Anti-crime agency 'disappointing'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/uk/8115134.stm

Version 0 of 1.

The Serious Organised Crime agency has been criticised after it emerged that for every £15 of public money it spent, just £1 was recovered from criminals.

Labour MP David Winnick told the Home Affairs Committee that the agency had been "a disappointment".

But Soca chairman Sir Stephen Lander said seizing assets was not the "be all and end all" and it had also stopped gangs using an additional £460m.

The agency was also helping Britain win the war on cocaine, he added.

Soca was heralded as Britain's FBI when it was launched three years ago. Then Prime Minister Tony Blair said it would target "brutal and sophisticated" criminal gangs of the 21st Century.

But earlier this year, Downing Street was forced to review Soca's work after an HM Inspectorate of Constabulary report identified 2,800 organised criminal gangs active in the UK - a much higher number than previously thought.

'Too many managers'

Sir Stephen, and Soca's director general Bill Hughes, defended the agency's performance as they appeared before the committee on Tuesday.

Mr Winnick accused it of failing to get value for money for the taxpayer, after it emerged that since its inception it had seized just £78m from criminals, but had cost the public £1.2bn.

There was also criticism of the number of senior managers employed by Soca, which has a total of 30 deputy directors.

We have had a genuine impact on the cocaine trade affecting this country Sir Stephen Lander, Soca chairman

Sir Stephen, who retires later this summer, admitted the agency had faced "teething troubles", but said he would give it a score of eight out of ten for its performance this year.

He said Soca was regarded as a world leader in the fight against organised crime and as well as the assets seized, far more money had been placed out of criminals' reach.

He also told the committee that Soca's work had made it much tougher for drug dealers to smuggle cocaine into the UK.

"I am very confident that we have had a genuine impact on the cocaine trade affecting this country," Sir Stephen said.

"What is available on the streets is very largely not cocaine. Indeed, the consumer is buying sometimes 95% something else and paying for it as cocaine.

"So, in fact, cocaine has never been more expensive in this country."

But this claim was rejected by Sebastian Saville, chief executive of drugs charity Release, who said the rise in the price of cocaine was simply due to the falling value of the pound against the dollar.

"The reason Soca have said that it has gone up is not to do with their interdiction of cocaine; it is more to do with currency," he said.

Mr Saville told the committee that cocaine was "as available" as ever.