There are some welcome steps, but economic crime remains a blind spot, and the drive to deregulate raises real questions about whether key safeguards will hold.
Keeping organised crime off our high streets
The new High Streets Strategy recognises that organised crime undermines legitimate businesses and local economies. We welcome efforts to learn from international approaches and to examine the role of commercial landlords.
But enforcement must go beyond closing criminal premises. It needs to disrupt the networks behind them, tackle those who knowingly enable criminal activity, and prevent illicit businesses from simply reopening elsewhere.
Making enforcement count
We welcome investment in 670 additional HMRC compliance officers. Success should be measured not just in additional staff, but in results: complex, high-value and offshore non-compliance investigated, and the people who facilitate it held to account.
Effective enforcement also depends on agencies such as the National Crime Agency and Serious Fraud Office having the sustained capacity to investigate and prosecute complex economic crime. The Budget does not address this.
A narrow focus on fraud
The Budget’s fraud focus is heavily on welfare. With the Public Sector Fraud Authority moving to DWP, the forthcoming Counter Fraud Strategy must show it can tackle fraud and corruption across all public spending, including procurement.
Growth shouldn’t come at the expense of integrity
The Budget sets a target to cut the administrative costs of regulation by a quarter. Among the proposals feeding into this are changes to corporate reporting requirements (currently under consultation), which could scale back what companies disclose on anti-corruption, the environment and human rights.
These requirements are not just paperwork. They help investors, regulators and the public spot wrongdoing early. Any savings for business should be weighed against the costs of weaker oversight, and the Treasury should be clear about how it is assessing those costs. The forthcoming Regulating for Growth Bill should strengthen regulators’ role in tackling financial crime, not dilute it.
The bigger picture
Tackling corruption and illicit finance must be central to the government’s economic and national security agenda. That means ambitious anti-money laundering reforms, effective enforcement, and closing persistent gaps in corporate and asset ownership transparency, including across the Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies.
Protecting public money and legitimate enterprise, and maintaining the UK’s position as a trusted global financial centre, require more than commitments. They require delivery, and they require keeping the safeguards that make a trusted economy possible.