If the government needed any more evidence that electronic crime cannot be ignored, the UK’s two-place slide down the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) annual global e-readiness rankings has come right on cue.

A country’s e-readiness is the ability of consumers, business and government to exploit technology, and the rankings are an index of its ability to compete in the global economy.

The UK is still in the global top 10, so the situation is not all doom and gloom. Our social and cultural environment is well-adapted to the digital world, says the EIU, and our business environment is one of the best in Europe – comparable even with those of our new Asian arch-rivals, Hong Kong and Singapore.

But even with political stability, strong support for private enterprise, and thriving competition on our side, our legal system is letting us down.

Hong Kong, in particular – which has shot up the rankings from 10th to fourth – is vastly superior in terms of the aggressive pursuit of digital criminals such as hackers and online fraudsters.

In this respect the UK is woefully inadequate, and worryingly, the situation looks unlikely to improve.

To try to persuade the Home Office to provide some funding for a national e-crime unit run by London’s Metropolitan Police, the Association of Chief Police Officers is now touting around the private sector looking for donors.

But even with significant investment from business, the responsibility for pursuing this most non-geographic of crimes looks likely to remain with under-funded, under-skilled and over-stretched local police forces.

There are many different elements to a thriving digital economy, and it is simplistic to make comparisons between countries on a single issue.

But the value of a secure electronic environment to online business is inestimable. The government needs to stop relegating e-crime to second place, or the UK will slip even further behind.