Border policing: National Crime Agency to replace £1.2bn 'failure'

It will replace the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca), which has gone from being heralded as "Britain's FBI" at its launch four years ago to being criticised as a waste of money by MPs.

As well as building on Soca's work, the NCA will include a border

police force and will absorb the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, which is aimed at protecting children from paedophiles who prowl the web. The National Policing Improvement Agency, whose work includes criminal profiling to assist major investigations, is to be phased out.

Mrs May said terrorism, serious and organised crime and cyber-crime required new approaches which "cross not just police force boundaries but international borders as well".

Last year the influential Commons Home Affairs Select Committee accused Soca of lacking transparency and accountability.

The cross-party group of MPs pointed to figures that showed only 1 was seized from organised crime gangs for every 15 in Soca's budget. The agency recovered 78m from crime bosses during its first three years, but cost taxpayers 1.2bn.

But Shadow Home Secretary Alan Johnson said the "structural upheaval" caused by the formation of Soca had taken years to settle down. "Four years later, to put them through another structural upheaval is simply madness," he said.