(Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
(Lab):...Obviously, the key is to increase funding for law
enforcement. The Government have promised £400 million to fund a
three-year programme, but economic crime costs this country £350
billion. In 2019, the head of the National Crime Agency
said that the budget needed for the NCA was closer to £3 billion.
The Royal United Services Institute says that annual investment
of at least a quarter of a billion pounds is needed. We could
raise that money if only we took on the argument of setting, say,
a £100 fee for setting up new companies, which is, of course, the
fee level recommended by the Treasury Committee. That is double
what His Majesty’s Government are currently proposing. We need
stronger proposals from Ministers to plug the gap where our
credibility should be...
(Inverclyde)
(SNP):...Economic crime has been an afterthought for far too
long. The National Crime
Agency budget has declined in real terms by 4.5% over
the past five years. Approximately 225,000 people work in
policing in England and Wales, covering London, right at the
centre of this mess, but just 1,700 of them—less than 1%—work on
all types of economic crime. The UK Government could follow the
lead of the Dutch Parliament and set up a trust fund based on
seized money from Russia and Russian oligarchs to fund the Prime
Minister’s proposed Marshall plan to help rebuild Ukraine...
(Hornsey and Wood Green)
(Lab):...Spotlight on Corruption highlights that the Bill
“only funds the first two years of the plan”,
so we need to plan for more and more finance, particularly as
this sort of crime and online crime become more complex. Will the
Minister outline how the Government will ensure that the plan has
necessary funding to ensure that public investment matches the
scale of the challenge that we face? The National Crime
Agency the Serious Fraud Office and other bodies
urgently need further resourcing to row back years of inactivity
in this area and to protect legitimate business and safeguard our
national security...
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