Criminal Justice Bill

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 15th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Laura Farris]

I thank my hon. and learned Friend for his sensible intervention, which engaged two issues: article 6 considerations on the right to a fair trial, and article 8 considerations on the right to respect for private and family life. We are keenly aware of those obligations. I am sorry that I cannot give more detail on that, only the extra reassurance that the Lord Chancellor has insisted that prisoners will retain all their rights under the convention. These will be principal considerations. I will ask the Lord Chancellor to write to my hon. and learned Friend to flesh out some of those responses.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has given a wide-ranging opening speech, but I want to press her on one more issue: spiking. First, I thank her for recognising the importance of creating an offence to cover it. We had a spate of spiking attacks in Nottingham, and the stories of the young people affected were chilling. I seek her reassurance that we will create the most robust possible legislation in this area, and that she will look kindly on the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), who has led a fantastic campaign to get spiking recognised in law. It is so important that we cover all the intentions that someone might have when they set about spiking someone, even if it is that they thought it might be a bit of fun. It is certainly not fun for their victims, and it is important that we do not create a loophole where offenders might be able to wriggle off the hook.

[Laura Farris]

I hope that I can provide my hon. Friend, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) with some reassurance. The offence is drafted to cover all possible outcomes. We looked very carefully at the wording. I want to provide some specific reassurance about “attempt”, which I know my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester is concerned about; it is in his amendment. It is not necessary to put a separate offence of attempting to spike in the Bill, because it is captured as an inchoate offence under section 1(4) of the Criminal Attempts Act 1981, which covers all forms of attempt of a crime that is on the statute book. I hope that provides some reassurance.

I thank Members on all sides of the House for their engagement in the Bill, their joint commitment to its successful development as legislation that enhances our criminal justice system, and that delivers robust protection, appropriate penalties and a better framework of justice for the public. Our Government amendments achieve that, and I will respond in due course to Members’ views. I commend the amendments and new clauses to the House.

Crime and Neighbourhood Policing

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

I want to make some progress, and I will take some interventions later.

The first fact—achievement No. 1—is that this Government are on track to deliver the most police officers in the history of policing in England and Wales. We are on track to deliver 20,000 new police officers by March 2023, and in that regard I want to pay tribute to my right hon. Friends the Members for Witham (Priti Patel), for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) and for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse)—he was in the Chamber earlier—for their leadership of that mission.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

In Nottinghamshire we have 405 more police officers as a result of the policing uplift. Many have gone into the neighbourhood policing team, so we have newbie officers in villages such as Keyworth and Ruddington. Will the Home Secretary join me in thanking Inspector Rob Lawton and his neighbourhood team for the brilliant work they do in Rushcliffe, and will she tell the House when the long-awaited review into the police funding formula will begin, so that great forces such as Nottinghamshire police can get the resources they deserve?

[Suella Braverman]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I join her in paying tribute to the police leadership in her county and her force. It is thanks to strong leaders in her police force that we have higher police numbers, more bobbies on the beat, and more visible, responsive policing at the heart of our local communities. We will begin consulting on police funding soon, so we can ensure that the resources and money reach the front line where they are needed.

Spiking Incidents: Prevention

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), not only on securing this debate but on his committed campaigning on this issue.

The hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) said that she is sick of young women being told to take precautions. I am sick of that, too, but I am even more sick of the seemingly endless number of ways of intimidating and hurting women that some men think up. I have seen so much of it in my last three years as an MP. We need to be as creative when it comes to stopping them—indeed, to stopping all spiking offences, because, as colleagues have said, although those affected are mostly women, they are not only women.

Sadly, it did not surprise me to see my constituency near the top of the list when it came to support for the petitions related to this debate, because Nottingham saw a spate of spiking in autumn 2021, and last year it had one of the highest number of reported incidents of needle-spiking.

