of those people who still remain with us, if they haven’t chosen to retire or leave of their own volition, are doing a fantastic job as they were beforehand but people at a certain point in life make choices about what is right for them. I think it would be wrong to over interpret it in the way that you have said.
Q40 Mr Jayawardena: Corporate memory, though; are you losing corporate memory that is invaluable to your effort to fight crime?
Keith Bristow: The profile of our workforce is quite interesting. We have a lot of people who have very substantial policing and law enforcement experience, like me, 20, 30, 40 years in some cases. We also have a lot of young people because we are recruiting quite quickly. For those people who have gone we have had to make budget savings. We have also recruited hundreds of people who have joined us who are trainee investigators, trainee intelligence officers. So people of my generation not only have to fight crime, they have to develop the next generation of crime fighters. We have to do that in a measured and sensible way, not in a reckless way, so we are shifting our workforce to be the contemporary workforce that we need with experience, inside training, development and learning from people who have that depth of experience.
Q41 Mr Burrowes: Just to carry on that point. The case you make about the seven out of 17 members of the management board leaving in relatively quick succession is, as I understand it, they have served their time in crime enforcement over 20 to 30 years or so and then moved on. But if one just looks at one particular example, I do not see that that is the case with Phil Gormley, the Deputy Director General. He has moved on to the Chief Constable of Scotland. One sees he is moving on to another crime enforcement role and, when he got the post less than two years ago, he said that this role was once in a lifetime, which has lasted less than two years. It does raise the question as to whether there is more than you say that has led to these people leaving, not least Phil Gormley. I don’t know if it is suggested, is it, that they are frustrated because you are operating more like a Whitehall Department than what they came in to, which was a national crime fighting agency?
Keith Bristow: I have spoken to everyone at a senior level who has left the agency, and I have a good relationship with all of our senior people, and no one has ever said that to me. Phil Gormley announced his retirement before the job in Police Scotland was available. There was an incumbent who had quite a way to go on his contract. Phil announced his retirement. He did a once in a lifetime job, which is to stand up the National Crime Agency and make it a success in the first two years and he did that well. He decided to retire for a range of reasons. He is in his early 50s. He wanted to pursue some other interests and then, out of the blue, came Police Scotland, a fabulous job, second biggest police force in the UK. Phil applied and, good on him, he got it and he has decided he wants to serve as the Chief Constable of Scotland. I don't think there’s a back story.
Q42 Mr Burrowes: Moving on, are you still convinced that the NCA would be better able to lead the UK’s counter-terrorism effort than the Met?
Keith Bristow: I have never said that, Mr Burrowes. What I have always said—
Q43 Mr Burrowes: As you look back in your parting speech, would that be one of the things you would say?
Keith Bristow: No. What I would say is things have changed over the last four years but some of what I said at the start I think still stands good, which is this is about focusing on capabilities. What is it law enforcement needs to be able to do to keep the public safe from all national security risks, whether it is from terrorists, people with a sexual interest in children, drug traffickers and others? What are the capabilities that we need? I have always argued that the enemy, whether they are terrorists or criminals, often the way in which they perpetrate their criminality is the same or linked and the law enforcement response is often the same or linked: guns, borders, moving money, all of those capabilities are shared. My argument is, particularly at a time of austerity, particularly when the world is changing—as it is—what we need to do is focus on the capabilities that we need collectively and work that through, so we build capabilities once at the right level that are deployed for multiple purposes. I think focusing on the ownership of a CT threat is the wrong starting point. The right starting point now that things have moved on, the threat has moved on, is capabilities.
Q44 Mr Burrowes: So capabilities: you have 4,000 staff, the Met has 45,000 staff. In terms of capability to deal with the imminent, immediate threat now, you would not agree with what John Yates said, when he was lead of UK counter-terrorism, “If an attack was imminent, a seamless operation would kick in—developed by the counter-terrorism network, but delivered by mainstream policing” and that the NCA taking on a lead would be a failure, “to take into account the complexities of the task and ignores the critical importance of local policing to fighting terrorism at every level”. Do you agree with that?
Keith Bristow: The same is true of tackling organised crime, so let me give you an example. A lorry load of very vulnerable people being dropped at motorway services, who have been trafficked in to this country and will be exploited, needs a local policing response to debrief those people to find to who trafficked them, so national security risks are global and national in character but they are local in effect. If you compare the numbers between the Met and the NCA, we do not do emergency responses policing, we do not do local patrol. That is not what we do. The Met has specialist capabilities as well and the CT policing element, which is not the Met, is a national element of which the Met is a part, is a much smaller cohort than the size of the Metropolitan Police. My view is the link between national capabilities and local effect is true for organised crime and is true for countering terrorism, and what we need to do is make sure we have joined up capabilities. The work we are doing with CT policing at the moment is heading in that exact direction. Co-location of units, thinking about how we operate in a digital environment, what we do overseas, what we do at the border, all of those are opportunities to squeeze out better operational effect with less resource.
