India: Scam Call Centres

Lord Sharkey Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank the noble Baroness for that question. She is right to raise this. Local government is at the heart of some of that local awareness-raising and enforcement action. We have given a grant of £500,000 and an additional £600,000 for National Trading Standards scams teams to provide call-blocking technology to vulnerable people.

[Lord Sharkey (LD)]

My Lords, yesterday the Times reported the cybersecurity company Avast as saying that scammers have been targeting healthcare providers worldwide since the pandemic struck. Its CEO said:

“We’ve seen an increased number of attacks against hospitals and the NHS is one of the top targets right now.”


These attacks use ransomware and shut down NHS systems unless a ransom is paid. The last large ransomware attack on the NHS was in 2016 and led to disruption in at least a third of trusts. In 2018, the NHS published a lessons-learned report that made 22 recommendations to protect against future attacks. How many of those recommendations have been implemented, and how safe from ransomware attacks is the NHS at the moment?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I hope the noble Lord will forgive me when I say that I do not have specific information to hand on the NHS. It is pretty disgusting how this exploitation takes place very quickly on the back of a vulnerable event. Counterfraud guidance is being circulated alongside further advice and guidance from cybercrime technical work, which consists of more than 100 police officers across the country with a focus on helping businesses and individuals to protect themselves from these sorts of crimes. The public sector is a huge part of national business as we know it. I have certainly had a lot of information on Covid-19 exploitation, such as selling people protective equipment that is absolutely fraudulent and tests that are absolutely fake. It is an appalling practice, but it is happening and we are working across agencies to try to combat it.