National Crime Agency

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for an important question. The establishment of the NCA will require legislation. We aim for that legislation to be in place so that the NCA can be fully operational in 2013, but we believe that this is an important area and that we need to start working before then. The transition to the NCA can be eased by work such as developing the organised crime strategy, starting to develop the co-ordination capability on organised crime within the Home Office, which we are doing and, as I have just indicated, starting to develop the co-ordination capacity in relation to economic crime. These are the precursors for a more seamless transition to the NCA.

As we develop the agency, we intend to establish a position for an individual who will head the work. An individual at chief constable level will be appointed fairly soon—within the next few months—and will be able to work within the Home Office over the period before the NCA is set up. At that point there will be a transition for a permanent individual to be established as the head of the NCA.

We want to learn lessons—for example, from the setting up of SOCA, where there were some difficulties in terms of personnel and their move over to SOCA. We will be looking at the lessons to be learned from that.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Home Secretary on the prettiest little speech rewriting history that the House has heard for some time. I plead guilty to having been responsible for launching the Serious Organised Crime Agency. I had hoped for a 50% remission, but I will have to settle for a third instead.

The truth of the matter is that SOCA has had enormous successes but was bedevilled by the over-emphasis on intelligence rather than on enforcement, yet this afternoon the Home Secretary once again placed intelligence at the centre. In the new economic crime directorate, the new border directorate and the relationship with Customs and Excise, who will be responsible for the emphasis on economic and, by its very nature, cybercrime—the Treasury directing the policy or the Home Office laying it down? We had problems with that, and I did not hear any explanation of how the present Home Secretary intends to get round that difficulty.

[Mrs May]

I am sorry about the approach that the right hon. Gentleman took in his comments. If he had listened carefully both to my statement and to the response I gave to his right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary, he would have heard me make it clear that I think SOCA has done good work over the past few years, but I believe, and I think those involved in SOCA would agree, that we can do more. We can build on the experience that it has built up. By making SOCA the organised crime command within the National Crime Agency and being able to take advantage of the synergies across the law enforcement agencies and police forces, we will be able to do a more effective job in the future.

On the intelligence issue, yes, there will be an intelligence capability at the NCA. That is important, but the difference is that the NCA will clearly be a crime-fighting body and the commands within it will be crime-fighting commands.

In relation to cybercrime, which the right hon. Gentleman referred to, there will be a cybercrime unit at the NCA which will cross all the commands, because cybercrime is both a crime in itself and a tool for the execution of other crimes.