Q45 Mr Burrowes: Finally, John Yates continues by saying, “Hiving off one part of the strategy to another agency risks divorcing the key response elements from each other” and, perhaps going further in terms of funding issue, no doubt terrorism in terms of the funding pot, surely that would risk—also from an NCA point of view—diverting yourself from other areas of national crime?
Keith Bristow: I don’t want to get into a debate with John whom I respect enormously, but that was written three years ago. The world is now different. It seems to me that the Australian Federal Police and other agencies around the world manage to balance their caseload between a range of national security risks where terrorism and organised crime are in the same agency. That is not what I am advocating. What I am advocating is there are things that we can do together that will get better collective effect. Some of the tragic events that we have seen recently involving firearms, it is not for me to comment on where those firearms have come from but I would not be the least bit surprised if there is a link between criminals, who do things for profit and gain, and terrorists who do things for ideological reasons. It is also true if you want to cross borders and you want to fraudulently obtain genuine passports. You would probably go to criminals. If you want to launder money you would go to criminals. How we analyse digital media, same capability. What I am advocating is a logical approach where we look at what law enforcement needs to be able to do to keep the public safe all of the time.
Chair: Thank you very much. To be fair to you, Mr Bristow, it wasn’t you who suggested CT should go to the NCA, it was this Committee. We will probably have to revisit that recommendation, based on what we have heard about the NCA in the last year or so, so it wasn’t you.
Q46 Mr Umunna: Mr Bristow, one of the activities that fall within the competence of your organisation is, of course, tackling cyber-crime. I want to give you the opportunity to maybe correct the record, if some of the stuff that has been put out about your organisation you feel is incorrect or not fair, and I get a certain sense of that from you today. There were reports in July that your computer servers were in danger of meltdown and that you suffered a three-day IT blackout. Is that correct?
Keith Bristow: I think the incident you are relating to is a DDoS attack that we suffered as a result of, with our international partners, tackling some cyber criminals, and what happens is when we attack them, we can then sit and watch them attack our websites as our law enforcement partners around the world also experienced. There was no penetration into our systems. No loss of data. For short periods we took our website down to let some of the DDoS attack pass.
Q47 Mr Umunna: Is that related to another report that has appeared about your site being brought down by the Lizard Squad hacking group who were said to be behind the cyber attacks on Sony, Microsoft and others? Is that the same incident or is that another incident?
Keith Bristow: I don’t know. I am not aware of our systems being down or that report, but all I can think of is the DDoS attacks, and Lizard Squad we believe may well have been behind one of them because it is a group we have sought to confront.
Q48 Mr Umunna: Is it correct that a watchdog—which has not been publicly named but has been cited generically—found that your officers were not able to use the internet at their desks during a period?
Keith Bristow: The watchdog is probably Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary. The IT infrastructure that we inherited, which was mostly SOCA infrastructure, had been set up to operate in a secret environment because we share secret intelligence. To have that accredited it had not been possible, off the same device, to allow access to the open internet. It was just not technically allowed. Given our responsibility for policing in an internet environment, that was a challenge. We had separate stand-alone computers. We have now invested—and it was recognised in the same report—to deal with that so our officers now can go secret, confidential, official, open internet, on the same device. That was a fair description of the challenge that we had. We have dealt with it.
Q49 Mr Umunna: You were initially set up to investigate cyber-crime but you had not been given the tools, or did not have the tools to do the job properly at that point, but that has now been resolved?
Keith Bristow: The National Cyber Crime Unit started with the capabilities that they needed from the start. What you are alluding to is the ICT infrastructure across the whole of the NCA, internationally and domestically, did not allow what I have described, which is open internet access and secret. It could not be accredited. We have now found a way to do that in an accredited system where all of our officers have access to the open internet off their desktop.
Q50 Mr Umunna: You talked about the National Cyber Crime Unit, which is one of your operations, and the Chancellor last month announced the creation of this new national cyber crime centre. What is the relationship between the two?
Keith Bristow: I think it is a really positive announcement and it goes back to the answer I was giving to Mr Burrowes earlier about shared capabilities. The national cyber centre will provide incident response and incident management. We will retain the lead on the law enforcement aspect. Much of the cyber challenge, whether it is state, non-state, individual, organised crime, often looks quite often the same in the cyber environment, so the way you respond to the incident to start with needed more coherence and it needed lots of the component parts coming together, so I think it is a really good move. It is exactly what I was talking about: a shared capability, built once, used many times.
Q51 Mr Umunna: What is the point in having these two organisations? Isn’t there a risk of waste and duplication? Why not just have one unit that deals with both of those capabilities?
Keith Bristow: Because they will be dealing with a whole range of other issues and we are a law enforcement agency. The national cyber centre won’t be doing the same and they will also be dealing with cyber security issues. But we need that incident response, whether it is a TalkTalk or a Vodafone or whoever it may be, an instant response to support those organisations, give proper victim care and give us the leads and, if it is a law enforcement issue, it is criminals, we would lead on that.
