Back in November, the journalist Ed West wrote of how, after their 2024 landslide, Labour ministers met with senior civil servants. The politicos allegedly asked mandarins for ideas on how to run the country. Not unreasonably, the Civil Service pointed out that this was a job for ministers. That story comes to mind when reading that one suggestion of the Policing White Paper published today is to establish, yet again, “a British FBI” — the proposed National Police Service. Given such plans have long been gathering dust on a Home Office shelf, along with other much-trailed police reforms, it speaks to a case of civil servants obliging a minister asking: “what do we do now?”

Ever since the Serious Organized Crime Agency was established by New Labour in 2006 — yes, proudly announced as “the British FBI” — the Home Office has agitated for increasingly centralized policing bodies. These would be compliant to the whims of civil servants, as opposed to 43 pesky chief constables. SOCA was troubled, a civilian non-police organization slanted towards intelligence-gathering on organized criminals. Mocked as “MI7”, it endured fractious relations with police forces, its senior officers often high-handed former civil servants. When it was replaced by the National Crime Agency in 2013, little changed. I once worked on an operation where the officer in charge was a civil servant with a background in food standards. Occasionally hostile to police partners, coppers jokingly referred to the NCA acronym as “No Cops Allowed”. Incidentally, when the NCA was launched, it too was described as “a British FBI”.

To most observers, folding the NCA into the police might be seen as a concession in Whitehall’s turf wars. Yet, within the NPS, the NCA will be brigaded with national counter-terrorist policing. This is likely to cause concerns within MI5, which has primacy over counter-terrorism operations. Then there’s the sheer range of functions the National Police Service will absorb, including the College of Policing, policy, air support, research, IT procurement, serious fraud and even public order coordination. This will do little to settle the nerves of those concerned with this Labour government’s decidedly authoritarian streak. Does it still covet a national gendarmerie? Such fears might seem fanciful, but Prime Minister Keir Starmer referred to a national public order capability after the Southport unrest in 2024.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has denied the new agency is a money-saving move, insisting that the NPS will not only hire “world-class talent” but ultimately support local policing. Such bromides are offered whenever a cost-cutting White Paper is published. In reality, NCA pay is a running joke, the agency notorious for attempting to hire cybercrime professionals for the salaries one might earn in a supermarket. As for supporting local policing, most officers know the real issues around poor performance concern resources and funding, not headline-grabbing announcements about macho new agencies.

Since the last set of police reforms of 2010-15, officers have become poorly trained, paid and led. The wider criminal justice system is broken, especially in terms of prison capacity. The corpus of law and procedure — much of it originating from the Home Office — grows exponentially, creating treacly seas of bureaucracy for officers to navigate. Diverting resources to the NPS and its glamorous-sounding squads might offer a temporary distraction for an ambitious Blue Labour Home Secretary, but proof of concept turns on performance. By which time, as Mahmood well knows, she will no longer be Home Secretary. Nor, given the project timescales, will Labour even be in government. This is, unambiguously, the Home Office’s baby.

Which poses a question: would a populist new government entertain a super-agency, one incubated by civil servants offering reheated Blairite policy? Existing NCA officers, civil servants and senior cops anticipating glittering careers in the NPS might wish to consider their options. Until, of course, a new home secretary eventually announces, to much fanfare, “a new British FBI”.