Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, announced plans to set up a Serious Organised Crime Agency, which was likened to the Federal Bureau of Investigations, to replace the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the National Crime Squad, and to take over the functions of the Home Office and Customs and Excise in investigating the smuggling of people, tobacco and illegal drugs. Mr Richard Brunstrom, the chief constable of North Wales, asked on television: ‘What would be wrong with making heroin available on the state for people who want to abuse their bodies?’ Nineteen Chinese workers, two of them women, were drowned as they picked cockles in Morecambe Bay. One telephoned his home in China as the water rose about him. Police sought gangmasters who make use of illegal immigrants. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, told Parliament that at the time of the Commons debate on war against Iraq on 18 March 2003, he was still unaware that it was battlefield weapons to which a government dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction referred when it said they could be used within 45 minutes.
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