The better the data we have, the better our response will be. I am pleased that the Government asked the National Police Chiefs’ Council to establish a reporting mechanism, so that all police forces can report incidents of spiking centrally. That will help us to gain a better understanding of the scale and nature of the problem. The Government have also worked with clubs, bars and universities to raise awareness of spiking, to help to prevent it. For example, Nottingham Trent University has funded intervention training for staff in city-centre venues, and many other universities have increased bag searches at events, and provide drinks protectors and kits to test for spiking.

Rushcliffe has benefited from the Safer Streets Fund; West Bridgford and Trent Bridge have received nearly £250,000, which has provided new safer street wardens in the evenings, and more closed circuit television. I am a strong supporter of the Enough campaign, which highlights the different forms of violence against women and girls, including spiking, as well as the simple acts that anyone can take to challenge perpetrators of abuse, because at the end of the day only a society can change a culture. However, I take on board the comments that the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee made about the campaign; I hope that the Home Office will review its content on spiking. I am also pleased that the Government have reclassified GHB, the date-rape drug, so that offenders face up to five years in prison.

On the issue of a specific offence of spiking, there are already a range of offences that could cover spiking in certain circumstances. However, what we really need to understand from the Government in the report that I think is being published at the end of April is how effective efforts to prosecute incidents of spiking are under existing laws. We also need to know what the average sentence is for spiking offences prosecuted under these laws—not the maximum penalties for these offences, which is what the Government are publishing in response to parliamentary questions. That is the only way we can gauge whether the existing penalties are likely to provide sufficient punishment for offenders. We need to send a very clear message from this House that spiking is a vicious attack. If someone is going to attack people in this way, whether their weapon is a pill slipped into someone’s drink or a needle jabbed into their arm, they should expect a custodial sentence.

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

I thank all Members for keeping to the time limit and enabling everybody to speak in this well-attended debate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

I am sorry, but the hon. Lady needs to get her facts right. This Government are proposing a total police funding settlement of up to £17.2 billion in 2023-24, an increase of up to £287 million compared with 2022-23. Assuming that there is full take-up of the precept flexibility, something this Government introduced, overall police funding available to PCCs will increase by up to £523 million next year—a welcome increase and one that I hope she would support.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

2. Whether she has made an assessment of the adequacy of fire cover in Nottinghamshire. [902843]

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)]

The level of fire cover in Nottinghamshire is a matter for the Nottinghamshire and City of Nottingham Fire Authority, but I would observe that in Nottinghamshire the Labour-controlled fire and rescue service has cut firefighter numbers by 11% since 2016, despite its funding settlement having been about the same as other fire and rescue services, which, nationally have seen only a 1.6% reduction.

[Ruth Edwards]

The Nottinghamshire and City of Nottingham Fire Authority is proposing to cut the night shift at West Bridgford fire station despite the fact that it will save no money, the station has higher night-time call-out rates than other stations in the county, and it will leave Rushcliffe as the only borough in Nottinghamshire without full-time fire cover at night. Can the Minister advise me on the options Members of Parliament have to challenge the decision-making of local fire authorities when it is clear that they are letting down our constituents and the brave firefighters who serve them?

[Chris Philp]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question and for her campaigning on the issue of Nottinghamshire fire services, which she has raised with me a number of times. There is certainly no financial excuse for what the fire and rescue authority is doing. This year, it received a 5.2% funding increase and, thanks to my hon. Friend’s campaigning, when the figures are published tomorrow, there will be further good financial news for the Nottinghamshire and City of Nottingham Fire Authority. On how the fire authority’s decisions might be queried, any concerns she has can be raised with the inspectorate and taken into account when the fire service is next inspected. Otherwise, the fire and rescue authority is made up of local authority representatives, who are accountable, periodically, via the ballot box.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

Through the hon. Lady, I would like to pass on our thanks to her constituent who is now travelling to Poland. I will need the details, if I may take them from her, to ensure that the visa side and the sponsorship side match up, and then we can pick this up.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating Nottinghamshire police on hitting their recruitment uplift target a year ahead of schedule, so we now have more police officers in Nottinghamshire than at any time in the past 10 years? Can she commit to a date when the long-promised police funding formula review will start?

