Most crime in Britain linked to foreign gangs

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Bill Hughes, director general of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, told MPs that drugs, people trafficking and firearms crime were heavily linked to ethnic groups from overseas.

Mr Hughes' comments came in evidence to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee during which he also warned that the high strength skunk
cannabis is being grown on a "commercial scale" across Britain by Vietnamese and Chinese gangs. He described this as a "serious threat".

Mr Hughes described how people smugglers were channelling illegal immigrants to Britain via Malta, Moscow and Rome, while drug dealers were using routes through West Africa and the Balkans to gain access to Britain.

"Most of the crimes we are dealing with are international. The source of the trouble starts elsewhere," he told MPs. "For instance in the trafficking of Vietnamese people to cultivate cannabis we are seeing the impact of Chinese 'snakehead' gangs.

"With firearms there are particular ethnic groups that are particularly involved in that. Similarly with drugs."

Sir Stephen Lander, chairman of Soca, of Soca, who was also giving evidence, expressed concern about the growing number of migrants from outside the EU seeking to exploit lax European border controls to enter Britain. "This is a very large problem across most of the EU's borders," he said.

Several MPs suggested the agency, set up two years ago with an annual budget of £440million, had achieved little but Mr Hughes and Sir Stephen insisted that it was making progress in reducing organised crime.