Banks: Forgery

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord has raised the subject of resources, because we are giving them: the spending review last year allocated a further £400 million to tackle economic crime over the next three years. This includes £100 million earmarked specifically to target fraud, including by establishing a national fraud policing network, including greater fraud investigative capacity in the NCA, meeting a manifesto commitment to create a new national cybercrime force focused on fraud. In addition, new fraud investigation teams have been piloted in four regional organised crime units, which will be expanded and rolled out across all ROCUs. These new capabilities are driven by a new tasking and co-ordination process run by the NECC. Finally, as part of the police uplift, we are prioritising more investigators for the City of London Police, which leads on this.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister was quite rightly concerned about operational independence in an earlier answer. In that light, is it really appropriate that Lloyds Bank, one of the suspect banks, has directly funded the City of London Police to the tune of £1.5 million since 2019?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is referring to Action Fraud, which is receiving some funding—but the money is ring-fenced from another source. I cannot find the precise reference to it now, but I will write to her with the details. However, it is not from Lloyds Bank directly.