[Priti Patel]

I commend Nottinghamshire police and their outstanding chief constable for all the work that the team have been doing. They have been really focusing on driving down crime through recruitment and the training of new officers. My hon. Friend rightly asks about the police funding formula, which is under way through the Minister for Crime and Policing. It is deeply complicated, as my hon. Friend will be well aware, but we are happy to report back on it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Gentleman has raised a vital issue and I thank him for his work locally, and the work of his local authority and policing. I know he has been in contact with the Policing Minister on this issue. We will happily meet him and others from his community. I know this is a particular issue and it is something that we need absolutely to come together on and to work together to resolve.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that, last year, the British public had £78 million stolen from them by clone scammers and people posing as legitimate companies online? Will she work with colleagues from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to set out in law robust identity checks that all online platforms should have to make, before letting people take out advertising on their site?

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend is right about the scourge of fraud and its prevalence online. We brought fraud into scope for the draft Online Safety Bill. I am conscious of the issues that she mentions about advertising and we continue to work with colleagues from DCMS on that.

Violence Against Women and Girls: Police Response

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

Our deepest sympathies are with the family and friends of the hon. Gentleman’s constituent. It is precisely cases like those that have led us to prioritise violence against women and girls in such a vital way. That is why we have appointed a national policing lead so that we can put the issue at the heart of Government policy. That is the right way to tackle it.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

I welcome my hon. Friend to her place and thank her for her statement. Data sharing and collaboration between organisations in victims’ cases are obviously sensitive but crucial issues and are highlighted in the report. Will she outline the steps that the Government are taking to improve data transparency, to help to stop offenders from repeating their heinous crimes?

[Rachel Maclean]

We are looking into these matters, which are clearly a vital part of our response. I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend and discuss them in more detail.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 19th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

With the greatest respect, if the hon. Gentleman had listened to me, he would realise they were not my words I was quoting—it was Waheed Arian himself I was quoting.

The Government say that the asylum system is broken. I totally agree. And it is the Conservative Government who have broken it over the past 11 years. Under this Conservative Government, the asylum processing system has imploded. Their own incompetence, removing targets from the system and failing to run it properly, has completely undermined it.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman says it has imploded under the Conservative Government. I remind him that after his party had been in power for 10 years, there was a backlog of nearly 500,000 asylum cases and 120,000 of them were put in the controlled archive because they were unable to trace them.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

If the hon. Member wants to hear about statistics, try these: the share of applications that received an initial decision within six months fell from 87% in 2014 to 20% in 2019. That is the scale of the failure of this Government. At the end of March 2021, over 66,000 were waiting for an outcome on their initial claim. Seventy-five per cent. of them—over 50,000—have been waiting over six months. New research from the Refugee Council shows that, according to the most recent data available, over 33,000 people have been waiting for over a year. I have been intervened on about the last Labour Government, but that represents a tenfold increase in the past decade—tenfold. It is failure heaped upon failure, and not only that: the initial decision making is so poorly judged that around 40% of initial decisions are overturned: so four in every 10 decisions are wrong. Yes, this process is broken and, frankly, it is getting even worse.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

The United Kingdom has always been a generous, open and welcoming country. We help some of the most vulnerable people in the world to settle and make their lives here. We welcome migrants, refugees and asylum seekers from around the world, and we will continue to do so: nothing in the Bill will change that.

People who enter the country legally will continue to be able to claim asylum here. We will continue to prioritise helping the most vulnerable: the elderly, children, and the poorest—those who are unable to travel hundreds of miles or to pay people smugglers, like the 25,000 people who have come here through our resettlement programme in the last six years. We have resettled more people through that programme than any other country in Europe.

People in genuine need deserve an asylum system that functions properly, supports them through the process, and makes a decision quickly. Perpetuating the current system is not fair to them. Nor do we want to continue with the system that is being exploited by people smugglers who callously treat human beings as if they were cargo, and sometimes not even as well as that. The Bill will introduce life sentences for those found guilty of people smuggling. It will give Border Force additional powers to search, seize and divert vessels carrying people illegally, and it will provide an incentive for people to use safe and legal routes to claim asylum in the UK. This combination of measures will disrupt and undermine the business model of people smugglers.

