Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the adequacy of the suspicious activity report programme.

Intelligence from Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) enable law enforcement to identify, disrupt, and recover hundreds of millions of pounds which underpin serious and organised crime in the UK and disrupt criminals. The SARs Reform Programme was established to make several improvements, which have been delivered. These are:

• UK Financial Intelligence Unit (UKFIU) capacity uplift: An additional 74 officers for UKFIU (doubling capacity).
• UKFIU Feedback and Engagement: Provide higher quality feedback and increased engagement events to the Anti-Money Laundering regulated sector. In FY22/23, the UKFIU delivered c.575 products and events, and achieved positive satisfaction scores, with 95% (of over 800 respondents) finding the new products/events useful.
• Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCU) Uplift: The creation of a new national capability, uplifting 22 ROCU investigators, dedicated to SARs analysis.
• Defence Against Money Laundering (DAML) SARs Review: Legislative changes delivered through the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act (2023) have been implemented, designed to reduce the volume of low value (from a law enforcement effectiveness perspective) DAML SAR reports.
• IT Transformation: A new SARs Digital Service (SDS) is being implemented to replace the existing SARs IT system. The programme delivered the first release of the new Digital Service in March 2023, enabling the 14 largest SARs Reporters (primarily banking) to submit SARs in bulk through a new interface, and the delivery of the new SARs Online Portal for the remaining reporting community to enable them to submit SARs (which 10,000 organisations have registered for). The National Crime Agency is continuing to develop and rollout the SARs Digital Service to the UKFIU and law enforcement over FY24/25 and FY25/26.