Q52 Mr Umunna: Can I ask one final question related to the earlier questions of the Chair on the fall-out of the misuse of these warrants? I think you refer to this, but there were four cases to which this related and I think three of them collapsed. Am I wrong about that?
Keith Bristow: There are two cases. It would not be unfair to report it as three because one case had two trials. What I would also say is in Operation Heterodon, to be clear, people were convicted, assets were confiscated and people went to prison.
Q53 Mr Umunna: Of the two collapsed trials, which could be referred to as three—
Keith Bristow: Yes.
Mr Umunna: —no doubt that will have cost a lot of money to the taxpayer in terms of counsel who would have been instructed, the brief fees, and so on. How much did those three collapsed trials cost the taxpayer?
Keith Bristow: I don’t know. I would need to do some further work but it did cost the taxpayer. It was below what we would expect; the standards of that investigation were below what we would expect.
Q54 Mr Umunna: What are we talking, millions of pounds and if you cannot give an exact figure would you be able to write to the Committee and let us know how much?
Keith Bristow: I can write to you. Most of our investigations cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of pounds because they are complex.
Chair: Thank you. If you could write to us by next Friday with the information about the cost to the taxpayer of these cases, including costs that you have paid, any damages that you have paid, including cases in respect of historical cases that SOCA was dealing with, as Mr Umunna has asked.
Keith Bristow: The only caveat, if I may, Chair, is I may need to note in some of those if proceedings are ongoing. It may be we need to reply on some of them at a later date.
Chair: That is fine, so long as we have what you have paid out so far. That would be very helpful if you could do that. Before you go we would like you to finish all your bits and pieces. Thank you.
Q55 Nusrat Ghani: Mr Bristow, I want to take you back to the quote that Mr Umunna referred to, which was in The Mail on Sunday on 19 July that, “The NCA’s computer servers are in danger of meltdown and it suffered a three-day IT blackout”. What assurances can you give us that your defence capabilities are tough enough to stop other people hacking in to the system?
Keith Bristow: We spend—and the Chair may ask me to write to him and tell him how much this is—a lot of money on protecting the front end of our website, but we should remember that is different and distinct from where we store data and information. It is the front end. We have not had any breaches of our information security. Our website has not been hacked but we have suffered DDoS attacks.
Q56 Nusrat Ghani: Front and back you have had no attacks anywhere within your system?
Keith Bristow: None that I am aware of, no.
Nusrat Ghani: In the last how many years?
Keith Bristow: We have been going two years. I am not aware of any data breaches at all.
Nusrat Ghani: There have been no data breaches whatsoever?
Keith Bristow: None that I am aware of, no.
Q57 Nusrat Ghani: How many have you intercepted?
Keith Bristow: DDoS attacks? I could not tell you. It is a regular feature of what we do. We have a dashboard, in effect, and you can map our operational activity against the level of DDoS attacks that we suffer, most of which are completely unsuccessful. Sometimes we have to take the website down for a few minutes.
Q58 Nusrat Ghani: Those attacks no doubt are getting more and more sophisticated each time. Have you calculated how long it would take for them to maybe hack the system, or are you continuously changing your IT each time that there is an infiltration to make sure it is stopped?
Keith Bristow: As you know, there is no static point where we can say “We are now secure”. This is an ongoing battle between law enforcement and government more generally, and the agencies and people who would do us harm or seek to disrupt our ability. It is an ongoing battle.
Q59 Nusrat Ghani: When you are stopping these DDoS attacks can you calculate if they are coming from the UK or overseas, or is that not a calculation that you can make?
Keith Bristow: I think we can make judgments about where they are located but, by the very nature of a DDoS attack, it is a distributed denial of service, the way in which they use the network can make that quite difficult.
Q60 Nusrat Ghani: In your judgment, would you say they come from the UK mostly or overseas?
Keith Bristow: A mixture of both I would say.
Nusrat Ghani: A mixture of both, okay.
Keith Bristow: The cyber criminals, particularly in the fraud world who are most effective, tend to be Russian speaking organised crime groups, so when we arrest them, disrupt them, disrupt their systems, they inevitably push back at us and this is not new. This has always happened in policing and law enforcement. If you dealt with a traditional drugs network 20 years ago, don’t be surprised the police station did not get attacked or officers got threatened at home, so this is not new. It is just a good example of how our world has changed and it is now hand to hand combat—or as a colleague said, “Mouse to mouse combat”—in a digital environment rather than a physical space, which is often what we experience.
Q61 Chair: In respect of counter-terrorism and cyber security, the Security Minister in evidence to this Committee commended the work of a group called Anonymous that was taking down the websites of those involved in terrorist activity—are you grateful for the support of groups of that kind—and also a group called Ghost Security Group, which has exposed the new Daesh phone app, which allows people who support Daesh to be able to break through an encrypted messaging service for their supporters? Are you grateful for all the support that is coming from these groups because I would have thought this is something the National Crime Agency should be doing?