It is important that we are able to keep all our citizens, our constituents, safe. There are currently 10,000 foreign national offenders outside prison in this country whom we need to deport. Some are guilty of the most hideous crimes. They have no right to be here, but time after time Labour Members have come here to Parliament to plead for their rights. I am more interested in the rights of their victims. That is why I support the measures in the Bill that will end repeated, last-minute and vexatious legal challenges to deportation, expand the early removal scheme for removing foreign offenders from the UK as early as possible, and increase the sentence for breaching a deportation order from six months to five years.

This Bill will deliver an asylum system that continues to prioritise the most vulnerable, immediate indefinite leave to remain for refugees who are resettled through safe and legal routes, tougher sentences for people smugglers, and tougher sentences for foreign national offenders who try to come back to our country when they have no right to do so. That is what I am voting for. My question to Opposition Members is: will they?

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 5th July 2021 Commons Chamber

Finally, I will speak briefly to new clause 98, which would create an offence of pet theft. In March, DogLost recorded a 170% increase in dog theft from 2019-20. Pets are more than property; they are part of the family and we place huge emotional value on them. The punishment of this crime must outweigh any potential reward thieves can reap from selling dogs and it must reflect the distress caused to owners.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

In our home, pets are not property; they are members of the family. There is Geoffrey the tortoise, whose sole aim in life seems to be to find the most obscure and inaccessible corner of the room to sit in for the day. The back of the fireplace is his perennial favourite, and crawling in there to retrieve him has become an evening ritual in our house. We then have Florence, Vera and Coco. They are alpacas, although someone who happened to wander into their paddock with a handful of carrots could be forgiven for thinking they were dealing with a shoal of piranhas. Then there is the newest member, Sergeant Wilson the donkey, whose mission is to eat the world—even if it does involve getting his head stuck in the fence while trying to reach for the raspberry canes.

Many of my constituents have been in touch with me to express their concerns about pet theft over the pandemic, so I started a Rushcliffe pet theft survey to listen to people’s views: 96% of people told me that they were worried about pet theft; 30% said that they had been, or knew someone who had been personally affected by it; and 90% have taken extra precautions to ensure that their pet is not stolen. There was varying support for different measures to help to tackle pet theft: 44% wanted tougher sentences; 22% wanted to create a separate offence; 17% wanted more regulation on pet selling; and 15% wanted more support from the police. So I am pleased that the pet theft taskforce will be addressing all those points and considering the issue in its entirety, including causes, prevention, reporting, enforcement and prosecution.

There are a number of fundamental issues to think through. Should we be thinking of pet theft as theft at all, or is it close to abduction? So many contributions here tonight have talked about pets as members of the family. What about the animal cruelty element? At present, if someone causes an animal to suffer in the course of stealing it from the owner, they can be prosecuted under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. But are not all acts of wrenching a pet away from the family who love and care for it an act of animal cruelty? What about sentencing? We already have a maximum term of seven years, yet it rarely seems to be used in the case of pet theft.

So I welcome the opportunity to debate these issues tonight, and I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and other right hon. and hon. Members for the amendments they have tabled that have enabled us to discuss the matter. I will not be supporting any at this stage because I think we need to see the result of the pet theft taskforce first, so that we have the data that we need to make the best decisions and ensure that we have strongest tools we need to deal with the people who want to steal our pets. I look forward to seeing the results in a couple of weeks’ time and to Ministers taking strong action to implement the taskforce’s recommendations in this Bill in the autumn. We owe it to our pets to make sure that we get this right.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab) [V]]

I wish to speak to new clauses 20 and 21 in my name, which refer to specific penalties for two road crimes.

Every year in this country, 1,700 people are killed and 26,000 seriously injured on our roads. It is the biggest killer of young people between the ages of five and 29 and there has been a feeling not just in this House, but particularly among the families of road crime victims that the penalties for road traffic offences often do not fit the crimes and that road crime is not treated like real crime.

