THE Home Office is “clueless” about how to tackle serious crime – which is on the rise across the country with thousands of active organised criminal gangs.

A Pubic Accounts Committee (PAC) report revealed a lack of funding was putting lives at risk from the 4500 criminal groups active in the UK. MPs criticised the Government’s ability to tackle the issue, which costs the economy at least £37 billion a year, and their report found it did not know why activities were rising.

Serious and organised crime includes human trafficking, illegal drugs and cyber-crime and is thought to kill more people every year than any other national security threat.

Despite launching a new strategy for dealing with it in 2018, the PAC found the Government did not fully understand the threats.

Senior figures from the Home Office and police departments, who were grilled by the PAC, praised the work being done in Scotland and said the Scottish Crime Campus worked much better than the Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCUs) in England and Wales. One witness, Merseyside Police Chief Constable, Andy Cooke said: “There are a lot of good things happening in Scotland that we should keep a very close eye on.”

The PAC said: “Despite launching a new strategy for dealing with serious and organised crime in 2018, government does not yet fully understand the threats from serious and organised crime.

“It does not have the right data to measure success or the performance of the government and law enforcement bodies tackling serious and organised crime. These bodies are focused on pursuing criminals after the crime has been committed, but this has been at the expense of doing work to ‘prevent’ crime from happening in the first place. The Home Office is currently not using all the levers it has at its disposal to ensure that law enforcement bodies at local, regional and national levels prioritise work to tackle serious and organised crime ... There is still confusion over the role law enforcement bodies at each level should play in tackling serious and organised crime.”

Committee member and SNP MP, Douglas Chapman, said: “It is extremely concerning that the UK government is failing to tackle serious and organised crime and appear clueless as to how to prevent it increasing.

“The National Crime Agency needs to be properly funded so it can protect us from some of the most violent and sophisticated criminal activity.

“I would agree with Chief Constable Cooke that we are doing good things in Scotland through our co-ordinated approach with Police Scotland. The UK government could learn some lessons from us in that respect.

“These types of crime are on the rise and as criminals become more sophisticated and can carry out crimes in other nations from their laptops, we need the NCA to operate at full capacity, but they are being put on the back foot by a Tory government that is more interested in spending £100 million on a Brexit advertising campaign than a police force that can effectively protect us all.”