No sustainable funding model for economic-crime enforcement

The SFO returned £3 for every £1 invested in 2019-24 yet its salaries fall further behind the private-sector firms it faces; the government granted NCA officers a pay rise without new funding, slowing recruitment; and the UK Financial Intelligence Unit remains below the 200 staff FATF recommended in 2018. The December 2025 strategy expanded the City of London Police Domestic Corruption Unit and added some NCA funding, but Spotlight on Corruption warns the planned National Police Service reorganisation risks repeating the NCA's founding mistake of structural underfunding. The Economic Crime Levy and the Asset Recovery Incentivisation Scheme exist but give agencies no multi-year certainty.

Enforcement is the credibility test of every other reform: registers, debarment lists and donation rules deter nothing if the agencies policing them cannot retain investigators. Underfunded enforcement is also fiscally irrational given documented positive returns on investment in the SFO.

A statutory, ringfenced Economic Crime Fighting Fund recycling recovered assets, fines and levy proceeds into the SFO, NCA, FIU and CPS proceeds-of-crime work on multi-year settlements, with pay flexibility to retain specialist investigators, a proposal long advanced by Spotlight on Corruption.

// State-led: Instrument: statutory ringfenced Economic Crime Fighting Fund recycling recovered assets on multi-year settlements.

Enforcement is the credibility test of every other reform, yet the SFO and FIU lack multi-year funding certainty; a ringfenced recycling fund needs a hard Treasury settlement.