Yet another British FBI: reform or reinventing the wheel?

The government’s announcement of a new National Police Service (NPS) is once again being described as the UK’s equivalent of the US FBI. Yet it raises a fundamental and uncomfortable question.

I joined the police in 1982. For the last 44 years I have closely followed the development of UK policing. I have seen policing in England and Wales restructured, rebadged, centralised, regionalised, and then centralised again.

Each iteration has promised to “free up local policing,” modernising the response to serious crime, and to better reflect the realities of globalised offending.

UK government’s rationale

The government’s announcement of a new National Police Service (NPS) is once again being described as the UK’s equivalent of the US FBI. Yet it raises a fundamental and uncomfortable question.

Is the government implicitly admitting that the National Crime Agency (NCA) is no longer fit for purpose? Or that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is surplus to requirements? Has the Counter Terrorist Unit had its day? Are the British intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, on borrowed time? Who knows. After all, the rationale given for setting up the NPS is almost exactly the same as when the NCA was created in 2013.

The real test will be if the NPS is properly funded, operationally independent, staffed by experienced investigators … and capable of turning intelligence into arrests, prosecutions, and recovered assets.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced plans for the new NPS that will assume responsibility for counter-terrorism, fraud, and organized crime, absorbing the functions of existing bodies including the NCA and regional organized crime units.

Those who follow my utterings will know that the mention of fraud in particular caused my ears to prick up. For once, I agree with a politician. Mahmood stated the current system is “broken.” She told the BBC that there was an “epidemic of everyday crime” going unpunished, and again, I wholeheartedly agree.

Her narrative is powerful, but it collides head-on with institutional history.

• Historically, in 1965, the Regional Crime Squads (RCS) were born and referred to as “Britain’s FBI.”
• In 2006, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) superseded the RCS, and was immediately dubbed “Britain’s FBI.”
• In 2013, SOCA was replaced by the National Crime Agency, and it too became known as “Britain’s FBI.”
• And, in 2026, here we go again …

Fraud: reinventing the wheel (again)

At what point does reorganization become institutional amnesia? The police themselves are synonymous with reinventing the wheel: they do not need politicians to jump on that particular bandwagon.

When I joined Liverpool’s Major Crime Unit (MCU), the departmental name was changed for no apparent reason (the unit was rife with rumors that it was simply someone’s promotion-box-ticking-exercise). The name change must have cost thousands administratively and caused confusion among the troops and our partner agencies. I suspect that our latest iteration of Home Secretary is embarking on a similar “look what I did” process in the attempt to tick the box marked Fraud.

Those of us who were serving detectives during the transition from SOCA to the NCA will remember the sales pitch well. The NCA would:

• take on the most complex, cross-border threats;
• free up local forces to focus on neighbourhood policing;
• provide national leadership on organized crime, economic crime, and cyber-enabled offending;
• act as a single point of international law enforcement engagement.

If today’s policing system is now described by the Home Secretary as “out of date” and “broken,” that is not a neutral observation. It is, whether intended or not, an indictment of the NCA model itself.

Graeme Biggar, Director General of the NCA, publicly backed the new proposals, saying: “The overall policing system is out of date. Crime has changed, technology has changed, and how we respond needs to change.”

Although factually accurate, it also begs a question many investigators will be contemplating; wasn’t that exactly what the NCA was created to address, and if so, why hasn’t he done something about fraud, as it fell within his remit? Yet again, the hot potato that is fraud is being gleefully flung from one leader to another.

Now fraud is being explicitly named as falling under the new NPS remit. Does this mean the NCA is relinquishing its role in “investigating and prosecuting” this particular crime?

Fraud is the most commonly experienced crime in England and Wales, accounting for over 40% of all reported crime. Yet for years tackling it has suffered from:

• fragmented ownership;
• chronic under-investment;
• a confused reporting and investigative model;
• a widening gap between victim expectation and operational reality.

