NCA Director General Graeme Biggar Delivers RUSI’s Annual Security Lecture

1 November 20233 Minute Read

RUSI Annual Security Lecture with Graeme Biggar, Director General at the NCA

On 31 October, the Director General of the National Crime Agency (NCA), Graeme Biggar delivered the Institute’s Annual Security Lecture.

Reflecting on the tenth anniversary of the NCA’s inception, Mr Biggar used the lecture to explore how the UK’s serious and organised crime landscape has changed over the last decade, and how the Agency has responded to tackle the organised crime groups.

As he highlighted the Agency’s decade of disrupting serious and organised crime, Mr Biggar also outlined how the NCA plans to deliver on its vital mission into its second decade. The conversation and Q&A session which followed Mr Biggar’s lecture was chaired by Lucy Fisher, RUSI Associate Fellow and Whitehall Correspondent for the Financial Times.

Concluding his address, NCA Director General Graeme Biggar said:

The NCA must embrace becoming more and more an online agency, harnessing the best of technology, with the very best people. It is our future. We are uniquely placed to do so, sitting as we do at the juncture of policing, the intelligence agencies, government and international partners; and blessed with a wonderful blend of officers from a range of specialist backgrounds. It is an urgent challenge, but one that law enforcement has risen to time and again throughout history. Faster ships; better code cracking; the ability and willingness to find and police those ungoverned spaces: these are challenges we have faced and overcome before, and, working with Government and broader society, I am confident we can do so again. If we are to achieve our mission of protecting the public from serious and organised crime, we must.

Graeme Biggar

Director General of the National Crime Agency

Reflecting on Mr Biggar’s address, Cathy Haenlein, Director of RUSI’s Organised Crime and Policing Research Group said:

Serious and organised crime causes greater harm to a larger number of people and more frequently than any other national security threat. As the NCA enters its second decade, this year’s Annual Security Lecture was a vital opportunity to hear from Mr Biggar on how the Agency has been working to address these threats, as well as what he views as the core challenges in the years ahead.