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Fuel Laundering and Smuggling in Northern Ireland

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Fuel Laundering and Smuggling in Northern Ireland House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee Fuel laundering and smuggling in Northern Ireland Oral and written evidence 5 September 2012 Mike Norgrove, Director, Excise, Customs, Stamps and Money, Sarah Harlen, Deputy Director, Environmental and Transport Taxes, John Whiting, Assistant Director, Criminal Investigation, and Pat Curtis, National Oils Lead, Specialist Investigations, HMRC Ordered by The House of Commons to be printed 5 September and 20 November 2012 HC 556-i Published on 3 April 2013 by authority of the House of Commons London: The Stationery Office Limited £6.00 Northern Ireland Affairs Committee The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration, and policy of the Northern Ireland Office (but excluding individual cases and advice given by the Crown Solicitor); and other matters within the responsibilities of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (but excluding the expenditure, administration and policy of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Northern Ireland and the drafting of legislation by the Office of the Legislative Counsel). Current membership Mr Laurence Robertson MP (Conservative, Tewkesbury) (Chair) Mr David Anderson MP (Labour, Blaydon) Mr Joe Benton MP (Labour, Bootle) Oliver Colvile MP (Conservative, Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) Mr Stephen Hepburn MP (Labour, Jarrow) Lady Hermon MP (Independent, North Down) Kate Hoey MP (Labour, Vauxhall) Naomi Long MP (Alliance, Belfast East) Jack Lopresti MP (Conservative, Filton and Bradley Stoke) Dr Alasdair McDonnell MP (SDLP, Belfast South) Nigel Mills MP (Conservative, Amber Valley) Ian Paisley MP (DUP, North Antrim) Andrew Percy MP (Conservative, Brigg and Goole) David Simpson MP (DUP, Upper Bann) The following Member was also a member of the Committee during the inquiry. Kris Hopkins MP (Conservative, Keighley) Powers The committee is one of the departmental select committees, the powers of which are set out in House of Commons Standing Orders, principally in SO No. 152. These are available on the Internet via www.parliament.uk. Publication The Reports and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the House. All publications of the Committee (including press notices) are on the Internet at www.parliament.uk/niacom. Current Committee staff The current staff of the Committee are Mike Clark (Clerk), Duma Langton (Inquiry Manager), Edward Faulkner (Senior Committee Assistant), Ravi Abhayaratne (Committee Support Assistant) and Jessica Bridges-Palmer (Media Officer). Contacts All correspondence should be addressed to the Clerk of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, House of Commons, 7 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA. The telephone number for general enquiries is 020 7219 2173; the Committee’s email address is [email protected]. List of witnesses Wednesday 5 September 2012 Page Mike Norgrove, Director, Excise, Customs, Stamps and Money, Sarah Harlen, Deputy Director, Environmental and Transport Taxes, John Whiting, Assistant Director, Criminal Investigation, and Pat Curtis, National Oils Lead, Specialist Investigations, HMRC Ev 1 List of written evidence 1 HMRC Ev 15 Northern Ireland Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev 1 Oral evidence Taken before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on Wednesday 5 September 2012 Members present: Mr Laurence Robertson (Chair) Mr David Anderson Naomi Long Mr Joe Benton Jack Lopresti Oliver Colvile Dr Alasdair McDonnell Mr Stephen Hepburn Nigel Mills Kate Hoey Ian Paisley Kris Hopkins David Simpson ________________ Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Mike Norgrove, Director, Excise, Customs, Stamps and Money, HMRC, Sarah Harlen, Deputy Director, Environmental and Transport Taxes, HMRC, John Whiting, Assistant Director, Criminal Investigation, HMRC, and Pat Curtis, National Oils Lead, Specialist Investigations, HMRC, gave evidence. Q1 Chair: Thank you very much for joining us. It is was in Belfast just last week, a seizure was made in good to see you again. As you know, we produced our Dublin Port of 20,000 litres of fuel on its way to report some while ago now, but at that time we Liverpool. All of that is relevant in the context of your expressed a concern about the apparent slowness, as deliberations about future markers, either we felt, in developing the technology to counter fuel developments of the current one or brand new fraud. You very kindly offered to come back. We markers. hoped to get you back in the summer but the Thank you for your report too, Chairman. I am sorry programme was so congested we could not do that. that you were disappointed and expressed your We are delighted that you are with us again