Britain’s FBI is “on its knees”: new report calls for major reform and new investment for the National Crime Agency

Without serious reform and investment, the National Crime Agency’s ability to protect the public from major threats, including corruption, money laundering and organised crime, will be critically compromised, according to new research released today by Spotlight on Corruption.

The report – titled “Is Britain’s FBI on its knees? How to make the National Crime Agency a genuinely elite crime fighting force” – shows that morale is at rock bottom at the agency and that it is haemorraghing officers due to major pay inequality and stagnation. 

Based on official reports and submissions to the NCA’s independent pay review body, the report reveals that:

• NCA spend on temporary staff and consultants has risen by an alarming 369% since 2015/16, and by 58% in the last three years alone.
• 9% of NCA roles are unfilled due to recruitment issues – more than double the average of 3.9% for the public sector, and higher than the 4.8% in the voluntary sector.
• Despite a 7% pay award last year, NCA officers’ median pay has dropped by 16.3% in real terms since 2013/14, when the agency was established. The proposed 5% pay award for this year still leaves officers with a 13.9% real terms pay cut compared to over a decade ago. 
• The NCA faces a major brain drain with a quarter of senior managers leaving annually, and the agency loses a third of its legal expertise annually.
• The NCA faces potential equal pay claims of around £200 million due to its unequal pay structures.
• 59% of NCA officers are stuck on the bottom of their pay range with no chance of pay or career progression.

The agency is at a pivotal moment. The NCA’s independent pay review body has called for a “different organisational form” to be considered for the agency and for urgent pay reform to be introduced. The agency needs the flexibility and the investment to reform its pay structures and recruit the workforce that will allow it to deliver its mandate.

Instead, as a civil service department under the Home Office, the NCA is uniquely vulnerable to the recruitment freezes and budget cuts that civil service departments face – unlike police forces – despite the fact that it plays such a critical role in protecting the public from a range of threats from money laundering and kleptocracy to child sexual exploitation and cyber attacks.

On top of this, any pay increases or measures the NCA takes to address its critical pay issues must be funded from within its own budget, meaning it must continually rob Peter to pay Paul from within its own resources. 

Spotlight is calling on the government to:

• Undertake an urgent review of the organisational status of the NCA to ensure it is insulated from recruitment freezes and budget cuts 
• Invest new money in the NCA so that it can undertake speedy and ambitious pay reform 
• Ensure that the NCA has the investment it needs to transform its technological capability.

Dr Susan Hawley, Executive Director of Spotlight on Corruption and co-author of the report, said:

“If the government wants the NCA to be at the forefront of tackling the range of threats and challenges the UK faces, from organised immigration gangs to hostile and corrupt states, it needs to put its money where its mouth is. The NCA for too long has been forced to operate at sub-par because of lack of sufficient investment. It desperately needs a new injection of cash to fund major pay reform and cutting-edge technology. This new investment can easily be offset against the long term value for the taxpayer that it will bring, including by reducing the massive sums the agency now spends on temporary labour and consultants to fill its vacancies.”

This is the third in a series of reports by Spotlight looking at the current state of the UK’s enforcement of economic crime offences. The first in the series – All Bark and No Bite? – covered sanctions enforcement and Global Corruption Busters covered the aid-funded enforcement work of the NCA’s International Corruption Unit. There will be at least one more report in the series assessing how current methods of reinvesting the income from fines and asset seizures into economic crime enforcement and how they can be massively scaled up.