The agency leading Britain’s fight against organised crime is struggling to cope with the soaring scale of heroin trafficking, it admitted yesterday.

The Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) claimed it was making headway in tackling fraud, gun-running and the cocaine trade but that success in tackling heroin smuggling was “more elusive”.

Soca stated in its annual report: “While interdictions of both heroin and opium base surpassed those of the previous year and good leads to money flows were secured, there remained much to do, in the light of increased production, against this very difficult target.”

The agency’s pessimism over the heroin supply is reflected in street prices, which, according to the charity DrugScope, have fallen £10 per gram since 2004. Soca’s largest overseas deployment is in Afghanistan where its agents are working to disrupt big heroin gangs.

Bill Hughes, director-general of Soca, said his internal critics – who toldThe Timesthis week that the agency was top-heavy with senior managers, bureaucratic, divided and ineffective – were undermining agents’ work.

Mr Hughes said: “We have guys in Afghanistan who are working in the most difficult conditions. They are locked down in Kabul at the moment.

“It is not an agency that is out of control. There are some disgruntled people. It is a very small number. If they have something to say to us there are routes to do it.

“To do it in the way they are doing it is to denigrate their colleagues and is disgraceful.”

Sir Stephen Lander, chairman of Soca, conceded that there had been “turbulence” and morale problems since the agency was set up two years ago.

“There has been an issue about overtime,” he added. “We were trying to bear down on some ‘Spanish practices’ that we inherited, such as putting off starting a job back to 4pm so you get overtime.”

Sir Stephen rejected criticism that his management team – Soca has ten directors and 31 deputy directors – was too large.

Vernon Coaker, junior Home Office Minister, said Soca retained his full support and that of Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary.

He added: “Without saying everything in the garden is rosy, progress is being made.”

Soca’s leadership rejected allegations, reported in The Times, that it had failed to make any significant impact in targeting the “Mr Bigs” of organised crime.

It admitted that its original hitlist of 130 key criminals, drawn up in 2006, was flawed.

There were now 2,000 important criminals who were “subject to Soca operational activity”. The agency was working with police forces to build up a picture of the activity of “several thousand” other criminals in England and Wales and similar projects were about to begin in Scotland and Northern Ireland, it was stated.

Mr Hughes said the intelligence was a criminal version of theSunday Times Rich List, with individuals being added or struck off as circumstances changed.

He said 36 key figures were in prison, many of them overseas, as a result of the work of Soca and its international partners. The activities of crime bosses who continued to run their empires from prison were being restricted by court orders requiring them to report all financial activities.

Soca reported 2,033 arrests over the year included more than 500 people arrested in Britain on European arrest warrants and more than 650 people arrested overseas.

Three senior members of a North London drugs gang received jail sentences totalling 74 years.

But the number of antidrug operations was lower than the total conducted the year before.

Instead, more effort was dedicated to detecting firearm-related threats and organised immigration crime.

Cash and grab

90 tonnes of Class A drugs seized in Britain and abroad

60 tonnes of chemicals, used in narcotics processing, seized

£46m of criminal assets restrained by courts

756 arrests made in Britain

4,000 staff in agency

£400m operational budget

Source: Soca

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