BRITAIN: Britain is to establish a new national police unit to tackle organised crime. It will operate throughout Britain, unlike existing police constabularies which are confined to their local areas.
The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) will concentrate on fraud, drug- and people-trafficking.
Explaining the new unit's role, the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, indicated that the burden of proof might be lowered in organised crime prosecutions to snare more alleged gangsters.
Mr Blair said he believed the public would back making it easier to secure convictions in serious crimes such as drug-trafficking. He also suggested prosecutors should be allowed to present evidence from telephone taps - material which is usually banned in British courtrooms.
The radical proposals were expected to feature in a wide-ranging policy paper on organised crime due out next month. The SOCA is expected to employ more than 5,000 investigators.
During a visit to the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit in London's Docklands, Mr Blair said the new agency must be prepared to be "ruthless" to break down the complex networks established by international crime lords.
"My impression sometimes is that the system is struggling against a presumption that you treat these crimes like every other type of crime and that you build up cases beyond reasonable doubt," he said.
"To require everything beyond reasonable doubt in these cases is very difficult. I think people would accept that within certain categories of case, provided it's big enough, you don't take the normal burden."
After speaking with officer Helene Gould, who described how she had won permission from a court to use telephone intercept information against a cocaine dealer, the premier said: "Surely we should be able to use this stuff if we want to."
Some law enforcers, particularly the security services MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, have major reservations about the use of surveillance material, fearing it will expose their techniques.
The creation of the SOCA will be the biggest shake-up of the way British policing is organised since the current force boundaries in England and Wales were drawn 40 years ago.
Meanwhile, two more people were arrested yesterday in the investigation into the drowning last Thursday of 19 Chinese migrant workers picking cockles in Morecambe Bay, Lancashire.
They bring to seven the total detained in the inquiry.