Keith Bristow: There is absolutely no way we can deal with crime, particularly pure cyber-crime, without engagement from industry, NGOs and international engagement. We just can’t. The world has changed. How we work with the private sector has to change too. I am not going to comment on those specific groups because I don’t have knowledge of what they have done on CT because we are not responsible for countering terrorism, but we are always grateful for the help of people who share our values, want to act ethically and want to keep the public safe.
Q62 Chair: On their website, which I had a look at earlier on today, they have the list of the number of websites they have taken down that has jihadist propaganda: 1,690 websites have been taken down by them in 234 days and 15,300 Twitter pages have been deleted by them. Further to questions by colleagues, I am just worrying whether the need to take down these websites is falling between different agencies, between the Adrian Leppard Centre in the City of London Police, between what you are doing in the National Crime Agency and what Mark Rowley is doing in the Metropolitan Police. It does not seem very joined up because we are not getting this kind of information. Do you not think the public would be pleased if the National Crime Agency or some other body was able to give us the kind of information that Ghost Security Group and Anonymous are giving us?
Keith Bristow: It is more joined up than it might appear from the outside, but that is not an unreasonable challenge, Chair. What I would say is let’s go back to what we said about the National Cyber Centre earlier. We recognise the number of organisations and institutions are operating in this space on behalf of Government needs to be rationalised, needs to be joined up, and something I feel we need to do through police and law enforcement reform is let’s be clear about who is doing what locally, what we do regionally and what we do nationally and internationally, and not—
Chair: That is not happening at the moment.
Keith Bristow: That is the process of reform that we are going through and I think it is becoming clearer and clearer all of the time.
Chair: Right. Thank you.
Q63 Victoria Atkins: I would like to ask you now about the draft Investigatory Powers Bill. Indeed, you gave evidence last week with other law enforcement officers to the Joint Committee that is scrutinising the draft Bill at the moment. How important is communications data in fighting crime?
Keith Bristow: If I may, without repeating everything I have said, the internet, and internet-based technologies have affected all of our lives. Criminals exploit them all the time. The situation we find ourselves in is to invest in our capabilities. We as an agency, law enforcement and the state more generally, also need legislation that reflects the nature of the contemporary threat and we simply cannot do our job to the extent that we ought to be, and that is getting worse all of the time because the legislation is not fit for purpose. The data that has been retained does not give us what we need, so thinking about communications, if I communicate with you on the phone we can access the data that said the call took place and, subject to warrant, we can even find out what you said. If that is on the internet the data might not be available to even prove that the call took place in the first place, so this legislation, both in countering terrorism, dealing with organised crime and finding missing persons, is absolutely key to what we need to keep the public safe in a digital environment. We simply cannot do our job without the right legislation.
Q64 Victoria Atkins: Could you give us an example of the missing person scenario that you have described?
Keith Bristow: We have an infographic that I can send you a copy of. We use this as an example of how communications data are used. The reason I think we ought to talk about missing persons as an example is that resonates with all of us because many people think, quite reasonably, they will not be involved in organised crime. There is a gap in what is proposed in the Bill that does concern me, and that is around internet connection records, which goes exactly to this point. We can request internet connection records, not weblogs, not a full browsing history. Companies will be required to retain the data and we can request the data for three purposes: IP address resolution; if the website was visited contained unlawful material or it is what is called a communications website, so Twitter or Facebook. To use the missing person example, if a young, vulnerable person had booked a train ticket, we could not request the internet connection record that would show us they had been on to a train website. That is not something that we can request. This is so central to what we do because the Bill, if it becomes an Act, will give us most of what we need. It does not satisfy for us the one requirement of our five law enforcement requirements, which is to give us investigative leads, and in my judgment that particular bit is a gap. I don’t want to cut across what a Joint Committee is doing, what Government decides goes into the Bill or what Parliament decide goes into the Act. That is absolutely for others. I recognise that Parliament will consider a whole range of issues beyond the views of law enforcement, but it is important that I point out there is a gap there that needs to be taken into account.
Q65 Victoria Atkins: Thank you. You have talked about resources in terms of computers and so on. Do you have at the moment the computer network that the NCA will need in the future, particularly if the Investigatory Powers Bill is enacted and these new powers are brought to bear?
Keith Bristow: We need to invest in our network. That is why through the spending review we bid for £200 million worth of capital over the next four years. That is why Government has agreed we can have the capital we need to transform our technology. We are able to do what we need to do now but we need to transform and we need to transform at pace.
Q66 Victoria Atkins: Picking up on the issue of people, the exchange between the Chair and yourself about websites being taken down by various organisations that exist on the internet and are not police organisations, doesn’t that underline your point about the need to make the workforce of the NCA more flexible? In other words, perhaps attracting people with the computer skills to do this sort of work that perhaps in the past they didn’t think of the police or law enforcement as a career for them?
