Labour MPs Dan Jarvis and Lucy Rigby have visited the National Crime Agency to discuss its work tackling serious and organised crime, including drug trafficking, people smuggling and the seizure of criminal assets.
Jarvis said NCA officers were working “round the clock” to protect the public and praised the agency’s role in targeting the criminal networks behind some of the most serious threats facing the country.
He said:
“NCA officers work round the clock to protect the public: seizing criminal cash, dismantling drug and people smuggling gangs, and hunting the criminals who run them.”
The visit came as the Government continues to emphasise stronger action against organised crime, economic crime and people-smuggling networks.
Focus on serious and organised crime
The National Crime Agency leads Britain’s response to serious and organised crime, working across areas including drug trafficking, modern slavery, organised immigration crime, cybercrime, fraud and money laundering.
The agency also works closely with police forces and international partners, reflecting the fact that many of the criminal networks it targets operate across borders.
Jarvis said it was “good to be at the NCA with Lucy Rigby to discuss their work fighting serious organised crime”.
Rigby’s involvement also underlines the economic dimension of the issue. As Economic Secretary to the Treasury, her responsibilities include financial services and economic crime, with illicit finance and criminal assets forming an important part of the Government’s wider approach.
Seizing criminal cash
One of the NCA’s core responsibilities is disrupting the finances that sustain organised crime.
That includes tracing and recovering criminal proceeds, tackling money laundering and working with banks and other institutions to prevent the UK financial system from being exploited by criminal organisations.
The NCA’s latest National Economic Crime Annual Report sets out the scale of that work and the continued focus on fraud, money laundering, sanctions evasion and other forms of economic crime.
For Labour, pursuing criminal money is a key part of ensuring that organised crime does not pay and that the people directing criminal networks are targeted as well as those operating at street level.
Tackling drug and people-smuggling gangs
Jarvis also highlighted the agency’s role in dismantling drug trafficking and people-smuggling networks.
The NCA works with overseas law-enforcement agencies to disrupt organised crime at source and pursue offenders based abroad who pose a threat to the UK.
That international cooperation is particularly important in areas such as cocaine trafficking, organised immigration crime and money laundering, where criminal networks routinely operate across multiple jurisdictions.
Labour backs frontline enforcement
The visit gave Jarvis and Rigby an opportunity to hear directly from those responsible for some of Britain’s most complex criminal investigations.
It also reflects Labour’s wider emphasis on giving law-enforcement agencies the tools and resources needed to tackle serious crime, alongside efforts to strengthen border security and disrupt the financial structures behind criminal gangs.
Jarvis’ message was that serious and organised crime cannot be tackled only at the point where offences reach local communities — the networks, money and individuals directing those operations must also be pursued and dismantled.
