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FBI or Police State you decide



REDLAND

Active member
Jul 7, 2003
9,443
At the foot of the downs
Blair lays plans for a British FBI

National agency would tackle organised crime

Tony Blair gave his strongest hint yesterday that three national criminal investigation agencies will be merged into a British FBI - a national agency dedicated to tackling serious and organised crime.

The government has confirmed that it is also looking at a unified border guard combining officers from the police special branch and the immigration and customs services to tackle organised people smuggling.

Mr Blair told an international criminal justice conference in London that the government was looking at the idea of a new agency to tackle organised crime "which could share intelligence, expertise and investigative talent".

He has appointed a cabinet committee under his own chairmanship to examine the idea. A decision and announcement are due in the autumn.

Mr Blair said yesterday that more than £20m had been seized from the bank accounts of suspected drug dealers and organised criminals in the past few months, but more could be done.

He made it clear that the plans to set up a new agency were being made alongside the Treasury review on the future of the Inland Revenue and customs announced last week in the light of a series of notable failures by customs in multibillion-pound fraud cases.

"Some have argued that the time has come to bring together some or all of the national law enforcement agencies which currently investigate serious and organised crime," he said.

The comment was welcomed by Chris Fox, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers.

"I think what we're doing at the moment isn't working very well," he said. "The different agencies have different responsibilities and different lines of accountability."

He stressed that it was important to avoid the FBI's reputation for aloofness and its tendency to trample on the turf of local police forces.

"We need to make sure that we have an integrated operation which has got to link in with the grassroots," he said.

It is expected that the new agency will bring together the national criminal intelligence service, which has an annual budget of £93m and a staff of 1,200; the national crime squad, which has a budget of £130m, 1,330 detectives and 420 support staff; and part of customs and excise, which has 350 officers in its national intelligence division and 1,500 operational officers in the investigation service.

The merger was championed by the former BBC director general Lord Birt when he was advising Mr Blair on crime before the last general election.

Since then the idea has been subjected to an intense debate in Whitehall and the police service.

Downing Street ordered a review in the light of claims that the war on serious and organised crime was being damaged by inefficiency and rivalry between overlapping agencies.

It is believed to have found evidence that the agencies did not always share their information and that a merger could improve crime fighting and be cheaper in the long term.

The Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokesman, Simon Hughes, said there was a strong case for setting up a national policing tier, nationally accountable.

"If there are going to be changes in one part of the system, it would be sensible to think through the structure of the rest," he said.
 



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