Baroness Crawley
Main Page: Baroness Crawley (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Crawley's debates with the Home Office
(4 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberThe noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, has the next supplementary question. She is not here.
Thank you, Lord Speaker, and well done to everyone for getting us to this point. Given the rise in Covid-related fraud and scams in the UK, where we know unscrupulous criminals are exploiting fears about the virus in order to prey on older and vulnerable people, as the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, said, what are the Government doing to ensure that local government capacity, especially in trading standards departments, is fit for purpose, and what direct enforcement action has the Competition and Markets Authority taken in respect of companies breaking the law?
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.