Policing UK 2013 - Police Federation

THE POLICE REFORM PROGRAMME
The National
Crime Agency
Peter Neyroud asks whether the
new NCA will meet the challenge
of serious and organised crime?
Peter Neyroud is former Chief
Constable of Thames Valley;
former CEO of the National
Policing Improvement Agency;
and Editor, Policing UK 2013
The plan for the creation of a
new national crime-fighting
capability”, the National
Crime Agency (NCA), was announced
in a White Paper in une 2011. The
intention is that the new agency, subject
to the legislation in the Crime and
Courts Bill, will open its doors in 2013.
When it does, a major rubicon will
have been crossed in policing in England
and Wales.
In 1962, the last oyal Commission
rejected, despite a minority report,
the case for a national police force.
Since when the centre in policing
has been dispersed, with a succession
of attempts through regional crime
squads, a National Criminal Intelligence
Service, the specialist squads at Scotland
ard and, most recently, the Serious
Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), to
provide an effective response to serious
and organised crime.
Each model fell short of achieving
effectiveness. Either the focus was too
local or the national centre left a gap
in local provision. Above all, as in
the case of SOCA, the relationships
with local forces never quite warmed,
not helped by the competition for
resources between local forces focused
on local crime targets and a national
organisation less able to define its
purpose.
Despite the lessons of the past, the
model proposed in the White Paper and
set out in the Crime and Courts Bill can
still be seen very much as a compromise.
While key functions will be represented
in the NCA’s directorates – organised
crime, border policing, fraud and cyber
crime and internet-based child abuse and
exploitation – other agencies such as the
Serious Fraud Office remain at large.
Major decisions about the possibility
that terrorism will migrate from the
Metropolitan Police to the NCA
have been left on the table, with the
legislation providing an open door. A
crucial early task for the new agency
will be to establish and gain support
for a clear narrative about its purpose,
its promised outcomes and the way
it needs to work with local forces
and other agencies in the centre and
internationally.
It is almost certainly sensible to leave
decisions about expansion to include
terrorism for another day, because
the challenge of setting up the new
organisation is likely to be significant.
There are major lessons from the birth
pangs of SOCA and the National
Policing Improvement Agency that need
to be heeded. One lesson – the need to
give any new organisation a fair chance
to get set up properly – has already
been ignored.
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