Policing the local and the national
Blair Gibbs 1:34pm
Today’s announcement on a proposed new National Crime Agency (NCA) is a key
element in the government’s ambitious police reform agenda. Recent political attention has focused on changes to police pay and conditions and budget reductions, but the structural
reforms that Theresa May and Nick Herbert are pursuing matter more in the long-term. And before it is dismissed as another attempt to create a “British FBI”, the background and
rationale for the NCA is worth exploring.
The NCA is much more than a rebranding of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) – the troubled organisation set up by Charles Clarke. Instead it is one part of a major recalibration of our policing arrangements, the other being elected Police & Crime Commissioners (PCCs). Both should be seen together as a joint attempt to resolve an ongoing national/local tension in British policing over accountability and where responsibility should rest. Nick Herbert has spoken about the policing paradox that until now has meant that too much of the local was monopolised by the Home Office, but the national was neglected even as the problem of serious crime grew.
The first step was to get the Home Office out of local policing, and the devolution of oversight to elected PCCs from May next year will be the first time a major public service has been under direct democratic governance and it is the best expression – along with new city mayors – of the coalition’s localism agenda. But the Home Office’s devolution agenda cannot succeed without a stronger national capability as well – in that sense the creation of PCCs and the NCA are two sides of the same coin.
The new national agency is not a betrayal of localism policies but their natural corollary. Because PCCs will mean individual forces report less to the centre, the Home Office should be free to focus on what it has neglected – namely the national dimension and the growing threat of serious and organised crime. Herbert recently acknowledged that the record in tackling the ‘untouchables’ is patchy at best, and others have suggested that perhaps only one in ten feel the force of the law. Most crime is local but crime that cause the most harm – drugs, child exploitation, people trafficking and firearms – has national reach and often international origins and finance. The annual cost of this crime is estimated to be upwards of £20bn.
The risk with devolving more responsibility to police forces is that it could end up reinforcing the 43 police force fiefdoms, with police leaders able to ignore threats that emerged elsewhere. To avoid that, and because three quarters of the estimated 38,000 organised criminals work across police force boundaries, policing requires a stronger national capability to coordinate a cross-force, cross-border response. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson argued along these lines last year when he said that the scale of the organised crime threat required an agency with tasking powers to coordinate policing at all levels.
This was never realised with SOCA, which was not properly accountable and got distracted with overseas interdiction and intelligence gathering without being able to demonstrate tangible results for the huge sums it spent. It was also not a frontline operational agency with a domestic footprint that could leverage the capacity of existing forces so they could close the “Level 2” crime gap. Many senior officers mocked SOCA in private.
In its place, the NCA will have more powers and a wider remit than SOCA. Critically, the head of the NCA will be a senior chief constable who will have powers to task police forces and deploy NCA officers and assets throughout the country. For the first time, the national agency will be backed in law by a new ‘Strategic Policing Requirement’ which will insist that forces share intelligence and resources. The ‘Golden Thread’ of policing – fighting crime from street to border – will remain intact, but local forces will now share some of the responsibility with a dedicated agency that has the capability and reach that they do not. The policing of child exploitation – embodied in CEOP – will fall under the NCA’s remit (it is already under SOCA’s command), and the NCA will also have lead responsibility for economic crime and a dedicated border command.
A beefed-up national policing agency is the next chapter of the police reform story but it is also a reflection of the fact that serious cross-border crime is likely to become more prevalent in future and national jurisdictions need specialist agencies that can coordinate and respond with a capability to match the threat. The Dutch for example are also moving in this direction with their own police reforms. If the NCA provides the operational step-change in performance that is valued by the wider policing family then in time the case could be stronger for granting it additional responsibilities that for historic reasons reside elsewhere, like the police’s counter-terrorism responsibilities which are now owned by the Metropolitan Police.
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.
Blair Gibbs is the head of Crime & Justice at Policy Exchange
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ROJ
June 8th, 2011 2:00pm Report this comment"And before it is dismissed as another attempt to create a “British FBI”, the background and rationale for the NCA is worth exploring."
Whatever it is, it is certainly not an attempt to create a British FBI. If it were, it would have had to incorporate MI5. And presumably take over responsibility for anti-terrorism from the Met.
Oh, yes - "Because PCCs will mean individual forces report less to the centre ..." we'll believe that when it happens. Will it mean redundancies in the Home Office - I think not. And what about ACPO, with various members assigned responsibility for specific national policing policies. Nothing here to say that will change.
Claiming that the NCA is not just a rebranding of SOCA is all very well, but it don't make it so.
Verity
June 8th, 2011 2:02pm Report this commentDear God! Another quango? That will make the 18th, I believe, that Davey has created during his eight months or so in office.