Keith Bristow: Absolutely. Those people are in short supply. Attracting them is one thing, retaining them is a whole different issue because these people are also attractive to the private sector. We have to work hard at developing law enforcement careers that take account of the ebb and flow between different organisations, and we cannot get drawn in to solely representing the nature of the job by pay. Pay is important. Everyone has bills to pay. I want our officers to be appropriately rewarded but we must focus on the pride that one gets in keeping the public safe, the intellectual and professional challenge of tackling the most difficult cyber criminals and people who would exploit children. So we need to be very clear about the NCA offer to attract the highly qualified code writers and engineers that we need in this particular space, but then offering them the careers that retain them and recognising that they might go away to the private sector for a bit and come back to us, how we work with the private sector, how we share capability. We had an operation where we protected £100 million worth of British taxpayers’ money; one operation. That was all about working with the private sector.
Q67 Victoria Atkins: A final question about public support for these powers. You have said how essential it is that the public understand and agree with the need for these new powers. Are we there yet?
Keith Bristow: I don’t know. I think the duty that falls to people like me is to be candid about the risk that the public faces and what law enforcement needs to keep them safe. One of the things that we should be most proud of in this country is policing and law enforcement operates on the basis of consent, which is expressed through Parliament. I think honesty, integrity, openness and challenging ourselves are important, and we do need to secure that for what we do in a digital environment in the same way as we do in a physical analogue environment, and I think there is still a lot to do.
Q68 Mr Winnick: Mr Bristow, would it be right to say that in the main those who are lobbying for this—and you are in your capacity for extensive powers, which you have been explaining to my colleague—are the very same people who were so keen on extensive pre-charge detention on terrorism and for identity cards?
Keith Bristow: I think that is unfair, Mr Winnick.
Mr Winnick: Unfair?
Keith Bristow: First, I am not lobbying for anything. What I am doing, quite properly and professionally, is setting out what it is that we need, in my judgment, to keep the public safe and I am constantly acknowledging the role of the Joint Committee, Government and Parliament as the decision-makers. We will operate within the law. I am not lobbying for anything. I am setting out the real risks that I think we need to take account of as Parliament decides what we should do.
Q69 Mr Winnick: Yet you are on record as saying you recognise there is a tension between obviously the need for security against the threat of terrorism and privacy. You recognise that there is a tension in that.
Keith Bristow: There is a tension. There is also a connection, so, while in the physical world I want my children to have the freedom to play in the park, I want the reassurance that the police and responsible citizens will make sure that no one is going to unnecessarily interrupt them or exploit them. The same is true with the internet. You cannot have freedom without security.
Chair: Thank you. That is a very good point to end that on. Tim Loughton, child exploitation and then David Burrowes if he has any questions.
Q70 Tim Loughton: Mr Bristow, CSE has never had a higher profile and is clearly much more extensive than I think anybody ever really appreciated. Obviously the Government has done a number of things. GCHQ has recently set up this joint operations cell involving the NCA to track down paedophiles on the internet. What difference is that going to make?
Keith Bristow: It is a joint unit, newly formed, already delivering operational success. We are seeking to use the best of GCHQ, how they analyse bulk data, how they help us deal with the most difficult to get to criminals who would exploit children, and we are using our law enforcement expertise around investigation, collection of evidence and presentation of evidence before a court. Bringing together those two disciplines in a jointly led, jointly tasked team is already delivering big operational benefits, and we seek to use those benefits on cyber-crime and elsewhere, so it has given up a big step up in capability.
Q71 Tim Loughton: What does it do differently? I remember 10 or 12 years ago going to Scotland Yard and seeing their specialist unit there posing as other paedophiles to swap images across the internet, but dealing with very sophisticated people who always seemed to be one step ahead of the law enforcement agencies and how they used and hid behind technology. What has changed now? What extra dimension does the GCHQ angle bring in that would be one step ahead of the paedophiles rather than behind them?
Keith Bristow: I absolutely recognise the description that you have given, and some of that is still true because, of course, people who choose to pursue a sexual interest in children work hard at anonymity. That is why the internet is such a powerful tool for them. Whether it is encryption, whether it is getting through the sheer volume of the digital devices that we seize, which have media on there that we need to prove offences or prove conspiracies or relationships or to identify through hashtags victims that we can then go and rescue, GCHQ have deep technical expertise operating in that environment. They are bringing that to bear to assist our investigators where we have professional expertise in investigation and bringing criminals to justice and supporting victims. It is their ability to deal with bulk data, get to the high risk with an awful lot of data. We seized tens of thousands of devices through Operation Notarise alone. They need to be analysed to get the evidence out of them. They need to be analysed to prove who else is exploiting children that we need to target. That is where they are adding value.
Q72 Tim Loughton: The Children’s Commissioner for England produced a report on the proliferation of CSE a couple of weeks ago, following on from the work that she has been doing over the last few years. The alarming top-line figure from that report was that 85% of CSE—most of which was familial—goes unreported. Is that a figure you think is a reasonable assessment or is it too alarmist or not?