The Government promised a full review of road traffic offences and penalties in 2014, but that has yet to happen. The Bill introduces small but welcome changes to the maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving and a new offence of causing injury by careless driving, but it leaves a number of serious flaws in our traffic laws in place and my amendments would address two of the most glaring ones.

First, on the failure to stop and report an accident—more commonly known as hit and run—for which the maximum sentence is currently only six months, just one of the many cases raised by road safety and motoring organisations to Members of this House was that of the Cornish postman Ryan Saltern. He was killed by a hit-and-run driver, who received just a four-month sentence and a 12-month driving ban. My new clause 20 proposes a maximum sentence of 14 years where a driver fails to stop and exchange details or report the collision to the police in cases where they knew, or ought reasonably to have known, that a serious or fatal injury had occurred, or might have occurred.

New clause 21 addresses the issue of exceptional hardship. This is a plea that road criminals can often make to avoid losing their licence. From 2011 to 2020, there were 83,581 cases where drivers were let off a driving ban by pleading exceptional hardship. When Christopher Gard hit and killed cyclist Lee Martin in 2015, it was the ninth time in six years that he had been caught using a mobile phone while driving. He had been convicted and fined six times and sent on two driver retraining courses. He should have been disqualified, but magistrates had repeatedly accepted his plea that a ban would cause him exceptional hardship. He kept his licence, and Lee Martin was killed.

Courts have accepted a range of problems, such as not being able to do the school run or damage to a relationship, as exceptional, and as a plea against disqualification that has brought this cause into disrepute. My new clause requires that a court should regard hardship as exceptional if, and only if, it is significantly greater than the hardship that would arise if the same qualification were imposed on a large majority of other drivers. It is vital that the Government fulfil their seven-year promise of a full review of traffic offences. In the meantime, these are two modest improvements to two of the most egregious areas, where most reasonable people agree that all too often, the punishment does not fit the crime. I do not intend to push the amendments to a vote, but I hope the Government will accept them, if not here, then in the other place.

Online Scams: Consumer Protection

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to normal practice in order to support the new hybrid arrangements. Members need to clean their spaces before they use them and before they leave the room. I also remind Members that Mr Speaker has stated that masks should be worn in Westminster Hall throughout the debate.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered protecting consumers from online scams.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani.

Last year, my constituents Mr and Mrs Biggs came to see me at one of my constituency surgeries. They were asking for my help because scammers had stolen £30,000 of their savings. How had that happened? Well, a friend of theirs had spotted an advert on Google for a bond that, when compared with other products on the market, seemed to offer a reasonable rate of return over a three-year period. They called the telephone line provided to discuss the product further. The bond was being offered by a reputable firm, Goldman Sachs, and it was advertised on Google, which presumably had done its due diligence before accepting the advert, so my constituents invested. Only it was not Goldman Sachs that they had invested with, and the bond did not exist. Instead, Mr and Mrs Biggs, like many people up and down the country, had become victims of a very convincing clone scam. They had transferred £30,000 into the bank account of the perpetrators of that scam.

Clone scams exploit people’s trust in reputable brands by carefully mimicking their websites and online presence and even researching and impersonating their sales managers. When they also carry the stamp of an advert, be that on Google, Facebook or any other online platform, many consumers believe that the platform carrying the advert has checked out the company that posted it and that therefore it is an official advert from the company in question. But the truth is that that is rarely the case, because online platforms currently have no legal obligations to protect users against fake or fraudulent content, and that is the primary issue that I would like to address in the debate today.

In the last 18 months, we have been living through a public health emergency, but the pandemic has also had a really profound effect on the way adversaries operate online. We have seen everything: nation state espionage on vaccine programmes, the spread of misinformation and a huge increase in online scams. We have seen fake personal protective equipment, and phishing sites posing as councils giving out covid grants, or sending fake messages about parcel deliveries to try to download software on to victims’ phones or to direct them to give their bank details to scammers. It shows how sophisticated the world of online scams has become, how fast criminals can adapt to new situations and how easy it is for people to be taken in.