How does this gell with the bonfire of the quangoes he promised? Is it on the same level as promising a referendum on the EU, or is it a lesser dishonesty?
TrevorsDen
June 8th, 2011 2:34pm Report this commentand saying ' but it don't make it so', don't make that so either.
TomTOm
June 8th, 2011 2:34pm Report this commentCan we be assured that this NCA will be a private shareholder-owned Limited Company like ACPO ? How far does the Council of Ministers implement EU policy without requiring a Directive but simple agreement among European Ministers ? The change of German police uniforms and cars to blue in place of green was agreed at EU level though not by Directive or Regulation
Frank P
June 8th, 2011 4:16pm Report this commentThe entire government is a National Crime Agency perpetrating outrageous fraud on the extorted taxpayers. Get in the van you bastards!
Yet another snow job to give the impression that the government is ultimately able to prevent/detect crime and maintain the Queen's Peace by forming elitist squads and cherry picking organised perps according to political expediency, rather than nipping crime in the bud at local level. Same old, same old. The criminal fraternity is, of course, pissing itself at the antics and impotence of its adversaries.
MJK2011
June 8th, 2011 4:18pm Report this commentIsn't this basically a re-packaging of SOCA (Serious Organised Crime Agency) which under achieved in every aspect of it's core responsibilities. Re-packaging the same idea under a different name will make no difference to serious organised crime. The whole UK legal system needs a complete overhall before the government can even think about creating a new agency! How can they create a new agency dealing with organised crime when the current law can't even deal with the petty criminals that constantly escape prison sentences due to over crowding and magistrates who are now so far seperated from the real world that is almost impossible for them to comprehend the impact of any criminal activity upon an agrieved?
Barry Bilge
June 8th, 2011 6:13pm Report this commentThe failures of SOCA were not due to a lack of authority, they are just incompetent and without a clear objective. It was policy making for reasons of publicity.
There is no practical point in localising the accountability of Police forces while at the same time giving them an unelected superior who they *have* to follow the orders of.
Either the public via elected police chiefs run the show and decide on the priorities or the centralised Home Office do. Trying to do both ends up preventing proper holding to account and fitting Policing priorities to the ones who pay for it.
There already is a group who have all the authority they need to tackle serious and organised crime - HMRC. We are talking about serious amounts of money being earned by illegal means so set the Revenue on these supposed criminal masterminds.
David Taylor
June 8th, 2011 7:15pm Report this commentI've never understood why we NEED 43 Chief Constables, assistant Chiefs, Deputy Chiefs and so on and so on.
Local policing is a nice concept but how does it work, who decides priorities?
The Chiefs themselves are secretly appointed by a committee that must remain secret for security reasons (LOL).
What is true, is that every Home Secretary that has gone up against the Police Federation has lost so politicians can change nothing without their backing.
So now we need an equivalent to the FBI , what for may I ask?
In my opinion the whole police force of the UK needs to be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up so that it is fit for the purpose which we empower it.
Oracle
June 9th, 2011 10:13am Report this commentSOCA was a golden opportunity that failed miserably through lack of vision and leadership. Now the NCA is a new opportunity ! It will only succeed if the right people run it, the right people are recruited into it with the right skills. SOCA was a dumping ground for customs officers with limited skills, intelligence officers (inc Mi5)with limited ability and s senior leadership only interested in lining their pockets. The US assessment of SOCA as revealed by Wikileaks could not have been more condeming. An intelligence organisation that doesnt enforce the law. Not really what we need from a British FBI is it.
Sweep away SOCA completely and establish a leadership that understands Organised Crime and how to enforce the law. Leadership on short term contracts so they deliver or depart. No more old boys networks looking after one another. Get rid of the operatives who talk a good job but dont know what a court room looks like. Clear vision, clear strategy with quality staff. Somehow I dont think its going to happen. SOCA has too much legacy and has inherited too many problems for a re-branding process to turn a turkey into a swan.
woohoo
June 18th, 2011 1:55am Report this comment"SOCA was a dumping ground for customs officers with limited skills.....Get rid of the operatives who talk a good job but dont know what a court room looks like."
Typical sour grapes comment from either an HMRC or police officer. As anyone would know it was not HMRC officers with limited skills who joined SOCA - it was in effect all the officers working on the drugs side of HMRC investigation (we all of course knwo that some people think that the only people who can investigate crime are police officers but several 100 years of history proves that to be wrong). Most SOCA investigators know very well what that inside of a court room looks like. And the comment surely misses the point that large numbers of NCS officers also stayed on in SOCA - were they of limited skills too?
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