Let’s not lose sight that it is also the UK’s most underreported crime, too. Victims ask themselves if there is any point in reporting fraud, knowing that police are going to file it in the too-hard-to-do-drawer. In reality, fraud is an even bigger problem than illustrated by the statistics.

The national lead force for fraud remains City of London Police (CoLP). They were tasked with providing strategic leadership, but in practice the model has struggled. So, we must ask the second uncomfortable question. Is this an admission that the national fraud policing model has failed, and thereby has the CoLP failed in its remit?

If fraud now needs to be pulled into a new national police body to be taken seriously, that suggests the existing governance arrangements have not delivered. Have promises and undertakings failed ministers and the regulated sector and, most importantly, the victims?

On the subject of reinventing the wheel, we have also been alerted to a replacement for the UK’s online fraud reporting system, Action Fraud (another abject failure where UK fraud is concerned).

Action Fraud became a lightning rod for criticism from victims, the media, parliamentarians, and investigators alike. Reports were taken, reference numbers issued, and very little appeared to happen thereafter.

“Report Fraud” is the new replacement for Action Fraud, being delivered in partnership with the CoLP. How exciting, another way of obtaining a crime number for your insurance claim or bank … and very little else.

The UK policing response to fraud is perhaps its biggest failure of all. One of my Fraud Squad roles was to receive Action Fraud referrals, which saw me hawking cases around the force, visiting divisional Detective Inspectors (DI), and trying to convince them that investigating the fraud on offer would be a good move. Sadly, 99% of my door-to-door salesman attempts failed; I would have seen more success selling ACME vacuum cleaners.

The NPS will be no different: unless its fraud detection performance is measured it will fail.

It was totally demoralizing. It wasn’t the DIs’ fault. The fault lay, and still does, with the politicians. Until they make fraud a policing priority, nothing will change. And until such time as Chief Constables find their fraud detection performance being measured by the Home Office, like burglaries for example, they and their subordinates will ignore the problem as there is no consequence for doing so. The NPS will be no different – unless its fraud detection performance is measured it will fail.

Through this lens, the NPS announcement can be seen for what it is; less about structure and more about political cover. An attempt by this government, like its predecessors, to give a visible signal that it is “doing something” about fraud, even if the operational problems are deeper and harder to solve.

Which brings us to another coincidence that will not have gone unnoticed by those working in the battle against economic crime. The NPS announcement comes against the backdrop of Nick Ephgrave’s sudden decision to retire as Director of the Serious Fraud Office. No official link is being stated, and no conspiracy is being alleged. But timing matters.

Ephgrave himself previously warned publicly about the scale and complexity of fraud facing the UK, noting: “Fraud has become a low-risk, high-reward crime for organised criminals.”

We must ask ourselves, is the creation of a new national policing body part of a broader rethink about how serious economic crime is investigated, prosecuted and funded in the UK? Or are these simply parallel developments born of the same systemic pressures? Investigators in both the public and private sectors will be watching closely.

Real-life consequences

For those working in banks, professional services, and other regulated environments, this reform agenda has real-world implications. The downside is they can expect increased workload and greater emphasis on intelligence-led referrals rather than volume SARs. There will be more scrutiny of KYC and ongoing monitoring failures. However, on the upside, it could see them assisting the NPS with a more focused approach to asset recovery, not just prosecution.

I am sceptical of yet another structural reform being presented as a silver bullet. Buildings, logos, and organizational charts do not investigate crime – people do. Crime has changed; fraud is out of control and local forces areoverstretched.

The real test will be if the NPS is properly funded, operationally independent, staffed by experienced investigators, willing to pursue complex, politically uncomfortable cases, and capable of turning intelligence into arrests, prosecutions, and recovered assets.

Until then, many of us who have lived through the RCS, SOCA, the NCA, and now the NPS will reserve judgment – because we have seen this film before on an indeterminable loop.

• This article was originally published by GRIP