National Crime Agency announcements, June 2011

20 June 2011 by Rod McLaren

Detail emerges on the National Crime Agency from the Home Office announcements, the NCA plan and commentary elsewhere.

The problem statement is summarised in paras 1.2, 1.3 and 2 of the NCA plan: “the national response to serious and organised crime remains patchy [...] absence of a cross-government organised crime strategy, the lack of strong national tasking and coordination, [...] tendency to operate in silos”, and the NCA aims to address that.

What will the NCA do?

The NCA will conduct (run) cross-agency operations:

the NCA will work with police and crime commissioners, chief constables, devolved administrations and others, genuinely connecting activity from the local to the international – in country, at the border and overseas

The head of the NCA will be a senior chief constable or, as the Telegraph puts it, the most senior police officer in Britain with powers to order other chief constables to undertake investigations. The NCA plan is a little more nuanced:

[From the NCA plan] 1.6 [...] The NCA will have the authority to undertake tasking and coordination of the police and other law enforcement agencies to ensure networks of organised criminals are disrupted and prevented from operating. The tasking and coordination function entails the NCA setting the overall operational agenda for tackling serious and organised criminality; ensuring that appropriate action is taken against criminals at the right level led by the right law enforcement agency; stepping in to directly task where there are disputes about the nature of approach or ownership; and where appropriate, tasking or providing its own resources in support.

It will develop a core intelligence, analysis and prioritisation capability, and will have four commands:

The agency will answer to the Home Secretary and will be made up of four distinct crime teams – Organised Crime, Border Policing, Economic Crime and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. It will employ investigators, enforcement officers, intelligence analysts and technical, financial and operational specialists.

So CEOP retains some autonomy as a command. SOCA and NPIA get absorbed and the government will legislate in 2012 to formally disband those organisations. Some of UK Border Agency role moves to the NCA. The Serious Fraud Office has been left outside of the NCA for now, co-ordination to happen in committee with NCA’s Economic Crime Command. Counter-terrorism remains outside NCA, with national asset dumps led by Met Police’s CTC. Para 1.5 of the NCA plan talks about “mirroring” the structure of CT policing – perhaps this is a hint that NCA will eventually encompass CT after 2013. RoCUs and other units that cover level 2 and 3 crime remain in their force-funded regional structures.

The Road to NCA

A shadow NCA, with an appointed Chief Constable and a crime coordination function, will be set up before April 2012, with full transition by the end of 2013 (see the Home Office Structural Reform Plan). From the NCA plan:

7.2 The NCA build will learn the lessons from other machinery of government changes. With the objectives of minimising disruption and securing the best value for money, the NCA will seek to use or adapt existing systems rather than designing new ones. Any procurement proposals for the NCA will be subject to very close scrutiny and challenge and will only proceed where they are clearly essential and unavoidable. The NCA will inherit a range of systems and assets from its precursor agencies, including the SOCA 2010 ICT renewal programme. [...]

7.7 The total cost of the organisation will not exceed the aggregate of the Spending Review settlement for the precursors and the costs of the fully funded functions it is agreed should migrate into the NCA. Transition and running costs will be kept to the absolute minimum necessary to enable the new agency to function; the transition programme will be managed with a rigorous focus on achieving best value.

“NCA will seek to use or adapt existing systems rather than designing new ones” is encouraging, and this procurement strategy should be good news for current vendors to SOCA, NPIA and crime policing functions, though some of the precursor organisations were somewhat budget-constrained.

Policy Exchange’s Blair Gibbs suggests that a national body with teeth and accountability is a natural corollary of the decentralisation of local policing when Crime Commissioners arrive, and concludes:

With a wider remit and more powers, the NCA should avoid the fate of its predecessor agency, but to succeed it will still need to attract high-calibre recruits, earn the respect of specialist officers in local forces, and avoid the competitive animosity that characterises the relationship between the FBI and local law enforcement in the United States. If the NCA can do that, then it will finally resolve the national/local paradox that has beset British policing for years and begin to make the lives of organized criminals a lot more unpleasant.

More:

• the National Crime Agency plan
• the debate in Parliament, 8 June 2011

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