FBI-style crime agency to lead fight against drug gangs

A new FBI-style crimefighting agency will target drug gangs and paedophiles as well as helping to police Britain’s borders, the Home Secretary has said.

Theresa May is expected to give more details of the National Crime Agency (NCA) in a Commons statement later.

The agency, due to be launched in 2013, will replace the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).

It will also include a border police component and take in the work of the Child Exploitation and Protection Centre (CEOP), although CEOP will retain its own brand and budget.

Ms May said: “We will bring together resources across a number of agencies which means we can deal with these things and have much more ability to deal with serious and organised crime.”

She said there would be no new money for the agency and the cost of setting it up would come from existing budgets.

The Home Secretary added: “SOCA is not going to be disbanded. It will continue but as part of the new NCA, bringing together law enforcement across a number of types of crime at a national level that will enable us to really focus on organised crime.

We will bring together resources… which means we can have much more ability to deal with serious and organised crime. Theresa May, Home Secretary

“The drugs on the streets, these are being brought in by organised crime groups and these are the issues affecting neighbourhoods across the country.”

SOCA was described as “Britain’s FBI” when it was launched in 2006, but the agency was criticised for failing to fulfill its brief of bringing down Britain’s “Mr Bigs”.

The Home Affairs Select Committee described its performance as “disappointing” in 2009 after it emerged that it was seizing £1 from gangs for every £15 in its budget.

CEOP’s chief executive Jim Gamble resigned last year when it was announced the anti-paedophile unit would be merged into the NCA, saying the decision was not in the interests of children.

The unit said last month that it had helped arrest 1,644 suspected child abusers in the last five years, and dismantled 394 paedophile rings.