(The Secretary of State for the
Home Department): My first priority as Home Secretary is
to keep the public safe. Today I have published a new, revised and
updated, Serious and
Organised Crime Strategy. The strategy has been laid before
Parliament as Command Paper (Cm 9718), and copies are available in
the Vote Office and on gov.uk.
Serious and organised crime affects more UK citizens, more often,
than any other national security threat. Its perpetrators
ruthlessly target the most vulnerable, ruining lives and
blighting communities. Their activities cost us at least £37
billion each year and have a corrosive impact on our public
services, communities, reputation and way of life.
Since the previous strategy was published in 2013, we have made
significant progress in creating the powers, partnerships and law
enforcement structures we need to respond to the threat. The law
enforcement community, and the National Crime Agency in
particular, has an impressive, and sustained track record of
pursuing serious and organised criminals and bringing them to
justice. But the threat we face has grown increasingly complex
over the past five years. Criminals and networks are quick to
exploit the rate of technological change and globalisation,
whether it is grooming children online, using malware to steal
personal data or moving illegal goods, people and money across
borders. They have learnt to become more adaptable and resilient.
Our response must continue to adapt to new challenges.
The revised strategy follows a comprehensive cross-government
review, led by the Home Office. It sets out the government’s new
approach to prevent serious and organised crime, build our
defences against it, track down the perpetrators, from child sex
offenders to corrupt elites, and bring them to justice. We will
allow no safe space for these people, their networks or their
illicit money in our society.
Our new approach will be to target the highest harm networks and
the most dangerous and determined criminals exploiting vulnerable
people, using all the powers and levers available to the state to
deny them access to money, assets and infrastructure. But we will
not achieve our aim through disruption alone. We will also work
with the public, businesses and communities to help stop them
from being targeted by criminals and support those who are; and
we will intervene early with those at risk of being drawn into
criminality.
We will invest at least £48 million in 2019/20 in law enforcement
capabilities to strengthen efforts to tackle illicit finance,
which will enhance our overall response to serious and organised
crime, including additional investment in the multi-agency
National Economic Crime Centre. We will pilot new approaches to
preventing people engaging in serious and organised crime and
build community resilience against it. We will establish a new
national tasking framework for law enforcement. We will improve
engagement with the private sector, particularly the information
and communications technology industry. We will also expand our
overseas capabilities, including establishing a new network of
overseas policy specialists.
The new strategy will align our efforts to tackle serious and
organised crime as one cohesive system. We will equip the whole
of government, the private sector, communities and individual
citizens to play their part in a single collective endeavour.