Action Fraud figures show that, in the year to June 2020, 85% of all fraud was cyber-enabled. Reports of clone scams increased by nearly 30% between March and April—just in the space of a month—last year. Victims lost more than £78 million to clone scams in 2020. It is hard to put those sorts of figures in the context of individuals, but the average loss for victims is about £45,000. That could be the deposit for someone’s home, the money that they were saving to start their own business or expand it, or savings for retirement or to pass on to their children. But it is gone, and often with no compensation.

Fortunately, in the end, my constituents, Mr and Mrs Biggs, were compensated. That was not without a fight and the resulting stress and anxiety. Many other victims are not compensated. In 2018, The Telegraph, which has done some really excellent work on this issue, reported that, in the previous year, only 25% of the funds lost to authorised push payment or APP scams, in which the victim transfers money to the bank account of the criminal, were successfully returned to victims.

These figures are shocking, before we even take into account the immense psychological and emotional toll on victims and their families. Scammers take advantage of people’s fears, hopes and anxieties, and they motivate them to transfer large sums of money on this basis. Anyone who has helped a victim of these crimes knows how heart-wrenching the ordeal is for them. The feeling of anxiety and powerlessness experienced when pleading with banks and law enforcement to help recover life savings is a tremendous unseen harm caused by online scams.

Recent analysis by consumer champion Which? found that there are 300 to 350 fraud reports every week in which victims show signs of severe emotional distress. One such account from Which? details the case of an 80-year-old gentleman who could not sleep for weeks after losing his retirement savings to scammers. The person behind the scam pretended to be a real investment company, assuming the name of a real investment manager at that company, and ultimately stole £50,000 from the victim, even after he checked their credentials online.

This scam, like the others I have mentioned, began as an advert at the top of Google’s search results. TV, print and radio advertising are all governed by a comprehensive set of rules, yet very little exists to govern online advertising. The majority of people now go online to research and buy everything, from pensions to pet food, holidays to houses, shoes to savings products, but it is for each individual platform to decide what, if any, verification checks it wants to make on businesses taking out adverts on its service.

I do not mean to imply that platforms are doing nothing. Following ongoing discussions with the Financial Conduct Authority, Google, for example, has updated its financial services policy to make financial services advertisers subject to its business operations verification process. I followed the link that Google provided in its letter to the FCA to understand more about what the verification process entails. The policy states:

“Advertisers may be selected to complete business operations verification if, for example, the advertising behavior has been identified as unclear or their ad content is deemed as potentially misleading.

Advertisers whose accounts were suspended due to a violation of our Google Ads policies may also be requested to undergo business operations verification as part of the account suspension appeals and remediation process.

Advertisers who are required to complete business operations verification will be notified and given 21 days to submit the verification form. In certain circumstances, we may pause advertisers’ accounts immediately when business operations verification is initiated. This means that advertisers’ ads will not be able to serve until they are able to complete the program successfully.

Advertiser accounts may be paused if the advertiser’s business model is unclear and we suspect that their advertising or business practices may cause physical or monetary harm to users. Non-exhaustive examples include: misrepresenting yourself in your ad content; offering financial products or services under false pretences; or offering unauthorized customer support services on behalf of third parties.

Once the verification form is completed and reviewed by Google, advertiser’s accounts that do not meet the requirements of this verification program outlined below will be suspended with a 7 day notice period. Note that if any further clarification or information submitted to Google during this 7 day notice period is insufficient to verify the account, Google may suspend the account immediately.”

So, Google “may” carry out checks, or they may not. They “may” pause the adverts at the start of the verification process, or they may not. Advertisers “may” get 21 days leeway before proper checks are completed. Advertisers found not to meet the requirements of the verification process will have seven days to provide further information to verify the account. If they cannot provide that, Google “may” decide to suspend the account immediately, but presumably they also may not. I know politicians are often accused of using non-committal language and trying to evade a straight answer, but this is a masterclass. It might be time that we in this place send the strong signal that that approach is not enough to protect our constituents, who are definitely being scammed out of their life savings.

