I understand the right hon. Lady’s point about the cost to the police and other authorities of failed investigations but, in my experience, much of the problem stems from the division of the spoils in those cases that succeed in
securing the proceeds of crime. As she will know, the money is divided between the Treasury, the Home Office and the police.
When I was at City Hall, we tried to cut a better deal in which the police would effectively recover the full cost of a prosecution, and any profit would then be split, so that pursuing such prosecutions would be costless to the police. Tim Godwin was then deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police, and his view was that the police would then have a strong case to invest even more in this line of investigation, and they would therefore have more success and there would be more money to go around for everyone. It is not necessarily the case that legislation will solve the problem. It is more to do with the deal between the police and the Government.