Security service 'turf wars' hamper war against crime

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Turf wars that stop gangs being brought to justice

Turf wars and rivalry between Britain's intelligence agencies are damaging the fight against organised crime, a confidential report by the former head of MI6 has found.

"Fragmented and user-hostile communications" were also said to be undermining the work of MI5, MI6, Customs, the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), the National Crime Squad (NCS), GCHQ spying centres, and the police.

The unpublished "restricted" report, details of which have been obtained by The Independent, also reveals that the secret services MI5 and MI6 plan to tackle cocaine and heroin trafficking between international drug gangs and British street dealers.

The report by Sir David Spedding, the former head of MI6 who died from cancer in June aged 58, said some intelligence on organised crime that was meant to be passed to other agencies had been "perfunctory, delayed or insufficiently informative".

The Home Office commissioned the so-called Spedding report to examine the gathering and dissemination of intelligence by the main agencies and to discover whether there were any "barriers" to this work. One of its key recommendations – already implemented – was to hand the key role of co-ordinating intelligence strategy to the National Criminal Intelligence Service.

The battle against serious and organised crime has concentrated on key criminals and obtaining intelligence on their operations. The Government wants the law enforcement agencies to provide a more effective and united force.

Sir David concludes that there are "worrying signs" of agencies showing "restlessness or impatience" with "the joint approach to work against serious and organised crime".

"Anything less than full commitment to the joint approach would damage the effectiveness of all the agencies involved. Each is wholly dependent on the others."

He adds: "While some of the barriers to information sharing are genuine, we believe they can be tackled. This would allow concentration on the most serious barrier to effective sharing, which is reluctance, conscious or otherwise, to share intelligence between (and indeed within) organisations."

He says that although there was no evidence of "institutional reluctance" to share information "we certainly came across instances where an organisation involved in this (law enforcement and intelligence) work believed that other were failing to give full effect to the intended free flow."

It adds: "We can testify to the corrosive effect which such alleged failures cause."

He highlights the reluctance by some Customs and Excise officers to inform NCIS when they use MI5 officers in operations and to pass on intelligence reports.

"This represents a change of culture, especially for some operational units, and we doubt whether the process of changing attitudes at operational level is yet complete," says the report.

The report also confirms that the secret services are currently carrying out a major intelligence gathering operation against heroin and cocaine traffickers and dealers.

The report says: "Arrangements have already been made for the Security Service (MI5) to lead for the time being on the strategic analysis of heroin supply to the UK, generating strategic intelligence requirements for GCHQ and SIS (MI6) to meet. A similar approach is being adopted for cocaine."

The work "should make it possible to draw up a plan of action to tackle the entire range of the supply chain from Afghanistan to the streets of British towns and the resulting money flows back to the operators".

One of the key recommendations of the report is for NCIS to focus on producing intelligence strategies against a range of organised crimes, such as the Russian mafia and people smugglers. The organisation's annual threat assessment should become the "core document" influencing the focus of the fight against organised crime. Earlier this year NCIS hired David Bolt from MI5 to head their new strategic intelligence department.

A Home Office spokeswoman said that a new secure computer system linking all the agencies was currently being developed to overcome any IT problems.

She added: "We are encouraging the agencies to work together to tackle organised crime. Schemes like the joint initiatives to tackle drug smuggling and people trafficking are evidence of the way this is happening."