Underfunded NCA three times less effective than FBI at tackling organised crime, according to new report

In a paper out today (July 9), the Social Market Foundation (SMF) – a cross-party think tank – has called for a new Organised Crime Strategy to address the “most prominent and pervasive” national security threat in the UK.

It says the government is unlikely to bring down crime significantly by keeping its focus on “hyper-offenders” who commit a disproportionately large number of crimes, while not tackling serious and organised crime (SOC).

According to official estimates, SOC is costing the country £47 billion annually, and involves around 59,000 people – although many experts believe this figure substantially under-represents the true scale of harm.

“It is deeply embedded in everything from cyber-fraud and illicit finance to people trafficking and violent drug gangs, corroding communities, weakening the economy and undermining the rule of law,” the paper says.

The SMF paper comes as both the National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence Review failed to increase investment for law enforcement bodies to tackle SOC, despite designating it as a national security threat – on par with terrorism and hostile state activity – and a leading threat impacting British people every day, at scale.

The National Crime Agency (NCA), the body responsible for dealing with SOC, has a budget of only around £800 million, and remains significantly under-resourced compared to peer institutions such as the FBI in the US. By SMF’s calculations, if the NCA operated at the same level of arrest efficiency, it could have made around 1,900 more arrests last year alone. This would have taken the total number to nearly 3,000 – an almost 200 per cent increase over and above the number that were arrested last year.

The Government risks undermining its own national security and domestic crime tackling objectives if it continues to underfund the fight against this large and growing threat, the SMF said.

It is calling on the Government increase annual SOC enforcement funding by £3.4 billion, including raising the NCA’s budget to £1.3 billion. In addition, it should introduce a funding guarantee that keeps SOC investment (at least) in line with increases in spending on the intelligence services.

The SMF paper explores the previous government’s 2023 SOC strategy and how it failed to address longstanding weaknesses in the anti-SOC response – such as poor coordination, inadequate technology, unclear responsibilities, and underinvestment in the NCA and regional crime units. The strategy’s headline initiative, the ‘Clear, Hold, Build’ approach to tackling organised criminality, was not backed by the organisational reform or resourcing required to make it effective at scale.

Hence, the new government needs to devise a new and updated five-year national Organised Crime Strategy, the SMF says.

Despite its designation as a national security threat, the SMF says SOC is still treated primarily as a policing challenge rather than a systemic danger requiring an ambitious, strategic response. Therefore, the report also calls for:

• Modernisation of SOC laws, including the introduction of enterprise-focused offences and stronger tools to disrupt criminal enablers;
• Investment in intelligence sharing, digital capabilities and recruitment to build long-term capacity; and
• Use of new revenue-raising measures – such as redirecting national security spending and targeted levies on sectors vulnerable to SOC corruption – to help meet the funding challenge.

Richard Hyde, senior researcher at the SMF, said: “Despite its designation as a national security threat, serious and organised crime is still treated primarily as a policing challenge, not the systemic danger it truly is. That must change. SOC is inflicting real harm on communities across the UK every day – creating a huge amount of human misery and economic damage..

“Tackling SOC demands a properly resourced, strategic response. Piecemeal reforms and short-term fixes have failed. We need a modern legal framework, investment in specialist capabilities, and a genuine long-term commitment to treating organised crime as the national threat it is that is followed through on.

“If the Government is serious about building a safer Britain, it must act decisively. That means putting SOC at the heart of national security planning – and finally funding the fight accordingly.”

A NCA spokesperson said: “The NCA continues to be world leading in many areas. In our last reporting year we had our biggest ever impact on serious and organised crime, tangibly degrading or eradicating a criminal threat more than 12 times every day. And we are on track to exceed that achievement this year.

“Even while we achieve more, the scale and complexity of serious and organised crime continues to evolve, so we are focused on ensuring we have the resources, people and tools we need to tackle the most harmful criminals impacting the UK.

“We are also working closely with policing partners and government to scope how the entire policing and law enforcement system can best protect the public from serious and organised crime at local, regional and national level.”

Regarding the comparison with the FBI, they added: “This is not a credible method of comparison. Arrest figures alone are not an authoritative measure of impact, and while both are national law enforcement bodies, the remits of the NCA and FBI are substantially different.”