The Government will today announce the biggest police shake-up in 50 years with
the launch of a new US-style crime division. Home Secretary Theresa May will set out
plans for The National Crime Agency, which will tackle serious and organised crime
and protect the UK’s borders.
Labour announced similar plans for ‘Britain’s FBI’ with the launch of the Serious
Organised Agency (Soca) in 2006. Just 5 years later, however, the coalition
government is replacing Soca with The National Crime Agency.
Due to come into force from 2013, The National Crime Agency (NCA) will also take
over the work of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) and will
include a border policing command.
The Government have addressed initial concerns that Ceop’s work would be harmed
by being part of a larger agency with a wide range of priorities, saying that it will
retain a separate budget and its ‘unique brand, model and operational control’.
The NCA will form the basis of the most radical changes to the British policing system
in 50 years, which will see existing authorities replaced by directly elected police and
crime commissioners from May 2012.
The new plans come as the Government announces organised crime costs of up to
£40 billion a year in the UK, with many of the 38,000 individuals and 6,000 groups
involved escaping justice.
Critics are warning the NCA will be too large an organisation to be effective, but the
Home Office argues it will be a ‘powerful new body of operational crime fighters’
that will ‘strengthen the fight against the serious and organised criminality that
threatens the safety and security of the UK’.
