Home Secretary outlines plans for new National Crime Agency

Home Secretary Theresa May has released details of how the proposed National Crime Agency will operate when it is set up next year. It will replace the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), covering drugs and gun crime, and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.

The NCA will have the authority to task and co-ordinate police and other law enforcement agencies. Its head will be a chief constable reporting directly to the government. The NCA will consist of four commands: Organised Crime, Border Policing, Economic Crime, and Child Protection (CEOP).

It will not absorb the work of the Serious Fraud Office, as May had initially planned. Theresa May had been forced by her cabinet colleagues to back down on her plans to break up the Serious Fraud Office (SFO). She had wanted to put the lawyers who front the organisation into the Crown Prosecution Service and its investigators into the new NCA.

The NCA will have a chief constable and two key "commands" - one focusing on organised crime and the other on border policing. It will have its own officers but will also be involved in the "tasking" of local forces who are involved in the same kind of work. For instance, there are 3,000 officers around the UK involved in border work.

Read the rest of this item from the BBC here

Tweet