If a verification process is to be effective, it needs to take place before any adverts are served. Leaving them up for 21 days while checks are completed provides a free-for-all for scammers. An experiment undertaken last year by Which? shows why. It created a fake water brand, Remedii, and an accompanying online service offering pseudo health and hydration advice, called Natural Hydration. It advertised both using Facebook and Google. Which? reported that

“With barely any checking, Google promoted ads for our website and fake mineral water to users who searched for popular terms, such as ‘bottled water’. Our ads gained nearly 100,000 impressions over a month.”

That shows how fast fake ads can reach a wide audience. A lot of damage can be done in 21 days.

Just this week, in a user survey published by Which?, a third of victims who reported a fraudulent ad on Google said that the advert was not taken down by the search engine, while a quarter of victims who reported an advert on Facebook that resulted in them being scammed said the advert was not removed by the social media site. Those companies earn billions of pounds from advertising. Yesterday, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, reported record results, with a 163% increase in profits. Alphabet’s executives have attributed that rise to an increase in people using Google’s online services and interacting with their online adverts. I do not think it unreasonable to require those companies to spend some of their money on helping to protect people from the harm caused by fraudulent adverts, especially given that adverts are targeted at users based on their recent web activity and behaviour. Fraudulent ads, based on a user’s interests or concerns, are effectively pushed towards them by online platforms, which act as enablers for the scammers.

I will briefly tackle the issue of compensation for victims, which is, at the moment, a minefield. In my constituency, I have seen cases involving victims who have found it incredibly difficult to make their claim heard by their bank, prolonging the painful battle to recoup their losses. Those people are forced into a position in which the odds of a successful outcome are low, and they often emerge at the other end with a growing distrust for our regulatory system.

The Financial Ombudsman Service website puts it very clearly:

“When it comes to payments that customers have authorised themselves, the starting point at law is that their bank won’t be liable for the customer’s loss, even when it’s the result of a scam.”

We might say, “Fair enough. It is not the bank that’s at fault. They are merely acting on the instructions of their customer.” What about the companies who expose users to those fraudulent ads, however? Those companies actually target the adverts at users based on their interests, and make billions from doing so. Are we honestly saying they should have no liability, and that there should be no redress for users who are targeted with ads placed by criminals? How can that be fair?

We urgently need to tackle the issue of online financial harms. I asked the Home Secretary about this matter when she gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee. She said:

“We are actually doing some work right now through the economic crime board that I chair with the Chancellor—I chaired it just last week. If you speak to many financial regulators and to the financial services sector, they are equally concerned about this. One of the key outcomes that we are now discussing and picking up across Government is: how are we going to make the online harms Bill much stronger, and how are we going to tackle many of these online advertising platforms that come up through search engines, social media and other forms of electronic communications?

We still have a way to go, but what I can say—and I am very grateful to colleagues in the Treasury on this as well—is that the level of focus and attention to this issue definitely means that it will be given a huge push, a significant push, because, quite frankly, economic crime is now becoming one of the most predominant challenges when it comes to law enforcement but also criminality.”

I could not agree with her more.

I would be grateful for an update from the Minister on how the Government propose to tackle the issue. Will financial harms become part of the online harms Bill as the FCA, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme and Which? are asking for it to be? If not, will she set out what they plan to do instead? In either case, can she go any further towards providing a timetable for action?

We have a really urgent problem affecting thousands of people every year. We must sort it quickly. I am confident that we can, because I know from knocking around the cyber-security industry for most of the past decade that the UK has always been a global leader in cyber-security and tackling cyber-crime. I have seen our strategy grow, mature and evolve as the threat has. Fraudulent online adverts are a real threat to all our constituents. It is not on the horizon; it is here already, and it has been for several years. The alarm bells are sounding, and the problem is growing, so let us grip it now and offer our constituents the protection they all deserve.