Keith Bristow: I would not disagree with the assessment. What we are finding, as an agency working with the police, is the more we look, the more we find and, very sadly, there are a lot of people here and elsewhere who have a sexual interest in children and choose to pursue that interest on the internet or physically because, as we should remember, most physical abuse remains within the family and people who are connected to that family. I could not say the numbers are right but I trust the judgment of the Children’s Commissioner and it does not seem an unreasonable assessment to me.
Q73 Tim Loughton: How are we going to make a step change where the law enforcement investigation agencies, of which you are one, are looking at this vast body of potential offenders who are paedophiles of whatever level, particularly when it is hidden within the family, and particularly where there is a culture of fear of telling as well? Where do you fit in to that jigsaw of different agencies, which is about raising the profile, is about encouraging and making it easier for vulnerable kids to report and easier for them then to take the perpetrators to a successful prosecution through the courts? What is changing now?
Keith Bristow: I could give you a very long answer with a number of things we need to do, but I will give you the thing that I think is the central plank: confidence. People who are being exploited, whether it is online or physically, need to have the confidence to tell someone about it, and the people who are being told need to know what the right thing is to do next. It seems to me, whether it is historic cases that we are doing, children’s homes in North Wales, whether it is people online who have been encouraged or exploited to do inappropriate things online and then blackmailed to do further inappropriate things, it is all about having the confidence to tell someone about what is happening. That is the most important part.
Q74 Tim Loughton: Can I ask one final question? When I launched the Child Sexual Exploitation Action Plan, back in November 2011, one of the things that came out of it is that CEOPs trained all their personnel in recognising child sexual exploitation and what to do about it. Does that apply to all the staff within the NCA now?
Keith Bristow: Yes, and CEOP as an entity in 2011 was just over 100 people. It is now just over 300 people and every part of our organisation, domestically and internationally, now has a role in tackling child sexual exploitation. We prioritise this as an agency with the police and with others.
Q75 Tim Loughton: Every member of staff within the NCA has had specific training in CSE?
Keith Bristow: They have been trained in their responsibilities to safeguard and protect children.
Tim Loughton: That is not quite the same question. Have they had specific training in the new approach to identifying and being able to passport on to the appropriate agencies child sexual exploitation as we now know it?
Keith Bristow: I am honestly trying to give you the most accurate answer I can. Everyone has had the basic—including me—training that shows what your duties are to children where you have a concern about their safety. Outside of CEOP, our investigators who are involved in CSE investigations have been trained now to a very high level and have the equipment available to undertake operations like Voicer. Voicer was online streaming of child abuse of infants. These people have now been convicted. That was not done by CEOP. That was done by officers elsewhere in the agency.
Q76 Tim Loughton: I understand. Sorry to labour this but what is an important point here is the number of agencies involved with children and organisations who look after children, where there is only basic CSE training available at the frontline and the directors or trustees of those organisations haven’t done it themselves. It strikes me that it signifies they are taking it seriously if everybody from the chief executive, the managing director or whatever, downwards, has done an up-to-date course in CSE and has ongoing CSE training. Have you done that?
Keith Bristow: Yes, and I have undertaken CSE investigations myself over a career in law enforcement, including most recently leading Pallial.
Q77 Mr Burrowes: Just fixing on where your priorities are, plainly the sexual exploitation of people online, particularly in terms of historical cases, is resource-intensive. They have been assisted by the child abuse image database in processing cases and image analysts. In terms of trying yourself in your role—I don’t like to call them, the Mr Bigs, the lowest of low lifes—to go after those that are out there who are at the top of the chain in criminality, how can you assure the Committee that you are prioritising those people who are the source of some of this awful exploitation?
Keith Bristow: The organised crime group map is held by the NCA but it is owned collectively with the police, HMRC, Border Force and others. On that we map those people that we know of that are involved in organised crime and we prioritise them. We have high priority groups, priority groups and others who are involved in organised crime that attract less significant law enforcement effort. The high priority groups, as an agency, generally we lead the operational attack on about 50% of those, but all of those groups have ownership and they have been prioritised.
Q78 Mr Burrowes: But in this particular area of exploitation.
Keith Bristow: Sorry, I—
Mr Burrowes: That is why I am saying in this area where there could well be understandably a lot of tension, historical cases and this area of online exploitation, it is resource intensive. In terms of your organisation, how are you able to keep the priority on the organised criminality and the so-called Mr Bigs?
Keith Bristow: I have been very candid with the Committee that this is something that worries me greatly. The amount of referrals that we get from industry is rising, public referrals and big datasets that we get, partial IP addresses of someone that is accessing child exploitation material or grooming online. The problem that we have and methodology now is you need to identify the person before you can assess the risk. It used to be risk was assessed based on the images and the material that we were accessing. That is an important part of it, but the starting point is: is this person in a position of trust? Is this person a registered sex offender? That is how we start.
