Meeting of the Parliament 08 November 2023
We agree with the Scottish Government motion on cashback for communities, and I hope that the Government finds agreement with our constructive amendment.
Drug dealers prey on the weak and the vulnerable, they inflict misery and death across Scotland, and their dirty money poisons society and the economy. The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 was groundbreaking when it came into force in 2004. The police were excited at the prospect of the powerful new weapon, and the crime gangs were in a panic. The rules, we were told, had changed—crime would no longer pay. Working as a journalist, I bought it. Dirty fortunes could be seized by using the less onerous civil standard of proof, “the balance of probabilities”.?Crucially, a criminal conviction would not be required.
In the crosshairs were the besuited bosses who do not get their manicured hands dirty. They stay at arm’s length from the drugs that kill countless numbers of our people and they never personally wield the knife or fire the gun. The first significant Scottish case became a protracted farce—a decade-long quagmire of legal attrition—and, in the end, the dirty fortune was whittled down to nothing, having lined only the pockets of lawyers.
That exposed the limitations of the new law and resulted in a fundamental change of direction. The new focus was instead on proceeds of crime being pursued after a criminal conviction had been secured. Of course, every single penny that is snatched from criminals and ploughed back into our communities is welcome—there is no question about that. Many young people across Scotland have benefited from the £130 million of dirty money distributed by cashback for communities, and the programme’s work makes a positive difference to many young lives. However, the cost of organised crime in Scotland is counted not in the millions but in the billions. The early optimism of the proceeds of crime programme has become blunted, and every week we see examples of that in the courts: cases in which vast criminal fortunes have been generated only for a fraction to be subject to a confiscation order.
Take the example of the international drug dealer James White from Glasgow. The Crown Office says, with confidence, based on the evidence, that he made £126 million—£126,241,001.29, to be precise—from killing countless Scots. That drug dealer has made the same amount as the entire 15-year spend of cashback for communities. How much of White’s drug money do the authorities hope to get their hands on? The answer is just more than £118,000, which represents less than 0.1 per cent. I hope that that example, and many others, will persuade the Government to look again at the legislation.