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National Crime Agency will 'relentlessly pursue criminals'

Monday, 14 October 2013

The National Crime Agency (NCA) Was launched to tackle the UK's most serious crimes. The NCA has a budget of close to £500m a year, which will lead the fight against the estimated 37,000 criminals involved in organised and serious crime in the UK. The NCA has replaced the Serious Organised Crime Agency which was formed in 2006.

The National Crime Agency will tackle organised and economic crime, border policing, child protection and cyber crime as it will replace a number of existing bodies but has significantly less funding.

Labour said it was a "rebranding exercise" that did not "live up to the home secretary's hype".

The NCA will have 4,500 officers and will also work alongside regional police forces. The NCA will have significant powers to compel the police forces to provide assistance when needed.

In the first operation lead by the NCA 5 people were arrested in Cheshire, South East London, Essex and Liverpool.

Theresa May launched the NCA and stated, "We're taking a wholly new approach to the fight against organised crime. The NCA will be looking at a wider range of organised crime and working with police forces and others across government in addressing this pernicious problem in our society.

Mrs May also confirmed that in the near future they will examine whether the counter- terrorism policing functions should move over to the NCA.

There has been worry that NCA doesn’t have enough resources to be successful . Shadow policing minister David Hanson said the new organisation was "not strong enough to deal with the exponential growth of economic and online crime".

Mrs May has stated that she was satisfied the NCA would be "well resourced", adding that the government had already shown it was "possible to keep up that relentless fight against crime" with less money.

The situation will be different in Northern Ireland, where the agency will carry out border and customs functions but not other crime-fighting roles.

Northern Ireland Justice Minster said the NCA's limited powers in Northern Ireland would place "an additional burden" on the PSNI.