You cannot risk assess the person until you have found out who they are. To find out who they are you need to resolve the IP address. We have a lot of data where sometimes we cannot resolve the address but, in any case, it takes a while to do that. My concern—and the Chair will know I cannot say too much about Operation Spade, which has been the subject of an IPCC investigation—is that there will be cases where, when we have resolved an IP address, which isn’t instantaneous because of sheer volume, there will have been people where we have had data that, if we had resolved it quicker, we could have stopped them sooner and they have continued to abuse while we have had that data. It is a very serious risk for all of us. We are getting better at doing that. That is why we need to invest in our systems. That is why we need help from GCHQ and others, but there remains a risk that, until we have identified them, we cannot assess them.
Q79 Mr Burrowes: So you are still properly channelling your resources in terms of those who are at the head of these chains of exploitation?
Keith Bristow: I am sorry I do not understand the question.
Mr Burrowes: I am trying to get some reassurance that, given the widespread levels of criminalities, low to high, that your organisation is particularly focused on those at the higher end of the food chain in relation to criminality in terms of their exploitation online?
Keith Bristow: Yes. We could brief you on some closed investigations like Voicer. I don’t know if you saw the programme on Channel 4 last night about an investigation involving exploitation from Bahrain. That is the sort of investigation where the NCA with our partners, because we do this with the police and the safeguarding community, that is where we need to put our effort on the people that are most dangerous, high end of high risk.
Q80 Mr Burrowes: More so than a lot of the historical abuse, resource-intensive investigations?
Keith Bristow: Historical abuse is a bit of a misnomer because my view is, if the people that are suspected to have perpetrated the abuse are still at large there is nothing historical about that. In my experience, people who have abused rarely lose their interest in abusing over time. They remain a risk.
Q81 Mr Burrowes: Obviously some are more high profile than others. They may not have such a high level of criminality but they are high profile, are you affected by that high profile nature of a case more so than necessarily the high level criminality?
Keith Bristow: If by “high profile” we mean public confidence has been damaged in the ability of the state and law enforcement to deal with it, that would attract a priority. Going back to the point I made to Mr Loughton earlier on, central to this is the confidence of victims and families to come forward to give us the chance to protect them. Confidence is an important element, a legitimate part of prioritising what we do.
Q82 Chair: Thank you. Could you pass on our thanks and commendation to the officers involved in the Bahrain operation, which we saw last night on Channel 4?
Keith Bristow: Certainly, Chair.
Q83 Chair: In the programme it was stated that 50 new cases are being brought to your attention a day. Is that an accurate figure, 50 cases a day?
Keith Bristow: Yes.
Q84 Mr Jayawardena: Mr Bristow, if I could turn to money laundering. Transparency International has called Britain’s system for prevention of money laundering “shambolic”. How do you respond to that criticism and what evidence can you provide us about your effectiveness to date?
Keith Bristow: We in the UK carry significant risk from money laundering, partly because of the high transaction volumes through the City. It is a trusted place to do business. It is reliable. It has a history of being secure. That, along with some other big financial centres around the world, means that we are an attractive location for people to launder their money. The big strategic risk, in my judgment, is, if that damages confidence in the City and our big financial institutions, that would potentially have an impact on GDP, and we all understand how important that is because financial services is key to the prosperity of our country. This is important not only in terms of people involved in organised crime; apart from those that exploit children, it is all about the money. It is also important in its own right as a threat. That is why as an agency with the police and the national control strategy that I am responsible for, money laundering is a cross-cutting threat in its own right. It is a threat to the UK and its citizens.
We have some of the most stringent money laundering and asset confiscation legislation in the world. It is complex. We are dealing with complex people, particularly high-end money launderers, super controllers. These are challenging people that have their tentacles all over the world. But I think we can point to significant success. The bit that often derails the debate is when we talk about outstanding orders that have not been enforced. There is something about: we have to get past that, because in the early days these orders that were being made were made on the basis of the criminal profit not the asset available. If there is no asset you cannot seize it. It goes up by 8% a year and we end up with a huge debt that is owed to the state, which is mostly unenforceable. We have made progress on the enforceable bit. We, with the police, have seized £84 million out of those historic orders in the last couple of years. That is very significant amounts of money. That is criminals who are still harming the communities and have assets. We have to put resources into that that focus on the risk.
Q85 Mr Jayawardena: As you say, asset confiscation is only any good if there are assets to be confiscated, but that is a result of a lot of investigation that has taken place to lead to that conclusion. The Home Office’s national risk assessment also found significant intelligence gaps in the UK’s response to high-end money laundering, which would suggest to me that there are many more criminals getting away with it, assets that do exist not being confiscated, and indeed echo perhaps your deputy’s comments—and I declare an interest, I used to be in the City—your deputy has accused professional services companies in the UK of paying lip service to money laundering regulations. Clearly there is a balance to be had here but isn’t it true that there is a need for better judgment and more information to be provided, the role of legal and accounting sectors in particular to be looked at again, and can we expect this to be addressed by the NCA?
