10 September 2024 , 20:18
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Facing understaffing and retention issues stemming from chronic underinvestment, the U.K.’s elite crime fighting agency is left hobbled, finds a new report by the non-government organization, Spotlight on Corruption.
The ability of the National Crime Agency (NCA) to protect the public from major threats will be compromised without serious reform and investment, states the study titled ‘Is Britain’s FBI on its knees?’ published Monday.
The force is “hemorrhaging officers” with pay and benefits satisfaction the lowest across all government agencies at just 21%. In contrast, the civil service has an average satisfaction rate of 32%.
The report also stressed that NCA officers are paid less than other police forces, with senior roles being remunerated 21-25 percent less than their equivalents.
The root cause of the agency’s brain drain is pay stagnation, exacerbated by the “unwillingness of successive governments to invest in the agency,” with officers taking a real-terms pay cut of 16.3% over the past ten years, it said.
To combat the issues compromising the agency’s ability to protect the public, the NGO called on ministers to boost their financial commitments and allow the force to undertake a “speedy and ambitious” pay reform program.
The NCA is charged with fighting serious crimes including corruption, cybercrime, money laundering, and organized crime and is often dubbed “Britain’s FBI.” The report highlights that the agency is at “at the heart” of the United Kingdom’s commitments to tackle kleptocracy and economic crime more broadly.
In a policy paper published by the Cabinet Office in 2023, Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government committed to “close down London as a center for corrupt elites to launder money and enhance their reputations.”
London has long served as a financial center in which foreign kleptocrats can launder their money and reputations.
The news comes in the wake of the Transparency International UK’s calls to investigate more than a hundred high–risk contracts inked by Westminster as a part of Britain’s COVID response.