Action Fraud

Thursday 18th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Home Department (Mr Jeremy Browne)]

Action Fraud, run by the National Fraud Authority (an executive agency of the Home Office), now receives all reports of fraud on behalf of all police forces in England and Wales. Between November 2012 and July 2013, 2,490 reports (of which 1,738 were reports of crime) were not processed correctly due to a fault in the IT system. This represents 1.3% of all fraud reports taken by Action Fraud in this period. No data was lost or compromised at any point and the IT fault has been rectified. Action Fraud has taken immediate action to process the affected reports and will be writing to apologise to everyone who submitted a report and to make clear that their report is now being dealt with.

This issue came to light too late to notify the Office for National Statistics for inclusion in “Crime in England And Wales” for the year ending March 2013, published today. Crime continues to fall. Although the levels of total police recorded crime and fraud would be affected by this issue, the annual percentage change for total police recorded crime and for fraud would be unaffected. As part of routine revisions to the data, any corrections will be included by the Office for National Statistics in next quarter’s crime publications.

These figures supersede any given in previous answers to parliamentary questions and I apologise to the House for this.