Keith Bristow: The point that you make, which I think is very powerful, is that you have to go in at the top if you want to have an effect. There is a small minority of professionals who exploit the system because of their professional knowledge; not the vast majority who are law- abiding people, but lawyers, accountants and others. They are a small minority that know their way around the system. Those people, working with their regulators, can expect the NCA to be targeting them. We are not going to have big amounts of assets to confiscate, but by focusing on those people, by disrupting those people, by disrupting the system that can have a huge cumulative effect on their ability to launder money. I agree completely with you.
Q86 Victoria Atkins: When we have a head of those serious organised crime gangs, is there not an argument for saying that the current legislation is not tough enough on them? In other words, if they don’t pay up their £10 million, £20 million or £50 million they stay in prison for perhaps another five or 10 years. Is there an argument for saying they don’t leave prison until they have paid that money, because they will find it if that is the sentence?
Keith Bristow: I am not a legislator but, as a law enforcer, it seems to me a good place for those people is prison.
Q87 Chair: But Ms Atkins has just repeated, quite correctly, what the Commissioner has said. Once you have a confiscation order, it is a criminal offence, if you don’t pay it you stay in prison. Isn’t that the most sensible way forward? We know you are not a legislator but you did say that you might be back before us in another capacity.
Keith Bristow: Don’t over-interpret that, Chair.
Chair: As you leave the director generalship of this organisation, surely that is something that needs to be looked at. Obviously The Evening Standard is a wonderful newspaper and the rogues’ gallery in today’s paper is something that we will stick up on our wall as part of this neighbourhood watch for the Mr Bigs to see if we come across them in London but, at the end of the day, we need to change the law, don’t we, if we are going to do anything to these people?
Keith Bristow: If I said it in an offhand way, I was agreeing.
Q88 Chair: You agree. Excellent. Now, Mr Bristow, first of all, it has been an interesting, challenging session but, on behalf of this Committee, we would like you to pass on our thanks to all those who work in the National Crime Agency. We know this is a very difficult area. Some of us have visited the NCA. To see the work the officers do to uncover crime is to respect them for what they are doing, and our criticism, really, is because we expected more from the NCA as an organisation. We know that you were full of enthusiasm when you were appointed Director General. I think I asked you the question were you going to be, like J Edgar Hoover, out there when all the big events were taking place. You said you did not want to sit behind your desk. You wanted to put your flak jacket on and you wanted to be out there arresting serious and organised criminals.
I think we feel that the expectations that we had have not been met and there is work still to be done. But I think you accept that there is a lot of work to be done to make this organisation into the organisation that the Home Secretary wanted, a British FBI capable of doing all this work. Do you agree that there is a lot more that can be done?
Keith Bristow: I think your assessment, Chair, is very harsh and unnecessarily harsh. The evidence that I have been challenged on today are two investigations where we fell below the standards that all of us have. I think we treated that really seriously in the work that we have done. Mr Winnick challenged me on some reporting from The Mail on Sunday and there was something about what had happened to our websites with DDoS attacks. I am sorry, I don't think that adds up to the assertions that you have made about disappointment, so by all means please judge me, Chair, but our officers are some of the finest law enforcement officers in the world—
Chair: That is why we are very clear that we do support your officers in the work they do.
Keith Bristow: —who do fabulous work and have made a huge difference, Chair.
Chair: Yes. If I could just say that we think you have some excellent officers but we think the system—the IT, the lack of a database that is fit for purpose, which you have accepted, 20,000 SRAs, expected 330,000 coming every year—does not give you the capacity to do the job that we all expected you to do. It is not your officers and it is not the personnel. It seems to be the system that was created, so I ask you again: do you agree that there is more work to be done to make this organisation into the organisation that the Home Secretary wants it to be and Parliament and this Committee want it to be?
Keith Bristow: A huge amount has been achieved. What needs to happen next is technological transformation. That is why we have the investment from Government through the spending review. It will be for my successor to take that forward, but we are very clear about the capabilities we need to build in a digital world that will make us even better. Our arrests are 44% up. Our conviction rate is nearly 93%. We have taken assets off criminals, protected 3,000 children and seized 500 guns, rescued countless exploited people. I am sorry, Chair, I think that has been a successful start for the NCA.
Q89 Chair: You are pleased with what has happened so far?
Keith Bristow: I am and there is more to do, so we agree.
Q90 Chair: The in-tray of Lynne Jones will not be as full as we expect?
Keith Bristow: Lynne Owens.
Chair: Lynne Owens.
Keith Bristow: She is a fabulous law enforcement leader, very well respected across policing and elsewhere. I am sure she will take the NCA on to a new level. I do not expect you to be entirely satisfied, nor should you because we should always be pushing to be even better than we are now. Thank you for your support.
Chair: May I thank you on behalf of the Committee? Whenever you have appeared before this Committee you have always been very open and transparent and very robust on behalf of your organisation, which is what we would have expected, and I wish you the best of luck in your future career.
Keith Bristow: That is very kind of you. Thank you.
Chair: Thank you.
Oral evidence: The work of the National Crime Agency, HC 475 19