Soca seized £1 for every £15 spent

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The Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) was heralded as "Britain's FBI" when it was launched three years ago in a blaze of publicity.

It has since recovered £78 million from crime bosses, while costing taxpayers £1.2 billion.

Soca chairman Sir Stephen Lander, and director general Bill Hughes, defended its performance as they appeared before the Home Affairs Committee. Labour MP David Winnick said the agency had been "a disappointment" and had failed to deliver results.

The committee heard accusations the agency employed too many senior managers after it emerged it had a total of 30 deputy directors. Reports suggested it was riven with internal conflict and faced a review of its work by 10 Downing Street.

Sir Stephen, who retires later this summer, accepted Soca faced "teething troubles" but said he would give it a score of eight out of ten for its performance this year.

He told the committee drug operations had stemmed the supply of cocaine, leading to an increase in prices to an all-time high. Crime bosses were moving away from cocaine because it was no longer profitable, he said.

But this claim was rejected by Sebastian Saville, the chief executive of drugs charity Release, who said the class A drug was more expensive because of the falling value of the pound against the dollar.

He told the committee cocaine was "as available" as ever.

"The apparent increase in price correlates exactly to the decrease in the value of the pound. The reason Soca have said that it has gone up is not to with their interdiction of cocaine, it is more to do with currency."