now: disappointment in the progress that we have been thank you for coming. Could I ask you perhaps to give making. We have a lot of detail to give you today us an update on where you are with the development about the progress we have been making. The process of the new marker, please? of improving or replacing markers is a very important Mike Norgrove: Thank you, Chairman; thanks for but complex one. We cannot wish those complexities your welcome. Could I perhaps ask my colleagues to away. For us to replace or amend the marker that we introduce themselves before we kick off? are using at the moment—which is continually being Sarah Harlen: I am Sarah Harlen; I am Deputy refined and improved by Pat and his team—imposes Director for Environmental and Transport Taxes, costs on businesses. We need to check the stability of HMRC. the fuel that has been marked in a different way and Pat Curtis: I am Pat Curtis, the National Oils Lead its volatility. We are talking about a highly dangerous for Specialist Investigations, HMRC. product: the corrosive effect of it, the effect of the John Whiting: John Whiting, Assistant Director, marker when put in a new plastic container or metal Criminal Investigation, Northern Ireland. container and so on. I do not think we have ever Mike Norgrove: Thank you; thank you for the hidden from you the difficulty of finding a marker that opportunity to update the Committee too. I will begin we are sure is both safe and an improvement on the by bringing the Committee right up to date on an present one. Although we understand your important element of our strategy before we get on to disappointment at the progress, we think we are the marker itself, which is what has been happening making real progress. The intervening time since your north and south of the border in the last seven days. report has meant we have been able to make further Pat, John and their teams, with the help of the PSNI, progress that we can report today. have seized fuel and dismantled three plants capable Perhaps Sarah, who is my expert in this field, can of producing 25,000 litres of laundered fuel a day. It bring us up to date. has been a tremendous week for the teams in Northern Sarah Harlen: Thank you very much. It might be Ireland. Some of that fuel—we will get on to this; it helpful if I separate out first of all the progress we will be highly relevant to the Committee’s have made on the new marker from that we have made deliberations—had been laundered eight times in an on the enhancements to the existing marker, which attempt to remove all traces, but our existing test, the are two completely separate projects. Taking the new SET, the silica extraction test, has stood the test of all marker first, we have made a lot of progress since we eight launderings. On one of those plant dismantlings, last came before you back in January. The first thing on one of those seizures of fuel, the fuel that resulted we did was to sign a memorandum of understanding even from eight launderings has been found still to with our colleagues in the Irish Revenue contain one of our markers. Commissioners at the end of May. Following that, at That is an important bit of context, first of all because the end of June, we issued a formal invitation to make of the success of our teams on the ground. While I submissions, which went out widely to attract industry Ev 2 Northern Ireland Affairs Committee: Evidence 5 September 2012 Mike Norgrove, Sarah Harlen, John Whiting and Pat Curtis interest and to invite them to participate in the process will be looking on a monthly basis to see whether we of finding a new marker. We held a briefing can detect the new ingredient we are putting into the presentation for interested companies on 24 July; 16 recipe for the marker, both in laundered and representatives from 10 companies were able to non-laundered products, so we can assess how well it attend. As well as talking them through the detailed is achieving its objectives. We intend to do the process we were going through and what we were evaluation of the new, enhanced marker certainly by looking for from them, we had specialists from the early new year, and of course by that stage we will be State Laboratory and also from LGC Forensics, which able to start looking across at how that plays into the Revenue and Customs use, to explain the invitation to make submissions and our search for a technicalities both of the existing marker and testing new marker, and how it affects our benchmark in that we do, and in terms of what we would be looking terms of what a new marker might look like. for in the future. Chair: Thank you for that update. We have had an iterative exchange with companies since then, in that they have come back to us with Q2 Dr McDonnell: The memorandum of supplementary questions that we have been able to understanding with the Irish Republic was set for May field.
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